Obama tones down National Day of Prayer observance

From CNN.COM:

(CNN) -- For the past eight years, the White House recognized the National Day of Prayer with a service in the East Room, but this year, President Obama decided against holding a public ceremony.

"Prayer is something that the president does everyday," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday, noting that Obama will sign a proclamation to recognize the day, as many administrations in the past have done.

Asked if Obama thought his predecessor's ceremonies were politicized, Gibbs said, "No, I'm not going to get into that again.

"I think the president understands, in his own life and in his family's life, the role that prayer plays."

The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance for people of all faiths.

(full article)

Bravo Mr. Obama. Prayer by public officials should always be a private matter. Even the appearance of promoting a particular religion or religion in general is a tacit violation of the separation of church and state.

Prayer

I came across two similarly titled pieces examining the practice of prayer: What’s the Point with Prayer? and Prayer: What’s the point? Both identify pretty much the same self-defeating issues with Prayer and call into question the reasons for it and expectations of the people doing it. To my knowledge, neither inspired the other, at least not directly. Over the years, I've often had similar thoughts but hadn't gotten around to writing about them. I recommend reading both.

At this point, my suspicion is that to pray individually is roughly equivalent to talking to yourself. When you actually hear your voice verbalizing your thoughts, it seems to help focus on those thoughts and it stores them differently, perhaps redundantly. It may be a crude way to enhance the communication between the brain hemispheres or something on that order. In any case, many people find it useful to some degree to talk to themselves.

Praying as a group seems to serve an entirely different function, a social one, that of demonstrating conformance to a group standard in an effort to better fit into that group.