If Christians want to open the government to Christian prayers, they'll just have to accept a few other religions in the door, too. It's a legislative chamber, not a church.
The timing of this story nicely follows recent controversies on Dallas Blog concerning the First Amendment, which some Christian fundamentalists insist on claiming does not "build a wall of separation between church and state", as Thomas Jefferson put it. Well, if there's no wall there at all, then those Christians are going to have a devil of a time keeping those imams out of the hallowed halls of government. Maybe the Christians see the First Amendment as a gate instead of a wall, a gate they can slam shut after they themselves get in. Thomas Jefferson, I suspect, would have no problem with an imam or a priest or a rabbi occasionally opening the legislature with a prayer, as long as the government itself stayed neutral in the debate over who God favors. His "wall" is mainly designed to keep the government from playing favorites, not to keep either Christians or Muslims (or Jews or atheists, for that matter) out of government.
As for the imam's prayer that non-Muslims are excluded from God's favor, I find the sentiment as deplorable as that of Christian preachers who preach that heaven is reserved for those who confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. But if you're going to allow one senator to invite a Christian minister to lead prayers in the legislative chambers, you just have to let another senator invite an imam, too. That's the American way.
P.S. World Net Daily is hardly an objective or reliable news source, but it is one of Tom Pauken's favorite sources of "news" for Dallas Blog stories. Thanks to "Elsbeth" for pointing out that it doesn't appear to be so much Sen. Shapiro's constituents who are trying to make an issue here, but a Houston talk radio host and some of his listeners.
2 comments:
Tom Pauken. Charter member of the "fear of a brown planet" crowd. Terrified by an indefinite pronoun.
I don't think it's color that Tom Pauken fears. It's Islam. He's much more concerned with the growing popularity of Islam in Europe than with the growing population of Hispanics in the US. Perhaps because the Hispanic immigrants are Christian and more religious than the rest of America.
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