What I’m talking about is an alternitive to overtly Christian prayers at some sort of cerimonial begining. Something that is agreed on by the legislators. Silence does show respect for those with the desire to pray or ask for guidence, or meditate, or think about chicks. It seems like a reasonable balance to me of seperating church and state and still protecting the freedom to worship. It’s balance thats not perfect but acceptable. You might think they don’t need to do that at that particular time but if they and others feel that it is importent to them who are you to say, “tough shit”
That’s the same attitude as , " hey we’re a Christian majority so get used to it"
It’s a matter of showing consideration and respect for differing beliefs without unacceptable compromise and certainly without having others beliefs being preached to in some way every day.
There’s no arguement that parameters must be discussed and set and there’s a lot of stuff going on I don’t agree with, some of which you mention in this post. Take under God out of the pledge as being officially government sanctioned statement but support peoples right to add it if they choose to. My biology teacher in the early 70s refused to teach the theory of evolution because of his religious beliefs and I didn’t care at the time, but I would now. Each incident must be judged for itself until we find a better acceptable balance that keeps church and state seperate but defends freedom of worship. Being a citizen in the US requires a little more thought and effort if we’re going to try and get it right.
I agree.
Unfortunatly we need the courts when normal channels of compromise and mutual respect fail. I think folks probably asked for a change in procedure and were ignored or dismissed so it’s to the courts we go.
It’s unfortuante it went that far but I’m thinking the people who wanted Christian prayer aided it along by not showing equal respect to other beliefs.
If a “moment of silence” interfering with legislative affairs is bad to you, you’d probably really be upset if you actually watched what our Congress or Senate does on a day to day basis. Legislators reserve the right to be relaxed and fairly inactive day-to-day, plus, most legislative work actually happens outside the house of the legislature in question. A moment of silence is negligible when compared to all the other pomp and circumstance that goes on during sessions on a day to day basis.
If you’re going to argue about a strict “work-like environment” then you’d basically have to reform the entire way legislative bodies work. It’s really not comparable to the type of day-to-day employment most normal people are involved in, and using that as an analogy is basically meaningless…
What if legislators were free to invite anyone they wanted to open the session with whatever sort of speech, ceremony, invocation, prayer, or song they desired?
I think Kalhous’s claim that many legislator’s wouldn’t sit through an Islamic prayer is demonstrably false–whenever Bush declares a National Day of Prayer, the Bush family, many of his senior staff, and plenty of legislators happily sit through a service at Washington National Cathedral that includes prayers by Muslims and Jews as well as Christians of divers denominations. (Whether such a proclimation or service is a good idea is an entirely different issue.)
In fact, there is no evidence (that I’ve seen) that only Christian (or crypto-Christian) prayers were offered in the Indiana House. The quoted article stated that only 41 prayers out of 53 were offered by people identified with a Christian church. Who do you suppose gave the remaining 12?
As long as every person who is expected to participate has an equal opportunity to have his or her beliefs presented (or to allow different beliefs to be presented–I could well imagine a Christian legislator sponsoring a Jewish or Muslim clergy for the sake of diversity) I don’t think anyone would have cause to complain. Well, legally anyway. Some of the prayers might be offensive, but them some of the legislators’ speeches are probably offensive. They could be responded to in the same manner–by whining and haranguing and voting, not by suing. No legislator could be prevented from sponsoring a speaker merely because of the speakers’ religious intent (or from speaking himself with religious intent) any more than they could be coerced into selecting a speaker for the same reason.
I agree that it’s the lesser of a long list of evils. I still think it’s silly.
I agree…a lot of these guys are real slackers. I’ve seen reports of how many votes so-and-so has missed, and have watched C-span enough to know that these guys, by and large, aren’t working on the business of government as hard as elected officials should be. The bickering, the back-stabbing, the deal-making…it actually looks pretty shady to an outsider. I realize this is part of the process of making things happen.
But I was making a point. The LAST thing that should be on the agenda is how to express their religious beliefs at work. There are too many really important issues that affect every one of their constituents. Religious freedom is the least of their worries. But that’s not really what they’re worried about. They’re worried they won’t turn their pet religious issues into LAW for EVERYONE unless they’re spewing, it 24/7, into the faces of those who couldn’t care less. I’d hate to see how they’d behave if there actually was a threat to their right to worship.
And the part that really pisses me off is that I don’t believe for a minute that most of them have a personal stake in it. They’re doing it to “buy” votes from people who have deeply held religious convictions. Oh, they may be christian in the most generic sense of the word. But I’ll bet most of them learned that religion is a powerful political tool, and play the game to get or keep their jobs.
[QUOTE=Alan Smithee]
What if legislators were free to invite anyone they wanted to open the session with whatever sort of speech, ceremony, invocation, prayer, or song they desired?
