About 250 years ago, the first Continental Congress opened its session with a prayer. Members probably had no idea how significant that action would be.
Fast forward to 2024. That prayer, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared, is evidence of a “history and tradition” of religious invocations in government. The result is that prayers continue today in Congress (with taxpayer-funded chaplains no less) and in many state and local governments.
We are, it seems, locked into a system that, two and half centuries ago, made sense to many people. (But not all. James Madison opposed chaplains in government, calling the practice “a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles.”) The problem is, the America of 1774 is not the America of today.
There have always been non-Christians in America. Jews were among the early settlers, and many of the enslaved brought here against their will were Muslim or practiced indigenous faiths. And the Native Americans who were here long before European settlers practiced their own faiths. But in 1774, when most people talked about “religious diversity,” they meant primarily among Christian denominations.
That America is long gone. Our citizens today include all varieties of Christians but also Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, Pagans nonbelievers, Humanists and a growing cohort who decline to affiliate with any group.
Congressional prayer policy fails to recognize this diversity. Every official chaplain has been Christian. Until recently, they were all men. Every now and then, a non-Christian guest chaplain is invited to give an invocation, but this hardly remedies the imbalance. Even this small nod to ecumenism is assailed by religious extremists. In 2007, intolerant Christian Nationalists protested when Rajan Zed, a Hindu cleric, was invited to serve as guest chaplain. As Zed delivered his invocation, a group of self-identified “Christians and patriots” in the gallery screamed, “This is an abomination!”
The answer is not to establish some kind of rotating system whereby every religion (and equivalent non-religious belief) gets a day at the government’s podium. The answer is to end government-sponsored prayer in all contexts.
State-sponsored prayer is an anachronism. It didn’t make sense in 1774, and 250 years later, it’s increasingly unworkable in the America we are.
P.S. Americans United President and CEO Rachel Laser appeared on WHYY radio in Philadelphia yesterday to discuss this issue. You can listen to the segment, which also includes a brief interview with the Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a member of AU’s Faith Advisory Council, here.
Photo: U.S. House Chaplain the Rev. Margaret G. Kibben leads a prayer during an event in the Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. By Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.
