You are invited to read this commentary from the Free Enterprise Foundation. It will make you think!

Prayer

“Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying.” (Andy Rooney)

We know from Newton that every physical action is met with an opposite and equal reaction. The corollary in the life of a nation is the charge and counter charge in the arena of political debate. The summer of 2010, unusually hot through most of the land, has become the perfect analogy for Newton’s Law. We are enduring a steaming kitchen of national discord on everything from whether we are being cruel to Lindsay Lohan to the religious affiliation of the President. Maybe it is the heat, but just maybe this silly season is a symptom of our efforts to distract ourselves from the hard work of dealing with some serious questions about where this country is headed and what, if anything, each of us is prepared to do about it.

Prayer is just one issue that deserves serious consideration. Some will say, “I am not being prevented from prayer. It hardly ranks up there with unemployment, racial tensions, looming bankruptcy for the nation or a host of other issues that have raised the national anxiety level to a sizzle.” I beg to differ, for it is in the relationship of the nation to the role of prayer and the habits of life it represents that the pathway to recovery can be found.

I am old enough to represent a generation that, while in public school, began the day with the Lord’s Prayer, and the pledge of allegiance. I feel the better for the experience and believe the vast majority of my classmates, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, share that opinion. There was a bonding that occurred and a recognition that faith in something bigger than all of us was out there to help us navigate the scary unknown that loomed beyond school and childhood. It also gave me a sense of accountability. My behavior mattered even beyond the span of my days on this earth.

If I could pray, and all the dozen generations that came before me that settled this land and conquered the frontier could pray, why can’t the generations that come after me be able to pray? In the decades since, it has gotten worse. We have achieved our own version of purgatory in preventing all sorts of personal religious demonstrations seemingly guaranteed by the plain language of The Constitution. One public high school is rumored to have agreed with its class president that his appearance at their graduation would consist only of a sneeze to which the whole class responded with “God Bless, you!” They get an A in my book!

It is remarkable to me that the judicial reading that has so divided and turned our nation from acceptance of practices that our Founders believed were critical to our preservation and protection, came not at the end of a string of evolutionary decisions reflecting national dispute over decades but fully grown from the head of Justice Hugo Black in McCollum v. Board of Education. This decision in 1948 found that to allow religious educators to come into public school buildings for voluntary religious education after class was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to The Constitution and must be prevented.

The year before, Black was with the majority in Everson v. School Board regarding the permissibility of reimbursing school fares for use of the public transit system by students of both public and parochial schools. Before 1947 there is a dearth of decisions on The Establishment Clause, despite an extensive history of State involvement in encouraging religious education and practice. This then is a case of first impression by the Court based on an unsupported direct reading of the Constitution contrary to a century and a half of practice.

It is beyond dispute that our country has sprung from a deep wellspring of religious devotion and the call by our Founders for religious and moral character by our people as necessary to sustain us along our national path. The first “nationally approved” Bible was printed by Congress and released with its recommendation for use by the Nation. The Capitol Building was established and operated as a church for at least 4 congregations during the 19th century, including its use regularly by President Jefferson, and at his order, served by the U.S. Marine Band as its orchestra. One source notes that in 1858 it had over 2,000 regular parishioners.

The McGuffey Reader with its moral lessons drawn from Biblical reference was the most popular method by which our ancestors learned to read. The first statute passed by Congress was, in part, for the Christian education of Indian tribes in the Northwest Territories. There are facts galore attesting to the supporting, even sponsoring, nature of the relationship of the government to non denominational devotions. I have used many of them over the years, so won’t repeat them here but will remind you that even George Washington noted in his farewell to the nation that to stray from a devotional and moral path marked out for us by our Creator risked losing His Devine providential protection.

Even the language of the First Amendment gives pause in stating, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” One Justice has turned our whole history on its head by the differing position he took between 1947 and 1948. Should the Court in reading the Constitution, so substantially change the practice of the nation from its founding and before? Are the decisions that flow from this change taking practice way too far in the other direction, and by their fiat, prohibiting us in the free exercise of our religion? It is for the nation to decide, but for me, I am with Andy Rooney. “Let’s make 2010 the year the silent majority is heard, and we put God back as the foundation of our families and institutions.”

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Copyright © 2010 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr., is president of the Free Enterprise Foundation. He is also the first BB&T Visiting Professor in Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel. A regular contributor to the Mercury, Prof. Freer may be reached at Robert.freer@citadel.edu. If you would like him to appear before your group or organization to speak on any of the subjects about which he writes, please contact him at The Citadel. Copies of his earlier columns may be found at The Free Enterprise Foundation