As the coronavirus continued to kill , hospitalize , and harm thousands of people this weekend, President Trump declared that Sunday was, rest assured, a National Day of Prayer. “We are a Country that, throughout our history, has looked to God for protection and strength in times like these,” he tweeted . It is my great honor to declare Sunday, March 15th as a National Day of Prayer. We are a Country that, throughout our history, has looked to God for protection and strength in times like these…. Except we aren’t. Whatever you make of Trump’s stunning incompetence in orchestrating the government’s response to this outbreak, he was unmistakably wrong in terms of this country’s history, the Constitution, the extent of federal powers, and the underpinning of government. The United States was founded not on state-sanctioned faith or godly government prayer, but on the right to practice any religion, or none at all, free of presidential proclamations about if, when, and how you do; it was founded on the slavery of bodies, not the slavery of conscience or minds. It’s a country rooted in Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which explicitly separated God and government as the […]
