FRC Action's Tony Perkins and Tom McClusky: National Day of Prayer is Constitutional

WASHINGTON, April 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today congressional leaders held a news conference on Capitol Hill condemning a recent ruling by a federal judge in Wisconsin, Barbara Crabb, that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.  Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins made the following statement about Judge Crabb's ruling:

"Americans enjoy religious freedom not because of the courts but because of the Constitution and the sacrifices of countless men and women to defend it," Perkins said.  "Contrary to Federal District Judge Barbara Crabb's opinion, this ruling does not promote freedom, it crushes it.  The federal government has every right to call on Americans to a day of national prayer, as long as such prayer is not denominational in nature.  This is the clear context of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

"Prayer in America is voluntarily, and exercising that right together as a willing nation is exactly what the Founding Fathers intended, as evidenced by the national days of prayer that our first presidents and congressional bodies enacted. To imply otherwise is to suggest that the Constitution is unconstitutional and that the creators of the Constitution were acting unconstitutionally.  Religion cannot be banned in America because it was never imposed – not by the Founding Fathers, and certainly not by the National Day of Prayer."

FRC Action Senior Vice President Tom McClusky agreed:

"Examples of our founding fathers and national leaders calling for nation-wide prayer permeate our history.  But now over 220 years after patriots ratified the U.S. Constitution, a judge in Wisconsin ruled to reintroduce tyranny in America – this time, from the bench.  U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb determined that a national day of prayer – a tradition as old as the country itself – is unconstitutional.

"The Constitution says 'Freedom OF Religion' not 'Freedom FROM Religion.'  Yet repeatedly we run into judges who just don't seem to get it. This President's first judicial nominee was David Hamilton, who as a state judge ruled it wrong to pray in Jesus' name but okay to pray in Allah's.

"While this decision and these judges seek to undermine prayer, we will use them as the reason why it's necessary.  When the great men and women of our past bent their knees to God on behalf of the 'sacred fire of liberty,' it was often during the nation's darkest days.

"As Alexander Hamilton stated: '[The] sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records.  They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased by mortal power.'  The day we forget this, our nature as a nation becomes fundamentally, and tragically, changed."

SOURCE FRC Action