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ORIGINAL: sunshinemiss

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

None of the above, Dubbel...

My thoughts?

I cannot think of a religion that doesnt have some form of prayer. So i see no one faith being promoted over another. I do see all faiths being supported by this statute. So, was this a strike against government intervention or promotion of a particular religion, which is against what our founding fathers wanted... or is this a strike against religion, which is a supported freedom?

Many religions don't have prayer tazzy... and what about the people who don't practice a religion?

If people need the government to remind its citizens to pray, there is seriously something wrong.

best,
sunshine

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ORIGINAL: thornhappy

I wouldn't think much of it if it was wide-ranging and supported by many faiths, but it's become much more a right-wing Christian event.  Just like how the National Prayer Breakfasts used to have many religions participating, but locally, at least, it's exclusively Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian.

But really, why do we need a National Day of Prayer?

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ORIGINAL: xbrand

How about a 'National Eat Eclairs Day'.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: takemeforyourown

Why does the U.S., which alleges itself to be the "free-est" nation in the world, get so hung up on religion? It vexes me. We are not a "free" people. We enslave ourselves to narrow-mindedness.

Nevertheless, the alternative is to have other people deciding for us what is "narrow-minded" and what is not. And as you may have noticed, that happens to be one of the favorite pastimes of narrow-minded people.

K.

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

Religion doing something?

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On March 30, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the following proclamation:

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.

And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, 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.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward, Secretary of State[4]

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A Senate report incorrectly claims as part of the rationale for the law that prayers were conducted at the Constitutional Convention, which adopted the U.S. Constitution: “When the delegates to the Constitutional Convention encountered difficulties in the writing and formation of a Constitution for this Nation, prayer was suggested and became an established practice at succeeding sessions,” according to the report by the Committee on the Judiciary.

However, Benjamin Franklin suggested prayer, but in his own notes recorded that the convention, “except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.” His suggestion to pray was met politely but with some embarrassment, scholars note, and delegates quickly adjourned.[6]

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Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush each hosted special events for the day only once during their administrations, President Bill Clinton did not hold any such events during his time in office, George W. Bush held events on the National Day of Prayer in each year of his presidency, and President Barack Obama did not hold a formal event for the NDOP on May 7, 2009.[11]

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ORIGINAL: agnes26

I know...and the rational part of me knows that I'm not being "forced to pray". (I am glad they quit doing that in school before my time.) I just get a little bristley at the idea of a government sanctioned prayer day. Maybe I'd be a little less so if they had government sanctioned "free thinking day" or something. I spent time in the UK recently and I really enjoyed how - depsite England having a national church (unlike the US) - there seems to be no permeation of public politics with religion. At least to an American observer, it was much less than here. 

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The National Day of Reason is a secular celebration in the United States instituted by humanists, atheists, and other secularists and freethinkers as an alternative to the National Day of Prayer.[1] Some organizations associated with the NDR have organized blood donations.[2] Other local groups, such as the Oklahoma Atheists and the Minnesota Atheists have organized secular celebrations as alternatives to the National Day of Prayer.[3]

The day is celebrated on the first Thursday in May every year, to coincide with the National Day of Prayer. In 2008 it fell on May 1, the 75th anniversary of the first Humanist Manifesto.

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

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ORIGINAL: sunshinemiss


Many religions don't have prayer tazzy... and what about the people who don't practice a religion?

If people need the government to remind its citizens to pray, there is seriously something wrong.

best,
sunshine

If we are taking that road.. what about National Take Your Child to Work Day. Many people do not have children... yet i see no one up in arms over being "told" to take a child to work, or even their own child.

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ORIGINAL: Silence8

My blunt response: American's extreme religious strength is a natural counterweight to its extreme material ('market') orientation.

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ORIGINAL: Silence8

I think Christianity (and most of the world religions) emerged originally as a response to the rise of long-distance anonymous trade, so-called market societies where the professional realm focused entirely on product, profit, and material gains for arguably the first time in human history. To counteract this, society developed a religious realm that ostensibly dealt only with the spiritual, non-material, metaphysical, etc., a sort of 'antidote' to material excesses.

In the case of America, the unprecedented cultural diversity and social distances only heightened this already existent effect.