National Day of Prayer

A judge in the Ninth Circuit Court recently ruled that the law passed by Congress and signed by the president proclaiming a national day of prayer as an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Predictably the religious right has condemned the ruling as that of an activist judge trying to remove God from the public square. 

I hear this argument most frequently as, "yes, you have freedom of religion but you don't have freedom from religion." This is really a straw man argument for what "freedom from religion" has traditionally meant is different from how they mean it. 

Freedom from religion to those on the religious right is freedom from all religion, anywhere while, it has traditionally meant, "freedom from government religion." There are very few that would argue that we must be free from religion anywhere. Free from having a church on main street or a person on a street corner holding a Luke or John sign has never been an argument made by anyone I know.

It does make for an easy target though and that's why they continue to use it that way. The reality is, you can't have freedom of religion if you are not free from government religion. As soon as government is allowed to define what is orthodox (normal) in religion then that strips all of us of our right to define what is orthodox in religion. Even if you agree with their definition, your right to define it has been taken away.

In God We Trust on our money, "under God" in our pledge, and the national day of prayer defines what is orthodox in religion. If we are to truly have religious freedom we should never hand our religion over to the government and we should never accept the government's attempts to define what is orthodox in religion. 

Any encroachment on our religious freedom by the government that is left unchallenged only invites further encroachment. The Constitution is not likely to die from a single mortal blow but by numerous seemingly insignificant wounds.