{"id":3356,"date":"2015-05-07T16:20:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T21:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2015-05-07T22:03:56","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T03:03:56","slug":"five-arguments-against-the-national-day-of-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2015\/05\/07\/five-arguments-against-the-national-day-of-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"Five arguments against the National Day of Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/National_Day_of_Prayer\" target=\"_blank\">that time of year<\/a> again, when politicians across America strive to demonstrate their piety to the masses by leading them to prayer. In some places, they will even lead them <em>in<\/em> prayer, hosting a (Christians-only) worship service, which may look something like this:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NDPOK\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NyRWKrutXgw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(I was physically present when Brian filmed this a few years back, but still cannot believe how spectacularly awful that event really was. It could be marketed to secularists as an audiovisual emetic.)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d like to briefly go over five reasons government prayer proclamations have always been a bad idea.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Government exists for the sake of law and enforcement, not giving advice.<\/li>\n<li>Elected officials do not wield any religious authority in their role as public servants.<\/li>\n<li>Prayer proclamations blur the line between religious and secular authority, creating the false impression of a national civic religion.<\/li>\n<li>Over time such proclamations will tend to conform more closely to the beliefs of the majority religion, or even the most dominant sect.<\/li>\n<li>Politicians may well pervert prayer proclamations to promote partisan policies.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>None of these arguments are new, nor are any of them original. All of them were first advanced by the man now known as the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Father_of_the_Constitution\">Father of the Constitution<\/a>, and may be found in their original (mildly archaic) form on the Americans United <a href=\"https:\/\/www.au.org\/files\/pdf_documents\/james-madison-on.pdf\">website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3357\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3357\" style=\"width: 631px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/05\/631px-James_Madison.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3357 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/05\/631px-James_Madison.jpg\" alt=\"631px-James_Madison\" width=\"631\" height=\"768\" srcset=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/05\/631px-James_Madison.jpg 631w, https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/05\/631px-James_Madison-246x300.jpg 246w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 631px) 100vw, 631px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3357\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Original portrait of James Madison by John Vanderlyn (1775\u20131852) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is that time of year again, when politicians across America strive to demonstrate their piety to the masses by&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":2328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}