Dr. David Gibbs, Jr.

At the Christian Law Association, we know that prayer has been the deciding factor in many of our court cases.  Prayer has influenced presidential elections and legislative actions which have affected untold millions of lives.  God commands us in His Word to pray for our nation.

It was America’s founders who first developed a dependency upon God through prayer, although that dependency is slowly eroding today as anti-Christian forces hostile to Jesus become more powerful in our culture.  But God is faithful.

The question is, how faithful are we?

As Christians are facing attempts to censor public prayer in Jesus’ name, we are seeing far too many voluntarily give up their right to continue doing so.  There is power in Jesus’ name, and Scripture tells Christians that we are to petition God in the name of Jesus Christ.

What Did America’s Founders Say in Their Prayers? 

Our nation’s Founders recognized, and the United States Supreme Court has agreed, that “one of the greatest dangers to the freedom of the individual to worship in his own way lay in the Government’s placing its official stamp of approval upon one particular kind of prayer or one particular form of religious services.”  Engel v. Vitale (1962).

The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause means that no government may coerce religious belief.  But our Founders obviously never envisioned that this important Biblical principal would, more than 200 years later, be turned on its head and used to censor their own Christian faith in public.  Certainly, if the First Amendment means anything in this country, it means that the government must keep out of a man’s private prayers, even when those prayers are offered in public.

Several decades ago, the Supreme Court conducted an extensive historical inquiry and concluded that because members of the First Congress had authorized the appointment of chaplains to offer legislative prayers only three days before agreeing to the language of the Establishment Clause, they could not have intended the Establishment Clause “to forbid what they had just declared acceptable.”  The Court also pointed out that the “practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress” and has “been followed consistently in most of the states.”  “This unique history” led the Court “to accept the interpretation of the First Amendment draftsmen who saw no real threat to the Establishment Clause arising from a practice of prayer.”  The Court concluded that opening legislative meetings with prayer is constitutional because of its longstanding tradition in America.  Marsh v. Chambers (1983). 

It is very important to note that the early legislative prayers referenced by the Supreme Court in the Marsh case were almost always offered in the name of Jesus.  For instance, when the First Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in September 1774 to deal with the colonies’ worsening relationship with Britain, before getting down to the work at hand, the delegates decided to commit the matter to God. At first, they deliberated about whether to open their sessions with prayer.

John Jay of New York and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina disagreed with a proposal to open their legislative sessions with prayer because of the great diversity of denominations present.  All of the delegates were either Christian, Deist, or Jewish at that time, but there was tension between various Christian denominations, and particularly between the Congregational churches of Massachusetts, who had encouraged separation from England, and the American Episcopal Church, which was still affiliated with the Church of England during the Revolutionary War.  Samuel Adams, the great Boston Patriot, paved the way for the opening legislative prayers by rising to say that he “was no bigot and could hear a prayer from any gentleman of piety and virtue, and at the same time a friend to his country.”  Our modern legislators and courts should take the same view of this matter in our own time.

Historically, the first prayer offered at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia was prayed by Rev. Jacob Duché, an Episcopal clergyman, on September 7, 1774.  Rev. Duché’s church was still tied to England’s state church, while Adams and the other colonial patriots were desperate to avoid being required to attend the very British state church that Duché represented. 

Rev. Jacob Duche'

Be Thou present; O God of Wisdom, and direct the councils of this Honorable Assembly: enable them to settle all things on the best and surest of foundations: that the scene of blood may be speedily closed: that Order, Harmony and Peace may be effectually restored, and Truth, and Justice, Religion, and Piety prevail and flourish among the people. Preserve the health of their bodies and the vigor of their minds, shower down on them, and the millions they here represent, such temporal Blessings as Thou seest expedient for them in this world, and crown them with everlasting Glory in the world to come. All this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ Thy Son and Our Savior. Amen.

This first legislative prayer should settle the matter for our time as well.  Any legislator or citizen should be able to hear the prayer of any citizen patriot, even if that prayer is offered in Jesus’ name.  Every American has the right to pray as his own faith dictates.  Anything less is sheer bigotry, just as it would have been in 1774 when Samuel Adams was a member of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

Tips for Public Prayers in Jesus Name

It is very important to pray for success in these cases.  Pray that Jesus’ name will not be banned from legislatures in a nation that was founded as a Christian nation.  And pray that when prayers are offered in private associations and groups in America, whether children’s clubs, professional luncheons, or condo association meetings, that Christians will not voluntarily give up their own faith and censor their own prayers.  No court has ever required such censorship and our Constitution promises just the opposite. 

Pastors and other Christians who engage in public prayer should remember just two things:

1)    Courts have said that government-related public prayers should not be used to overtly proselytize, even though courts have never said that prayers may not be offered in Jesus’ name.

2)    Courts have also said that government-related public prayers should not be used to disparage other faiths.

If pastors keep these two simple rules in mind, praying in Jesus’ name continues to be a right that Christians enjoy, even in a changing culture.  And of course, in private associational clubs and groups, there is absolutely no governmental or constitutional reason to censor prayer.

John Adams, our second president and Samuel Adam’s cousin, said after America’s Constitution was established, “You have a republic, if you can keep it.”  Are Americans going to continue to fight for their religious freedom at home as well as in other places around the world?  Please join CLA in fighting to preserve the right for Christians to pray anywhere in Jesus’ name.