Forty years ago this month, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution calling on Americans to unite in prayer for the safe return of the astronauts aboard the battered Apollo 13 spacecraft. Specifically, it asked the media and businesses to pause at a certain time to permit people to pray.
Apparently this was a brazen and illegal act that threatened the nation. At least that's what one can gather from the ruling last week by U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb in Wisconsin. She sided with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which had sued the government to end the National Day of Prayer, established by law in 1952. Government, she ruled, cannot call for religious action because this takes sides "on a matter that must be left to individual conscience."
What utter nonsense.
This ruling was startlingly devoid of any historical context. National days of prayer extend back to the earliest days of the republic and were embraced by its founders, who understood well the First Amendment to the Constitution. John Adams set aside such a day so "that our country may be protected from all the dangers which threaten it."
We are aware that, even then, arguments existed as to the extent to which government could direct religious observance. But the founders understood generally that the First Amendment protected the free exercise of religion from any encroachment by the federal government. The nation was prohibited from establishing a national religion, but historically the government has been charged with neither maintaining a public sector completely free from religion nor with ignoring the role it plays in the lives of so many of its citizens.
Later, other presidents invoked national days of prayer. Most notably, Abraham Lincoln set aside April 30, 1863, "as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer" during the midst of the Civil War. It was his hope "that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace."
On the evening of D-Day in 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the nation to join him in a prayer, which he read over the radio. In an eloquent supplication, he said, "I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking thy help to our efforts."
These prayers were uttered at some of the most vulnerable turning points in the nation's history. They are as much a part of that history as any dry fact about which battles were fought when or who won which victory. They speak to the nation's character and its resolve. And if Crabb had had her way from the start, they would not have been allowed.
We're glad President Barack Obama decided to proceed with this year's National Day of Prayer despite the ruling. We hope a higher court overturns it soon.