7/7/10 Chicago, IL – Today, the Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC) signed onto an amicus brief by Liberty Institute filed in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the National Day of Prayer in Freedom from Religion Foundation v. Obama. Those represented in the brief alongside IFPC include Dr. James Dobson, the Family Research Council (FRC), Focus on the Family Action (Citizenlink), the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU), Let Freedom Ring, and Liberty Counsel, along with 27 other family policy councils located in states nationwide.
Speaking from a meeting of Family Policy Council leaders being held in Chicago, IFPC President Chuck Hurley said, “I am pleased to add my signature, and the support of IFPC, to the growing national outcry over yet another court opinion that flies in the face of our history and heritage as a nation.”
When Congress passed a statute in 1952 calling for the President to issue a proclamation designating the National Day of Prayer, it formally recognized the virtually unbroken tradition of Presidents from Washington to Truman who had designated a day of prayer.
On April 15 of this year, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled that the federal government’s observation of prayer is unconstitutional, despite the clear intentions of the US Congress to call for a day of prayer, the support of nearly every US president in our nation’s history, and numerous rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court that affirm long-standing traditions of religious invocations. Today’s brief argues that not only is the National Day of Prayer constitutional, but that Judge Crabb’s ruling establishes active hostility to religion and must be reversed.
View the brief online at http://www.ifpc.org/NDOPAmicus