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Nobody is against public prayer, unless you count a handful of cranks. Nobody is going to haul you off to the slammer if you kneel down in a public park or whatever. So your original premise is not just false, but highly misleading. Even a little dishonest.
Your religious rights do not permit you to infringe on the peace of others. So if your version of public prayer means standing on an apple box with a megaphone, then I'm all in favor of a police officer strolling up and writing a ticket.
What's more, the notion of public prayer isn't just performative, but it is actually directly flouts the teachings of Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount, the ethical core of the faith, Christ said the following:
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
I mean, how explicit does He need to get? Christ literally said, 'Do not do this,' and you're hammering out posts advocating the precise opposite.
I've never understood how some of my brethren in faith can quote obscure passages from Isaiah to suit their needs of any given moment, yet completely ignore these passages that are central to His ministry on earth. Christ informs His followers how they are to conduct themselves, and some people think it perfectly appropriate to bark out prayers over a loudspeaker at a football game, the ribbon cutting at a Burger King, or anywhere else for that matter. Go figure.
However, the problem I see with public prayer is often insensitivity. In my hometown, as far as I know, they still have a Christian "Invocation" at the start of borough council meetings. It's a small suburban town that was traditionally known as "the town of churches" because there were so many, but now one of those churches is a mosque and there are Jewish and Hindu people living in town. Praying at borough council meetings and football games for blessings "in Jesus name" is dismissive of those people present who are not Christian, particularly since some of those groups have historically been whacked upside the head in Jesus' name.
You don't need a public blessing said before a town council meeting. If individual believers wish to pray beforehand for guidance, let them do it in private.
This “sensitivity” to other religions is a little bit of an exaggeration. Firstly many regions, and ethnicities, are more tolerant of other religions than what Americans imagine. God is god and a prayer for guidance is just that and asking for blessing is just that. This is because most immigrants come from countries that are more diverse and have learnt to coexist with, and even celebrate the diversity. Of course they also kill each other from to time.
I did not quote any scripture as you do. Christians are not the only ones who pray, how strange is that, and many never kneel. The op is about seperation of church and state and the atheist mission to fight prayer in schools and civil hearings.
Please do not derail the thread with quotes from the bible or discussing how christians pray. There are as many ways to pray as there humans who need to pray.
Oh, so you're now moving the goalposts.
We were talking about public prayer. Now you're talking about prayer in schools and city council meetings.
First, you're wrong. The authors of the Constitution were very aware of the potential for religious abuse. After all, the American Revolution took place towards the end of an era of religious convulsions, from the Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, the English Civil War, the Muslim invasions of Central Europe, the Inquisition, the Calvinist Theocracy of Zurich, the Salem Witch Trials, and an entire host of abuses, large and small. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was about the closest thing this country ever came to ISIS with persecution of dissenters being the leaders of that community's sacred duty. Heck, if you were discovered to be a Quaker in Massachusetts, you were given a speedy trial and marched to the gallows. Roger Williams fled for his life to found Rhode Island. Oddly enough his sect, the Baptists, are one of the most ardent believers in intermingling faith and government.
That's why the Constitution mandates no religious test for office and the Federalist Papers do not mention the role of religion in government proceedings one bit. The Constitution is an embodiment of Enlightenment ideals, not those of any particular religious faith. All it does is provide religious faith the ability to thrive without state interference, as opposed to the state actively encouraging it.
Second of all, one would have to be seriously naive to not know how astray this could get in very short order. The very language of prayer is filled with theological meaning, so even Protestant Christian denominations can't agree on wording. Yet you're suddenly wanting to drag other faith traditions into your local school or city council meeting? If you can't see the mischief in that, I suggest you do some readings into past religious conflict.
And no matter what, stopping the classroom or the city council meeting to offer up a prayer to God, Allah, Nature, or Beelzebub is coercive, not essential to the business at hand, and creates unnecessary conflict. Either that or you offer up a prayer so watered down and generic that it means absolutely nothing.
I'm a devout Christian and also an advocate of the separation of church and state. Anyone with a brain and a sense of history knows how sideways things could get.
Last edited by MinivanDriver; 04-18-2021 at 08:53 AM..
I'm a devout Christian and also an advocate of the separation of church and state. Anyone with a brain and a sense of history knows how sideways things could get.
Alas, fundies fail on at least half that equation.
That is an opinion and I disagree. Generally it is done by the person opening the meeting and that is good enough. Nobody needs to be qualified to say a prayer asking for guidance for making good decisions.
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If the person leading the prayer is a public employee, that is what the Supreme Court says is the government promoting religion. That's not my opinion. That's the ruling of the highest court in the land.
We've discussed this many times. In my experience, you're the one that really seems to lack understanding of what the Founding Fathers intended. They never intended for any form of religion to be removed from public life.
It makes absolutely no different what the Founding Fathers intended. The only thing that matters is what the Supreme Court said the last time the ruled on the issue. The Supreme Court Justices are the final arbiters.
This “sensitivity” to other religions is a little bit of an exaggeration. Firstly many regions, and ethnicities, are more tolerant of other religions than what Americans imagine. God is god and a prayer for guidance is just that and asking for blessing is just that. This is because most immigrants come from countries that are more diverse and have learnt to coexist with, and even celebrate the diversity. Of course they also kill each other from to time.
Maybe rotate the the type of prayers. Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Christian, some tribal's, and atheist no prayer.
It makes absolutely no different what the Founding Fathers intended. The only thing that matters is what the Supreme Court said the last time the ruled on the issue. The Supreme Court Justices are the final arbiters.
Well, the Founding Fathers weren't uniformly Christian, and certainly wouldn't conform to what modern evangelicals would call Christian. Madison, the author of the Constitution, had fought and won against a Virginia law that forced non-Anglican clergy to pay a punitive tax. Jefferson wrote and printed a version of the Bible that snipped out passages that he thought were baloney. A very large percentage of the Constitutional Convention were either deists or nature worshipers.
So the notion that the Founding Fathers were trying to implement a quasi-religious state is not just revisionist history, but it's downright dishonest. While many were men of faith, they had a very clear idea of what could happen in a religiously pluralistic environment if some kind of neutrality to religious faith was not clearly established.
Religion is as natural to being human as is science, art, ethics, and politics, Santayana said.
Hatred of religion, he said, “is insensibility to the plight of man and all that man truly loves.”
He declared himself an atheist.
Prayer is the practice of religion, not any particular religion, any religion.
I don’t know if atheists pray, because then I don’t know who they pray to if they do not believe in a deity. I am willing to be relieved of this ignorance in this matter, but then who really knows? Foxhole and all that.
The “separation” of Church and State in the US constitution is somewhat ambiguous in that it does not show enmity to religion as do the Europeans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepa...irst_Amendment
We can add ignorance of what Europeans think to the list.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cb2008
The Atheist war against prayer in public places is misguided considering the humongous amount of human rights and civil right violations against humanity present right now.
That is like telling the police to stop investigating house break ins because they could be investigating murders.
Your post is just another 'why can atheists simply not keep quiet and allow the religious to break a few small laws' whine, while ironically ignoring that you are pushing stopping free speech for atheists.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cb2008
Starting the day with a prayer or a town hall meeting with a prayer for guidance is simply a human thing to do.
No it is not, it is a learnt behavior. And to insist one religion is more important than the beliefs of others in that meeting is arrogant.
A refreshing reminder that thoughtful, intelligent, mature Christians exist in the US of A.
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