Reading through my local paper today I noticed some serious discrepancies. As a resident of Carson City what was printed as fact without actual fact checking being done by either the staff reporter or the editor of The Nevada Appeal highly disappointed me. Errors in the article are a bit blatant and it seems to show that maybe this piece was written at the last minute and based solely on the information posted at The National Day of Prayer Task Force’s misleading site. To read the paper’s published article click here:
Now, the first thing we are going to look at is some history. In 1952 Billy Graham led a six week prayer campaign in Washington D.C. which concluded in members from both the House and Senate creating a resolution to have a national day of prayer. On April 17th 1952 President Truman signed the resolution into law for our country to have an official National Day of Prayer. The law was open to having the day be held when the president at the time declared it as such. Representative Priest called the resolution “a day which members of all faiths and all religions could spend in meditation and prayer.”
In 1988 S.1378, which was a Senate bill brought to the floor by Senator Strom Thurmond and brought to the House by Representative Tony Hall. This bill was signed into law on May 5th that same year by President Ronald Reagan and called for our National Day of Prayer to be held on the 1st Thursday in May every year. In Reagan’s proclamation he called for the joining together of people from many faiths and not just a single faith.
The main ideal here is that having a National Day of Prayer is to give anyone of any faith the ability to participate. Of course being America, anyone of any faith has the ability not to participate as well and that ability is one that I will be exercising this year.
Let us now take a look, again at The National Day of Prayer Task Force. This is a privately funded company housed in The Focus on The Family headquarters. The task force may state that they have the “official” national day of prayer website but they do not. This is an Evangelical Christian organization that requires its members to sign a belief statement before being associated with them in anyway. Refer to my previous article just on the task force here.
Now that the above is out of the way I’m going to get into the errors of The Nevada Appeal’s article.
Error 1: The article states that The National Day of Prayer Task Force was created in 1952 and signed into law by Truman. This is not true.
Error 2: The article says that this is a day for Christians to organize and pray. I was under the impression that anyone could pray at any time in their own way but here in my own city the local paper is telling me otherwise.
What became even more of a concern after reading their article was that the only listings for religious participation at the capitol building were for Christians.
Tomorrow, on the National Day of Prayer I’m going to compose my first letter to the editor at The Nevada Appeal. I’ll keep everyone updated on how that goes.
Also, I may get into here locally information that deals with The Alliance and the political ties between them and Focus on the Family. Sadly, I admit that I did not realize just how far the evangelical movement has come in our country in regards to actually changing laws and usurping the religious freedoms of not only non-Christian groups but of Christian denominations other than their own.