National Day of Prayer, Unconstitutional

If public money goes to the promotion of it in any way, then yes it is. Otherwise, I don't care what a person does on a given day.

The whole thing seems silly to me. If you believe in prayer, what is so important about doing it on one specific day? Also, why would you require it to be recognized by the government? You're already free to pray at any moment of the day.

T
K
O

I agree with TKO.

If there is any public funding (of those not donating), then yes it is. But if there are only people participating who want to be participating, then no it's not.

Let me repeat what Bella Dea said: I agree with Diest as well.

I have a real problem with forced, public prayer. To me, prayer is private.

Not only government funding, but government endorsement. Here the government is endorsing the day of prayer, yet it is not endorsing a specific religion, but religion in general. I'm not sure how that plays out.

I do give a little slack here though. I have no objection to public servants and elected officials participating in prayer events, but I expect them to attend in the capacity as a citizen not as a representative of the government. Certainly, that can be a hard line to walk depending on what position you have, but I expect that people have a good enough judgement to know the difference.

Government "endorsement" is hard to define, but it seems like it's one of those things that when you see it you know it.

POM - Nobody is forced to pray on the NDoP. If I was, I'd pray to the fire hydrant in my alley. I find the results are about the same, and in the end, I can at least prove the fire hydrant is real.

T
K
O

If it is not forced then it seems a good way to unite people of all religions....that would be good wouldnt it ?

I didn't mean forced in the sense of being made to do it but in the sense of a proclamation. Guess that doesn't make things any more clear than they were before I opened this dialog box.

This was the Judge's opinion:

Judge Barbara Crabb wrote:
Like international press coverage of a President at prayer...like a politician not being ballsy enough to declare he is non-religious. Doesnt anyone see the value in all religions having a prayer day ? Wont that help unity, something lacking in the New World ? Non-religious people can have a meditation day or a family outing day at the same time....

individuals who are grounded in spiritual matters are better than individuals who are not, so it is in the collectives interest to encourage this activity. Doing it through government is fine so long as the government is not deciding which flavor the individuals pick. This is certainly a more worthy use of government than a lot of what we use government for.

Better in what way?


So you're willing to allow government to promote religion over secularism, so long as government doesn't promote any particular religion. Is that right?