{"id":120,"date":"2010-05-06T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/05\/happy-national-day-of-prayer-unless-youre-an-atheist-or-a-millennial.html"},"modified":"2010-05-06T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T07:00:00","slug":"happy-national-day-of-prayer-unless-youre-an-atheist-or-a-millennial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/05\/happy-national-day-of-prayer-unless-youre-an-atheist-or-a-millennial.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy National Day of Prayer, Unless You’re an Atheist… or a Millennial?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is National Day of Prayer, although the latest court ruling has declared the observance unconstitutional<\/a>. (It’s still on the books, while the appeal process continues.) <\/p>\n

There’s been plenty of religion news leading up to this occasion, based on the usual protests from atheists <\/a>and other proponents of strict separation of church and state, compounded by the controversy over the Pentagon rescinding its prayer invitation to the Rev. Franklin Graham <\/a>last week, due to complaints over the evangelical Christian’s statements against Islam and other religions.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Cathy Grossman, the religion reporter at USA Today, recently reported that most “millenials” (people between the ages of 18 and 29) aren’t much interested in praying<\/a> today or any other day. Then again, the whole “spiritual, not religious” attitude seems fairly standard for that age group; I know plenty of young adults who step away from organized religion once they move out of mom’s house, then join a congregation once they have kids of their own. What’s potentially different now, at least among Christians and Jews, is a trend towards more grassroots DIY-type of groups coming together to worship. Blame Facebook\/Twitter?<\/p>\n

*Click here to <\/span>subscribe to Belief Beat <\/span><\/strong><\/a>and <\/span>click here to <\/span>follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is National Day of Prayer, although the latest court ruling has declared the observance unconstitutional. (It’s still on the books, while the appeal process continues.)  There’s been plenty of religion news leading up to this occasion, based on the usual protests from atheists and other proponents of strict separation of church and state, compounded by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHappy National Day of Prayer, Unless You're an Atheist... or a Millennial? - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/05\/happy-national-day-of-prayer-unless-youre-an-atheist-or-a-millennial.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happy National Day of Prayer, Unless You're an Atheist... or a Millennial? - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today is National Day of Prayer, although the latest court ruling has declared the observance unconstitutional. 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