U.S. National Prayer Day and coercive religiosity

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National Prayer Day and the insidiously coercive religiosity of its promoters

• America's constitutionally protected freedom of worship ought to mean that elected officials' religious life is none of our business

Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, the annual spectacle of activists and elected officials, in Washington and around the country, gathering for unabashedly conservative Christian public worship. This year's theme: "Pray for America", because there is a need, organizers say, "for individuals, corporately and individually, to place their faith in the unfailing character of their Creator, who is sovereign over all governments, authorities, and men".

Although the US Congress designated the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer, these organized prayer activities are staged by the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a Christian, rightwing organization. Despite its lofty claims, the NDPTF represents neither all Americans nor all Christians. As just one example of its extreme positions, the group promotes a strain of Christianity that teaches marriage equality is satanic, as pro-LGBT groups have pointed out.

Secularists – not people who hate religion, but people who respect the US constitution and the pluralistic ideals it protects – take issue with the NDPTF's promotion of Christian nation mythology. As has become customary, the American Humanist Association and the Washington Area Secular Humanists are organizing their annual Day of Reason to counter the explicitly "Judeo-Christian" (that is, Christian) nature of the NDPTF's Day of Prayer.

I would like to see all the Muslims bring their prayer rugs out into public places and celebrate the occasion with loud calls to prayer and much bowing toward Mecca.

Correct. Religion should be kept well within the home and the church. Nowhere else.

This is just an opportunity for the religious right to shove their theology down everyone else' throats, and to point an accusing finger at anyone who not only opposes them, but also those who doesn't take part.