National Day of Prayer and the Death of G-d

From thepoetmiranda's Editor's Desk

National Day of Prayer, a Jingoistic Tradition

Though the United States was explicitly founded as NOT a Christian nation, the church has from (before) our beginning been chipping away at the wall of separation between church and state. The Second Continental Congress called for times of prayer and fasting in 1775, and our second President, John Adams, again called the nation to pray in 1798 and 1799.

Other Presidential declarations calling for prayer happened throughout the years, often in response to the nation’s current struggles.

Then the Red Scare. In the 1950s, the U.S. added a whole lot of G-d to official government messaging. We didn’t take things to the point of endorsing a particular sect of Christian faith, but we wanted the world to know that G-d was on the side of the U.S. of A. and of capitalism.

We made “In God We Trust” the nation’s official motto, and it started going out on all forms of money (not just the coins that had borne that message off and on since 1864). We added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

And we added the National Day of Prayer in 1952 as an annual holiday—to occur on the first Thursday of May each year. It wasn’t a matter of true faith then, and it’s become even less a matter of true faith in subsequent years as evangelical Christians and Christian nationalists have used the occasion to weaponize prayer against their political foes.

(The Image of) G-d is Dead

The Trump regime represents Christian nationalists’ wet dream come to life. For years, they’ve been salivating about stripping rights from immigrants (of any status, not just undocumented ones), LGBTQ folks, black people, indigenous people, Palestinians, Jews who aren’t sufficiently Zionist, and, of course, women. More recently, their fervor for targeting groups for subjugation (and potential elimination) has expanded to include autistic people and other disability groups.

I’m a transgender woman who spent decades as an evangelical Christian (trying to pray my gay away). As dedicated as I was to spreading the gospel and living a faith-based life, I never committed to the Christian nationalist political program that saw white Christian American men as the heads of the Church and stewards of the latest crusades.

I was the wrong kind of true believer—one who took Jesus seriously. I read and reread the stories of oppressive religious leaders presenting to Jesus people who they considered sinners worthy of punishment, only to find that Jesus offered mercy and a broader understanding of who was made imago Dei (in the image of G-d). Even dirty rotten Samaritans!

Christian nationalists can’t see imago Dei in the eyes of asylum seekers or queer folks or anyone else outside of white America. I feel so sorry for them that they’ve limited G-d’s image to their own.

Over on my site, thepoetmiranda.com, I’m releasing the latest single in my mixtape memoir simultaneously with this article. In it, I talk about, among other things, attempting to get Christians—some of whom I broke bread with and prayed with for literal decades—to see that me being trans doesn’t make me any less human, any less a child of G-d.

They Will Keep on Speaking Her Name, Volume 5 - Made to Emerge

All Persons, Not Just Citizens

We aren’t a Christian nation, but we are beset by Christian nationalists’ prejudices. They’ve spent considerable time and resources dehumanizing so many of us and telling the lie that only citizens are due the rights prescribed in our Constitution.

We can point out, and I often do, that that sacred document clearly states rights such as free speech and due process are for all persons, not just citizens. But it’s hard to get through to ideologues who don’t see others as persons at all, not even through the lens of their supposed faith. I hate to be the one to tell you: white American Christians have murdered the image of G-d.