Eleven score and fifteen years ago, one of America’s greatest orators declared, without hesitation, that “there [was] a just God who preside[d] over the destines of nations, and who [would] raise up friends to fight our battles for us.” Today, few could imagine an American leader delivering that exhortation. Fewer still would refer to the United States as engaged in the “holy cause of liberty.” Nonetheless, for our founding generation, no intellectual dichotomy existed between the state and her reliance on religious piety; no ill-constructed wall separated religion from state.
Throughout the history of the United States, religion has proven to be “more than just words or an abstract idea; it’s a symbol. A symbol of who and what we are . . . It’s the bedrock and foundation of everything we believe” (Lake, Paul. Cry Wolf: A Political Fable, 145). In April, 2010, the McConnell Center hosted Dr. Thomas Kidd of Baylor University who argued precisely that point. Our founding generation interspersed religion within both popular and political culture. Orators from Patrick Henry to George Washington saw no way to appeal to a virtuous people while omitting the very source of that virtue.
Nonetheless, on Thursday, United States District Judge Barbara B. Crabb ruled the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional, on the ground “because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context.” Apart from the decision as a textbook example of bad jurisprudence (see Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 1983, upholding Congressional chaplains and ceremonial prayer), Judge Crabb’s decision ignored the context in which the Constitution was drafted, and in which it was ratified. Her decision paid no deference to the words of those who drafted, or those who ratified, that document.
President George Washington admonished our nation that, “of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” If we accept this to be true, has a nation not a compelling interest in fostering political prosperity within her people? Indeed, history has bourn out the credence of Washington’s words. It is only the fanciful imagining of a few that denies a causal link between the virtue of a nation and the virtue that religion instills within her people. But as Patrick Henry observed, “it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope.” And I lament that some of our leaders have proven so “apt to shut [their] eyes against a painful truth . . . disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation." Patrick Henry would have much to say to America today.