National Day of Prayer celebrated in Williams

GeorgeWashingtonPrayingWILLIAMS—The City of Williams will hold two prayer sessions for National Prayer Day this Thursday, May 2nd. The first will be held at the flagpole outside City Hall on First Street at 9 am. The second prayer session will be held at the Williams Visitor Center on Railroad Avenue at 10 am.

The National Day of Prayer is constitutionally mandated by Federal Law.

TITLE 36 – PATRIOTIC AND NATIONAL OBSERVANCES, CEREMONIES, AND ORGANIZATIONS
36 USC Sec. 119. National Day of Prayer
-STATUTE-
The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.

The real object of the [first] amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judiams, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.—Story, Joseph (1833) Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Boston: Hilliard, Gray and Company. Cambridge: Brown, Shattuck, and Co. Volume III, page 728, §1871.