Americans gathered at more than 40,000 events across the nation to mark the 63rd official National Day of Prayer May 1, with participating leaders warning of a continuing moral and spiritual decline, interceding for national repentance, and, in at least one case, expressing defiance toward the “abortion president” and the contraception mandate that his administration has tried to foist on Americans.
Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of famed Protestant evangelist Billy Graham, was a keynote speaker at the main Day of Prayer event in Washington, D.C., and her message included a warning of impending judgment on America over its increasing tolerance of wickedness. The remedy, she said, “will not be political or military or economic or education. The answer is to fall on our face before God and cry out to Him in humble repentance of sin.”
As the honorary chairperson for this year’s Day of Prayer, Lotz read the 2014 National Prayer written for the event, which included the declaration that while God is merciful, forgiving, and righteous, “this day we are covered with shame because we have sinned against You, and done wrong. We have turned away from Your commands and principles. We have turned away from You. Yet You have promised in 2 Chronicles 7, that if we — a people identified with You — would humble ourselves, pray, seek Your face, and turn from our wicked ways, then You would hear our prayer, forgive our sin, and heal our land.”
Speaking for all repentant Americans, Lotz prayed that “we choose to stop pointing our finger at the sins of others, and examine our own hearts and lives. We choose to acknowledge our own sin — our neglect and defiance and ignorance and even rejection of You. This day we choose to repent.”
As past presidents have done starting with Harry Truman in 1952, President Obama issued a proclamation designating this year’s National Day of Prayer. “One of our Nation’s great strengths is the freedom we hold dear, including the freedom to exercise our faiths freely,” said the president. “For many Americans, prayer is an essential act of worship and a daily discipline.” He noted that throughout the day, across America, prayers would be offered to God “for comfort for those who mourn, healing for those who are sick, protection for those who are in harm’s way, and strength for those who lead.” He added that “forgiveness and reconciliation will be sought through prayer,” and that many Americans would be giving thanks “for our many blessings, including the freedom to pray as our consciences dictate.”
Obama admonished that Americans “must never forget those around the world, including Americans, who are being held or persecuted because of their convictions. Let us remember all prisoners of conscience today, whatever their faiths or beliefs and wherever they are held. Let us continue to take every action within our power to secure their release. And let us carry forward our Nation’s tradition of religious liberty, which protects Americans’ rights to pray and to practice our faiths as we see fit.”
At least one prominent religious and cultural leader took the opportunity to lash out at President Obama over what many Americans have concluded is his ongoing assault on religious liberty, as well as for his overt defense and promotion of abortion. During an address at the Washington, D.C., National Day of Prayer event, Dr. James Dobson, founder of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, described Obama as the “abortion president.”
Dobson’s current pro-family organization, Family Talk, has won a temporary injunction against the controversial federal healthcare mandate that would require employers to provide free contraceptives — including ones that cause abortion — to their workers. In his address, Dobson claimed that “President Obama, before he was elected, made it very clear that he wanted to be the abortion president. He didn’t make any bones about it. This is something that he really was going to promote and support, and he has done that, and in a sense he is the abortion president.”
Dobson, whose wife Shirley heads the National Day of Prayer Task Force, told the Washington, D.C., National Day of Prayer audience that without the injunction, “the mandate requiring that we provide abortifacients such as the morning after pill would have begun on May 1st. After that, if we hadn’t prevailed, fines amounting to $800,000 per year would have kicked in. We would have closed our doors.”
But in defiance of the federal regulations and the president, Dobson read from a letter he had previously published on the issue, declaring that “I will not pay the surcharge for abortion services…. To pay one cent for the killing of babies is egregious to me, and I will do all I can to correct a government that lies to me about its intentions and then tries to coerce my acquiescence with extortion.”
He added that “it would be a violation of my most deeply held convictions to disobey what I consider to be the principles in Scripture. The Creator will not hold us guiltless if we turn a deaf ear to the cries of His innocent babies. So come and get me if you must, Mr. President. I will not bow before your wicked regulation.”
Following the comments, Democratic Congresswoman Janice Hahn (Calif.) stormed out of the room, calling Dobson’s comments “inappropriate” for the bipartisan event. “He goes on about health care and … providing abortions, and at that point I stood up and I pointed my finger at Dr. Dobson and I said, ‘This is inappropriate!’ and walked out,” Hahn told the Huffington Post. She added that the pro-family leader “blew a hole into this idea of being a nonpartisan National Day of Prayer. It was very disturbing to me and really a shame. James Dobson hijacked the National Day of Prayer to promote his own distorted political agenda.”
Meanwhile, reported Baptist Press News, this year’s National Day of Prayer “took place on the day the Colorado Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a challenge to the governor’s right to issue an honorary prayer proclamation. The Freedom From Religion Foundation challenged the practice in 2010, and the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled in the atheist organization’s favor.
Among those presenting oral arguments before the state supreme court was the conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, which argued in support of the governor’s constitutional authority to issue an official prayer proclamation. “No governor of any other state in the nation has been barred from issuing such proclamations,” said ADF Senior Counsel Brett Harvey in a written statement. “Our prayer is that the Colorado Supreme Court does not become the first state to bar its governor from doing so.”
