Skip links

A National Day of Prayer

Today is our National Day of Prayer.

This annual encouragement to call on God on behalf of our nation is codified in our laws:

The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals. (36 U.S. Code § 119)

More crucially, it is called for in God’s Word:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone,  for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. (1 Timothy 2:1-2

The History

The National Day of Prayer was created in 1952 by a joint resolution by Congress and signed into law by President Truman. However, since our founding, presidents have been calling the nation to its knees, urging citizens to cry out to God.

The phrase “separation of church and state” is gospel to those hellbent on removing faith from the public square. However, the man who came up with the phrase — in a single mention in a single letter addressing a specific situation — held a different view:

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)

It is not politically correct, only historically correct: No one would even be talking about a line between church and state had our founders not recognized and honored the direct line between the state and God.

Read more a Stream.org…

Share with Friends: