What did the Founding Fathers think of government prayer proclamations?
Key Founders such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson thought presidential prayer day proclamations were violations of the constitutional separation of church and state. Jefferson, the nation’s third president and a leading visionary on religious liberty, refused to issue prayer proclamations during his two terms in the White House. Writing to the Rev. Samuel Miller in 1808, Jefferson said, “Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the Constitution has deposited it.” Madison, widely recognized by historians as the “Father of the Constitution,” also considered prayer proclamations to be inappropriate. Although Madison issued a few “prayer day” proclamations while president under political pressure from Congress, he