I think Kalhous’s claim that many legislator’s wouldn’t sit through an Islamic prayer is demonstrably false–whenever Bush declares a National Day of Prayer, the Bush family, many of his senior staff, and plenty of legislators happily sit through a service at Washington National Cathedral that includes prayers by Muslims and Jews as well as Christians of divers denominations. (Whether such a proclimation or service is a good idea is an entirely different issue.)[/qupte] The National Day of Prayer (another stupid idea) is completely different. They aren’t taking up “work time” to do it. They aren’t in the legislative assembly. It has nothing to do with the discussion we’re having here. It’s wrong, but it’s apples and oranges.
The fact remains, NONE of the prayers should have happened. The 1/5 that were non-Christian was more like “tossing a bone” to the non-favored religions so they could appear to be fair toward other religious beliefs. Try reversing those percentages for a couple hundred years and see how happy the christians are then.
I can hardly wait until a witch gets her turn up there. Man…I’d PAY to see that! :rolleyes:
In fact one of the articles said that A Rabbi and a Muslim cleric had offered prayers. It also said that too many had been specicially about Jesus which smacks of endorsing a specific religion. I know Christians who can’t resist any opportunity to witness for Jesus which they feel is their duty. The guy at my fathers funeral threw in a little “do you want to be saved?” section. While I understand they are convinced it is important on certain occasions they need to reign it in or not participate. Note that the judge did not say they couldn’t pray.
Now sense of humor says guy in charge who objected so strongly to the judges decision, ought to go to then moment of silence thing so everyone can pray according to their own faith while medtative music is played. Then when everyone bows their head he plays an instrumental production of “What a Friend we have in Jesus” 
I think what they were going for was a prayer that was not religion specific. In a way I think that’s a cop out. The idea that the body declares prayer time and supplicates to a generic diety is just as offensive to me as overtly trying to convert people to Jesus, and may still violate the establishment clause. But hey, it’s only a ceremony.
I think it’s important to separate what we find offensive from what we believe to be illegal. I find generic prayers to much less offensive than overt prosteletizing. (I still don’t like them much, mind you.) But a policy by which generic prayers must be offered is (ISTM) clearly unconstitutional, as it endorses religion over non-religion, whereas a policy by which each legislator has an equal right to be offensive (or sponsor someone offensive) without any regard to religion strikes me as clearly constitutional (and probably wise), even though it would undoubtedly result in far more offensive prayers (and far more of them) being offered.
And Kalhoun, I find your snide little comments about what you would pay to see legislators sit through non-Christian prayers out of place, especialy when they have sat through Jewish and Muslim prayers, and you’ve offered no evidence they’d be less respectful of anyone else, including Wiccans or even atheists. Your attitude smacks of anti-religionism, which may possibly be defensible in a general context, but is most certainly not in a discussion of constitutional law, which requires that government be religion-neutral, not anti-religion or even (except arguably as a means to religion-neutrality) religion-free.
Just to be clear, the quote in my previous post was from cosmodan and the first paragraph was in response to it. The second paragraph was in response to Kalhoun’s comments. I didn’t confuse the two, but I may have appeared to have.
I’m sorry…I wasn’t going for snide. I was shooting for dismissive. The fact that a handful of bible-thumpers chokes down a few prayers that aren’t christianity-based, in order to make themselves appear to be fair, means nothing with respect to Christian overload in this country. If they were told 4/5 of congressional prayer was going to be Jewish or Muslim in nature, you bet they’d have a shit fit.
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I agree on the seperation of offensive and illegal. Or even, silly, useless, stupid and illegal. You raise some interesting points but I think there’d be a huge stink if an atheist legislator offered a prayer to science to help stamp out the foolishness of religion, or if someone wanted a wiccan or satan worshiper to offer the opening invocation. I don’t think that’s realistic but it would be interesting for someone to try. It might force the issue a bit and show them they aren’t actually religion neutral.
:rolleyes: If they were told this as an arbitrary decree (from whom, I wonder), they’d be right to. If they were told this because 4/5 of the legislator or electorate was Jewish or Muslim, a few would play that card, but most would see the need to play along or risk losing their seats and that 1/5 of the prayers with it.
Look, you don’t like religion. I can understand that, and can almost respect it. But if more than 4/5 of the electorate and the legislatures are Christian, what possible justification is there for preventing them from voicing their beliefs, so long as no one is forced to listen, and no one is denied the same right to voice diffrerent opinions–both within the legislature and without it?
