NATIONAL DAYS OF PRAYER AND CONGRESSIONAL CHAPLAINS

Q: If James Madison really believed in "separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States" (his words from his essay "Monopolies," William and Mary Quarterly, 3:555), why did he issue presidential proclamations for national days of prayer?

A: Madison addressed this question as a "deviation from the strict principle . . . in the eye of the Constitution" in his July 10, 1822, letter to Edward Livingston in terms of the distinction between "the language of injunction" (required) and language "without any penal sanction enforcing the worship" (voluntary). No such proclamations were issued by President Jefferson or during the first four years of Madison's term. However, under the duress of the War of 1812 President Madison was being pressured by Congress--congressional resolutions--to issue a proclamation as Washington and Adams had done. During the years 1812 through 1815 ("the war in which He has been pleased to permit"), Madison signed proclamations and in 1822 gave the following explanation:

Whilst I was honored with the Executive Trust I found it necessary on more than one occasion to follow the example of predecessors. But I was always careful to make the Proclamations absolutely indiscriminate, and merely recommendatory; or rather mere designations of a day, on which all who thought proper might unite in consecrating it to religious purposes according to their own faith & forms. . . . Notwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries . . . in some parts of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Gov[ernment] & Religion neither can be duly supported. . . . Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance.

The significance of the distinction is between a resolution (or a nonbinding suggestion) and a law. Congress shall make no "law"; but, there is no constitutional prohibition against congressional resolutions.

Q: Was James Madison in the First Congress and on the House committee which approved of congressional chaplains?

A: Yes; but, he was outvoted. In "Monopolies," Madison writes that "the establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable [an obvious] violation of . . . constitutional principles." In the same July 10, 1822, letter mentioned above, Madison said: "It was not with my approbation [approval] that the deviation from it took place in Cong[ress], when they appointed Chaplains, to be paid from the Nat[ional] Treasury." It was Madison's position that congressmen should" discharge their religious duties . . . at their own expence." As for the chaplains, he wrote: "Are not the daily devotions conducted by these legal ecclesiastics already degenerating into a scanty attendance, and a tiresome formality?"