Not all faiths welcome in National Prayer Day

On Thursday, May 6, the United States celebrated National Prayer Day. Sadly, many citizens were excluded from fellowship.

Prayer can have a positive role in the country. It will not happen, however, if racial, political, religious or cultural vanity is deemed more important than God.

In 1952, President Harry S. Truman signed a resolution calling for a national day of “common prayer.” Prayer is something done by persons of all faiths. “Common” has several meanings, all suggesting a broad invitation to come together as a nation. Common prayer can be a strong thread that unites diverse people in a communal manner who seek guidance from a higher good.

During the Truman presidency, many Americans had recently arrived from Eastern Europe. They escaped Soviet hegemony or the ruthless tyranny of a Communist political system. “Common prayer” fostered a sense of national belonging among immigrant Jews, Byzantine Catholics or Eastern Orthodox.

During this time, thousands also arrived from war-torn Southeast Asia. A nation of nations could be strengthened in part, despite different religions, languages or cultures, through religious liberty that didn’t exist in other lands. New citizens from all over the world learned to live in peace with neighbors who looked, sounded and acted differently.

Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, told the Christian Science Monitor: “Prayer is language that is nonthreatening across those boundary lines of left, middle, and right. I see it as an instrument of pausing to reflect on the level of violence we inflict on each other.”

That legacy of common worship has been forgotten. Today, National Prayer Day has evolved into a partisan religious agenda under the guise of holiness. Progressive and mainstream denominations often and rightly express discomfort with this trend, but unfortunately rarely mobilize in a spirited manner to publicly take issue with it.

National Prayer Day has become another example of how the line between politics and religion is blurred. In addition to serving a social, conservative agenda, the day became an exclusive denominational event. The Washington Post reported that Jews, Catholics and Protestants were invited. Muslims were among the religious minorities left out. By inference, others not invited included Bahai, Buddhists, and Unitarian Universalist earth-centered groups.

One national organizer said that only those of the Judeo-Christian heritage should be invited. No apology would be forthcoming because, the organizer self-righteously insisted, this is a Christian nation.

Ironically, the Founding Fathers and Mothers had a preference for using Creator, not Christ, in major documents and pronouncements. In addition, was the willingness to maintain and expand slavery part of God’s noble Christian plan? Nor should it be forgotten that the drive for independence was fueled by taxation without representation. The patriots weren’t worried about religion.

Several of the Founding Fathers were very careful not to emphasize a denominational approach in the young nation. Thomas Paine, a deist and the intellectual architect of liberty, wrote in “Age of Reason” a blistering attack on organized religion. Paine expressed concern that the Almighty had been compromised by humankind’s efforts to control, exploit and brutalize one another by using religion as a justification. Paine made it very clear he was “not a Christian.”

The exclusionary attitude of this year’s National Prayer Day was especially disheartening as taxpaying Americans of the Muslim faith learn about the systematic failure in the humane treatment of Iraqi Muslim prisoners, most of whom were wrongly incarcerated. Nowhere did I read of any efforts to pray for both the safety of American troops and the humane treatment of persons now imprisoned.

If human life is sacred, then it must be respected in all cases. Exactly what was the purpose of National Prayer Day? A political statement to suggest that God prefers one group over another?

God, faith and spirituality in all the Creator’s limitless possibilities must be respected at the national level in an interfaith manner.

To do otherwise encourages a federal theocracy that will divide Americans. It’s not likely God wants the family polarized. All are the creation of God. All are loved equally by God.

The Right Rev. Paul Peter Jesep, an auxiliary bishop in the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church-Sobornopravna, is studying at Bangor Theological Seminary. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the church’s position. He may be reached at VladykaPaulPeter@aol.com. Voices is a weekly commentary by a panel of Maine columnists.