The Freedom From Religion Foundation is condemning the White House’s “invitation to prayer and rededication of the United States as one nation under God,” and its unveiling of an “America Prays” webpage that explicitly promotes Christian worship.
The White House claims the “America Prays” campaign is preparation for the 250th birthday of the United States. The “America Prays” campaign was announced along with a promise to insert more religion in public schools at yesterday’s White House Religious Liberty Commission meeting held, inappropriately, at the private Museum of the Bible. HUD Secretary Scott Turner opened the event, saying, “We have a godly, faithful Cabinet … that prioritizes prayer.”
More than 70 faith organizations are listed on the White House website as having joined with the White House in asking Americans to join together “10 people each week to pray for one hour for America.” These groups include Christian nationalist or conservative evangelical organizations such as WallBuilders, Jack Posobiec (termed a white supremacist by the Southern Poverty Law Institute), the Southern Baptist Convention, National Religious Broadcasters and the Faith and Freedom Coalition, “Think about the miracles that would take place” if everyone would pray, intoned Turner.
Au contraire, says the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“As we say at FFRF, ‘Nothing fails like prayer,’” comments FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The answers to humanity’s problems will not come from above. Wishful thinking cannot alter the natural laws of the universe much less improve our nation. We instead urge pious politicians to get off their knees and get to work.”
The “resources and ideas for times of prayer” offered by the White House website are overtly Christian, including invoking the oft-misquoted 2 Chronicles 7:14. (Read FFRF Co-President Dan Barker’s blog about the misuse of this New Testament quote or watch this “Freethought Matters’ video dedicated to debunking the dishonest misrepresentation of this bible verse.)
That the “America Prays” campaign is based on disinformation is apparent from the illustration of General George Washington supposedly praying at Valley Forge that graces the webpage. There is no evidence that Washington ever prayed at Valley Forge — it’s the claim of 19th-century master of disinformation Mason Lock Weems, whose 1808 biography of Washington is full of bogus tales. Weems credited a Quaker named Isaac Potts, who claimed to have witnessed Washington praying in the woods even though Potts had spent the winter of 1777–1778 20 miles from Valley Forge.
The White House website includes a document compiling prayers and proclamations “throughout American history” that cherry-pick some events that included prayer, as well as debunked claims, such as that George Washington added “So help me God” to his presidential oath, even though the Constitution, which provides the wording, has no such mention. While Washington, a fairly orthodox Deist, peppered some remarks with deistic references, he also warned: “Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause” (Washington letter to Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792).
Most egregiously, the document dishonestly implies that there was prayer during the Constitutional Convention that adopted our godless and entirely secular Constitution. Yes, Benjamin Franklin, at one acrimonious point, suggested a prayer, but the convention adjourned and none was given, showing the clear intent of the framers of our Constitution not to entangle religious belief with government. The White House document dishonestly tries to conflate a private July 4, 1787, prayer by a minister with the convention itself.
Trump and the White House notably ignore the robust secular views of James Madison, the primary architect of the Constitution, and Thomas Jefferson, who demanded the addition of a Bill of Rights. Jefferson, as president, refused to issue proclamations of prayer or thanksgiving. As he wrote Rev. Samuel Miller, “one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, & mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the U.S. and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.”
President Trump has no civil, legal or moral authority to tell America to pray or otherwise direct our religious exercises. The “America Prays” program is blatant pandering to his evangelical base and a defilement of the Constitution Trump swore to uphold.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters of nontheism. With more than 42,000 members, FFRF advocates for freethinkers’ rights across the globe. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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