Today is the first Thursday in May, which makes it the National Day of Prayer, established by the U.S. Congress in 1952. A federal judge in Wisconsin has found it an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the federal government, but the decision is under appeal and so the events will go forward.
It might be of interest that there is one U.S. president who was asked to declare a national day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, and refused to do so on constitutional grounds.
That was Andrew Jackson, the man on the $20 bill. A cholera epidemic ravaged New York in 1832, and a local church (synod) asked Jackson to make the proclamation. His reply:
“While I concur with the Synod in the efficacy of prayer, and in the hope that our country may be preserved from the attacks of pestilence … I am constrained to decline the designation of any period or mode as proper for the public manifestation of this reliance. I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.”
Jackson, who was a practicing Presbyterian, was a firm believer in separation of church and state. He kept the mail moving and the post offices open on Sundays, despite protests from religions groups.
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