Give them Roger Zelazny’s agnostic prayer:
The U.S. Senate begins every day’s session with a prayer and the Pledge. It’s hardly childish.
The Pledge for the Senate, OK, it’s a bit silly to me that one would feel the need to renew one’s vows every day (at least they don’t invite the whole family), but I don’t think the prayer is appropriate in any context other than a specific religious meeting. Meals by families in which everybody belongs to the same religion and that religion blesses meals count as a religious meeting; a bunch of people who may or may not have religion, and among whom those who do have religion will belong to different ones, meeting to handle state business in a place that’s supposed to have separation of church and state, do not.
Do you say the pledge of allegiance at breakfast? If not, why not?
It’s very childish indeed for a condo board to equate themselves with something like the U.S. Senate.
Nm
When we consider some of the behaviour and attitudes seen in the US Senate, the fact that something happens in the US Senate is hardly, in itself, a compelling argument that that thing is not childish.
In any event there is an obvious distinction. The US Senate disharges a public function for the benefit of the republic. In that context, a formal affirmation of allegiance to the republic has a certain logic. A group of property owners meeting to manage their property to advance their personal and private advantage is not performing a public function or doing anything on behalf of the republic, and their political opinions and allegiances are wholly irrelevant to the business at hand.
It’s always important to perpetuate monotheist supremacy.
Growing up, my buddy ('s parents) had a framed picture in the basement - it was a cavedude in a wife-beater, dragging a club. Below it was the text, “Yeah though I walk thru the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no evil, fore I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.”
To this day, I can’t go to a funeral & not mumble the alternate words & chuckle.
They do it here at our civic association meetings in my neighborhood in Chicago, as well, so, no, not a “Deep South” thing. More an old tradition thing.
Don’t you have any foreign neighbours? It feels rather exclusionary to non-US citizens.
And everyone just goes along with it?
I’ve never owned a condo, likely never would, and if I did I’d probably find an excuse to avoid “meetings”. But if I ever attended a meeting where I was asked to recite a pledge, I’d LOL and walk out shaking my head.
Imagining “group meetings begun with a pledge recitation” brings horrible images to mind.
I have a fundamental dislike and distrust of loyalty oaths of any kind. One’s actions should speak for one’s beliefs. If I feel compelled to tell you how patriotic or religious I am, if I need to say that I’m a great parent or a stellar employee, what is the likelihood that I am what I say I am? Seems to me the worst traitor would be standing the tallest and reciting the pledge the loudest, just to prove he/she isn’t a traitor.
Or maybe I’m just too cynical.
Very many. I’ve always found the Pledge a bit weird, but it seems few give it a thought around here.
Speaking as a non-US person : what, and I can’t stress this enough, the *fuck *?!
Seconded.
Yes, thirded.
Amazing how blond most of those kids are…
At the beginning of MY condo meetings, we go around one by one asking all of the board members if they are now, or ever have been, a member of the communist party. Then we waterboard everyone to make sure they’re not lying. It takes up most of the meeting but you can never be too patriotic.
When I lived in Texas, it seems that, most gatherings had an invocation of some sort. Usually it was a minister from a local church who said too much while trying to sound profound.
I would normally just stare at the floor and bite my lip during these things.