National Day of Prayer: Politics and Religion

May 1st, brings us the national day of prayer. This is an exciting day for me, a Christian, who believes in the absolute power of prayer. However, the idea of a day of prayer is also tainted with some people's missuse of the United States First Amendment to the Constitution's provision of seperation of church and state. That is what brings me to my persuasion today.

So we've got the First Amendment which prohibits the establishment of a national religion by congress. Okay fine, I believe that our founding fathers were inspired if not completly directed by God to the form The Constitution and Bill of Rights. It doesn't take a genius here... Just look at the documents the term "God" is printed all over. However, in the spirit of the freedoms those documents profess, I will concede that argument and leave it up to your own judgements. I just challenge you not to forsake true history for the sake of temporal intelect.

The other argument established in the First Amendment of The Constitution, is the freedom to exercise your religion. Therefore, as a citizen of the United States, one has the freedom to profess and openly worship his or her chosen religion. Or! To choose no religion at all.

So to marry the two provisions above, as an American one has the right to his or her religion, and can count on the Federal government not to establish a forced national religion.

What irks me is when one takes those two provisions completely out of context. On one side, you say, "a political leader can't have prayer in her office." Why not, wouldn't that conflict with her freedom to exercise religion? Contrary, if she were to create and enforce law to require all her subordinates or citizens under her jurisdiction to follow her religion then she would conflict the establishment clause.

Now my rant... So when our President gets up to pray in a few days and maybe he'll say "Jesus" or "Christ", it's okay. He is not breaking the law! In America we have this wonderful organization of political election where a majority vote rules. We all knew our President, George W. Bush at this time, is a Christian. He was voted on and won, twice. If the majority of voting citizens of the United States wanted something different then they would have elected differently. We're not that stupid and we weren't decived by anyone. Accept it!

If a future president were to take another religious stand contrary to my beliefs, I would disagree. However, by no means does that give me the right to forcefully stop him.

So, a non-Christian might say that the United States doesn't represent me. TRUE and FALSE. False, because as a national government, the United States does nothing to prevent you from your religion. You are welcome to worship or not worship as you please. Go to some other country and try to practice a religion not accepted by the national govenment and you'll see what the freedom provides to you. The heading statement is TRUE in the sense that the collective individules of the United States don't represent the same beliefs as the non-Christian. In the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey completed by The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, the results show that just under 80% of those randomly surveyed consider themsleves personally aligned with the Christian religion. Only just under 4% believe in ALL other world religions and 14% stated they believe in no religion.

So if our national leader prayed a Christian prayer then in the popular sence, he would represent the United States very well. Hmm...

Rant number two, so in light of the above facts, I feel like in many circumstaces the adgenda of the non-majority try to jump up to a position of majority by way of legslitation or media or whatever. ALL are free to their thoughts I am sorry your's may not be the leading one. But the fact is that if you have a minority belief, the majority might disagree. Sorry. I can't change them just like I can't change you. You are STILL free! Stand tall! Just don't suppress me in the spirit of freedom. Huh? Suppress me. Freedom. I thought we were free to religion, and for the sake of freedom you are saying I can't pray at school, as a student? Listen to yourself.

Thanks for hearing my rant, conversly I hope the facts I expressed take a stronger position.

If you have any thoughts on this, please comment.