Yesterday, May 5, 2016, was the 64th official National Day of Prayer. The National Day of Prayer was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It was 13 years later that President Lyndon B Johnson signed in to law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Now, why would I even reference the ESEA in an article about the National Day of Prayer? It’s because the later Act has been a part of the assault on the earlier.
As I saw several posts on various Social Media feeds yesterday, I saw at least one comment in every thread following these post something related to, “Hey, don’t you know that we have the ‘separation of Church and State’ in this Country?!” This is the tie between the two Acts mentioned above. I have no doubt that without the intervention of the national government and its secular Educrats, in to the general public school system; our populace would today not be so ignorant of the true history of our Republic. There is no question that the volumes of history on the connection between this Nation and National calls for Prayer has been systematically expunged from our public schools and replaced with this “separation of Church and State” idiocy.
This has to come from the removal of Civics and the teaching the truth about our Founders and our Founding Documents from our public schools. In the place of the truth, we now have the teaching of “Our Founders were mostly secularists, Deists, agnostics and atheists and made sure that there was a clear ‘separation of religion (Church) and government (State)’ in the design of this Republic. But, to the surprise of those who have actually read our Constitution, it has NO reference to anything about a “separation of Church and State”. There is only a single reference to religion in the document, which resides in the 1st Amendment- “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The 1st Amendment is then limited in its scope by the 10th Amendment which states- “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The brilliance of the design of our Founders, which seems to have been removed through the education system, was that the Founders saw the Sovereign States as the seat of government powers, except in those particular powers that were specified in the Constitution. Since the 1st Amendment STARTS with “Congress shall make no law”, they were saying that the federal government had no place in these areas. And the 10th Amendment then says these areas are to be governed by the States.
There are those who now argue that this is no longer applicable because of the “catch all clause” in the 14th Amendment, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” I would contend that there is NOTHING in any law that says any Citizen has legal protection from being offended as it seems many contend they are by the public display or practice of ANY religious actions or rituals. So, there is no reason to codify a “separation of Church and State”. I hope that we will continue to humble ourselves as a Nation before God and observe our National Day of Prayer.
I close this article with this quote from one of our Founders, the one who many of those quoting “separation of Church and State” say was the driving force behind it, “Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the time for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and right can never be safer than in their hands, where the Constitution has deposited it.” —Thomas Jefferson, 1808
God Bless America! And America, Bless God Again!
