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Jewish World Review May 3, 2000 /28 Nissan, 5760
Don Feder
http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- TOMORROW IS NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER -- unless some idiot judge decides it constitutes an establishment of religion, tends to promote a particular faith and/or is offensive to the hypersensitive. May 4 will mark the 49th annual National Day of Prayer. In years past, there have been more than 20,000 prayer events across the country. In 1999, 500 inmates held a prayer service at California's Folsom prison. This year, in San Francisco, a group of motorcyclists will pray as they drive around the city. If you don't think this nation needs prayer, desperately, then you haven't been paying attention to the news lately.
What about "In G-d We Trust," on our currency and in our national anthem ("And this be our motto, in G-d is our trust")? Since it comes from the Book of Psalms, does it constitute government endorsement of Judaism? Writing for the court's majority, Judge Arven Cohn notes that the Supreme Court has never ruled on constitutionality of "In G-d We Trust." Apparently, Cohn hopes that this breach of the wall of separation will one day be repaired, as well. If Al Gore makes the next three Supreme Court nominations, count on it. The courts have taken a First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of a national church and transformed it into a ban on any connection of government and religion, however innocuous, that gets more absurd with each passing year. School prayer, student-led invocations, creches and menorahs on public property -- all have been declared the constitutional equivalent of the Church of England. That this is the furthest thing from the Founders' intent seems not to matter. The Pilgrims weren't secular humanists. The first Congress, which voted for salaried chaplains, wasn't the 18th century counterpart of the ACLU. On his deathbed, President Andrew Jackson pointed to a nearby Bible and exclaimed, "That book is the Rock upon which our republic rests." Now, 155 years later, America is ruled by unelected militants who have determined that the Rock of our republic (the book on which every president from Washington to Clinton has taken the oath of office) is a mortal threat to our republic, that if Ohio is allowed to quote the Christian bible in its state seal, tomorrow citizens will be baptized at gunpoint. The answer to this pigheaded, truncheon-wielding, state-enforced secularism is not to throw up our hands in despair. When things look hopeless, prayer is all the more essential. Throughout the darkest days of this century, in the death camps and gulags there was prayer. Before Cassie Bernall was murdered at Columbine High School a year ago for saying she believed in G-d, the 17-year-old probably said a silent prayer. (Since she admitted to a belief in G-d on public property, did Cassie violate the Constitution?)
Did these appeals to a much higher court help? Nazism is gone. After the
liberation of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union's demise, communism is on
the wane. Perhaps one day soon secularism will join its brother isms on the
editing floor of history. With G-d, all things are
JWR contributing columnist Don Feder's latest book is Who's Afraid of the Religious Right. Comment on his column by clicking here.
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