AOF Activities & Events

The National Day of Reason (NDoR), endorsed first in 2003 and honored by U.S. secularists, occurs on the first Thursday of May. NDoR is a response and counterbalance to the National Day of Prayer, designated by the US Congress since 1952. On this day all humanist Americans can join hands to celebrate rational thinking—a concept all can or should support. The goal: to raise public awareness of the persistent threat to religious liberty posed by government intrusion into the sphere of private worship. For details, and to learn about events in your area, see http://www.nationaldayofreason.org/.

Other organizations such as the Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia have designated this the Rational Day of Care, a day to donate home-cooked meals to the Aid for Friends project, or perform other acts of humanistic charity.

On January 23, 1808, in a letter to the Reverend Samuel Miller, our Founding Father Thomas Jefferson had these words:

“Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the time for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and right can never be safer than in their hands, where the Constitution has deposited it. ...civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.” [emphasis added]

The National Day of Reason is a movable secular holiday. It can occur any time from May 1 to May 7.