A Wiccan might just get a pass these days, at least in some legislatures. They’ve been giving official standing in the US military; I think if a legislator was personally Wiccan or had a Wiccan constituency they wanted to please, it would be such an obvious case of religious freedom, even the lowliest demogogue would be on thin ice raising a stink about it. I agree, though, that an atheist (and especially an anti-religionist) “prayer” or (ye gods, the company we keep in these debates!) a Satanist would probably not go over so well. Actually, a vocally anti-religion atheist would probably fare the worst. I could see many legislatures voting to abandon opening prayers rather than put up with that. But that’s only in an extreme case–not just an atheist invocation of science or reason, but an actual vitupriation of religious belief.
I… ah, don’t think you understand the concept of ‘seperation of church and state’, Alan. However, you’re providing a really good example of why it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.
This might be a good place to start.
It’s not just about freedom for religion. It’s about freedom from other people’s religions. What does it matter if my religion is given a day a month, if I am forced to abide by the words of another religion, the other twenty nine? Who decides which? Organized religion and civil authority should not be mixed. What is restricted is not the ability of the individual to pray in the public square, but the ability of the government to acknowledge God, Gods, or the Higher Power of your choice, and to urge us to pay tribute to them. This multi-faith worship is nothing but a way to water down prayer, which should be heartfelt, not rote. It is either devout, or worthless. If it is devout, then it can not be legal… and if it is worthless, it had best be gone.
James Madison’s opposition to the Congressional Chaplin was, in my opinion, wise.
Devout prayer by legislators cannot be legal? But worthless prayer is? You might want to think that bit through again. I’m not sure you meant what I think you said.
I’m also not sure if you misunderstand “the separation of church and state” or misunderstand me. I clearly said that mandatory multi-faith worship is illegal (regardless of how devout or worthless it might be). Allowing individual legislators the opportunity to pray in the public square (or to sponsor others to do so in a defined setting) is not, as you seem to agree, restricted.
(As for the Congressional chaplain, I agree with you and madison, but from a legal standpoint, it is not clear if he violates my rights, or Joe Lieberman’s, who hasn’t complained yet. But I have a pretty good hunch what the courts would say.)
Devout public prayer, mandated and sponsored by the government, can not be legal. Do you not understand the figleaf of ‘ceremonial deism’? It is the term for religious statements that have been part of public culture for so long, they are stripped of all power. Either this prayer is ceremonial deism, or it violated the establishment clause. If it has no meaning, save the rote repeating of words, such as ‘God save this honorable court’ or ‘in God we trust’, then it is ceremonial deism. If it is deeply meant and felt, it is a violation of the establishment clause.
I am not making this up, Alan. It’s pretty cut and dried. The Government has no freedom of speech. Only individual persons do. If the government sponsors religious speech, it must be ceremonial, or it is illegal. Thus, these deeply sectarian prayers sponsored by the legislature are probably illegal. Forcing it on any person of another religion, such as the Quaker who tried to leavel, is definately so.
If an individual legislator got up and protested, in such a way as to pray, it would be highly entertaining, but I fail to see how it would be any different than the series of dodges a few years back in Texas in the football games, where first a priest would pray, then the principal would pray, then a student would ‘spontaneously’ lead a prayer, as court cases went against them.
I see no reason the government has to spread someone else’s religious philosophy at my expense.
I’m aware of the “ceremonial deism” argument, but I don’t think anyone has claimed that’s what’s going on. It applies, like you said, to stock phrases, not hortatory speech by individuals within government. That’s not the only justification for religions speech, however. There are significant differences between a legislative session and a high school graduation. If you can provide a single cite that it is illegal for a legislator to pray devoutly from the floor of the legislature or to otherwise invoke religious language and belief, I’ll shut up.
The point you seem to miss is that leading anyone in prayer (particularly when they’re not all of the same faith) is an exclusive, self-righteous waste of taxpayer time and money. Fercrissakes…even the christians can’t agree on how the hell to worship, let alone agreeing with anyone else who holds differing beliefs.
The justification is that they have homes, churches, cars, parks and shopping malls where they can stand around and pray publicly, if they must. It is inappropriate to do it while conducting legislative duties. If they feel the need to THINK about god for a few moments, and not encroach on anyone else’s time or train of thought, hey…have at it. Why must they make it a freeking public spectacle? True belief can only come from within and can only make a difference from within. The rest of it makes them look like a bunch of attention whores.
Look…I’m anti-religion for myself and for my government. I couldn’t care less what bizarre personal beliefs people hold as long as they don’t try to intermingle those beliefs with the business of government. You wanna sit by a volcano and try to coax a spirit out of it, fine. But don’t waste everyone else’s time talking about it in congress. Majority beliefs should have nothing to do with the issue.
Overtly christian invocations, that is, specifically christian prayers at the opening of session?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0512010167dec01,1,4022911.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
As far as being on the floor, and proceeding in the way you suggest? I can’t, but I suspect strongly that it might be viewed in a similar case to said football events. Something that, on its own is not illegal, but if it were to happen after a failed legal battle, might be looked at with stricter scrutiny.