Plea for Healing Kicks Off ‘Day of Prayer’

WASHINGTON — A Capitol Hill chamber normally imbued with the aura of political deal-making took on the spirit of a tent revival meeting Thursday as policymakers kicked off the 46th annual National Day of Prayer.

While a choir from Texas sang, a congressman from Oklahoma sermonized and a Puerto Rican Catholic bishop prayed, more than 1,000 people filed in and out of the Caucus Room at the Cannon House Office Building as part of the daylong event in the nation’s capital.

Shirley Dobson, chairman of the national event and wife of Focus on the Family President James Dobson, opened the day by asking God “to stretch out his hand and begin a healing of this nation.”

Dobson said governors in 50 states have proclaimed statewide days of prayer, and she estimated that more than 1 million Americans would be praying Thursday at nearly 20,000 locations around the country.

She grew angry as she told the standing-room-only crowd that President Clinton would not attend the event.

“We bombarded the White House with requests that the president come today, but he doesn’t have five minutes for us,” Dobson said. “Let’s pray that God would send a messenger to the president so that he will be part of the National Day of Prayer.”

Clinton did, however, sign a proclamation making Thursday the National Day of Prayer, “asking for divine help in maintaining the courage, determination, faith and vigilance so necessary to our continued advancement as a people.”

In 1952, a joint resolution by Congress and signed by President Harry Truman declared an annual national day of prayer. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed an amendment into law, permanently making the first Thursday of May the National Day of Prayer.

American Atheists President Ellen Johnson said her group opposes the prayer day.

“Every politician is violating their oath of office and mocking the Bill of Rights when they participate in this prayer day,” Johnson said from her organization’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. “It’s sad to see politicians channeling with the spirit world to solve our problems when they need to get off their knees and get to work with their hands.”

The Rev. Thomas Hughson, an expert on church-state relations at the Les Aspin Institute in Washington, said he sees a national day of prayer as falling into a gray area of questionable practices in the realm of church and state.

“The wall is not so high that people can’t climb over it and pray together, but if it was a day of prayer set aside for a specific religion, then that’s a problem,” said Hughson.

Steven and Kathy Musiel and their 10-year-old son, Christopher, drove all night from Red Creek, N.Y., to be part of the national prayer day, but had to wait outside the caucus room and watch the events on closed-circuit television.

“We wanted to come here with our son to pray for our nation,” said Kathy Musiel. “The United States has been set here by God to be a light for the rest of the world, but that light is getting dimmed by selfishness.”

The Musiels knelt with others waiting outside the caucus room and watched as a variety of Washington religious leaders, including Rabbi Kenneth S. Weiss, Auxiliary Bishop Alvaro Corrada del Rio and the Rev. Lloyd Ogilvie, chaplain of the U.S. Senate, took the podium to encourage Americans to pray for government leaders and to offer prayers for the nation’s social problems.

The Rev. John Maxwell, president of Injoy Ministries, a leadership-training group for Christian pastors, drew raucous laughter when he said there could be an amazing revival in America “if the sleepy would wake up, the disgruntled sweeten up, the non-tithers pay up, the dishonest ‘fess up, the lukewarm fire up, and the gossipers shut up.”