George Bush is speaking at prr’s funeral? Now there’s a coup. 
I’m unbothered too. It’s a Christian funeral for a Christian guy. The only thing i’m slightly bothered by is some people’s seeming assertation that a funeral is an inherently religious event, but meh. Not that bothered.
You make it sound like this is a modern development. On the contrary, I doubt that any of the Founding Fathers (including the ones who wrote the Bill of Rights) would have had a problem with Bush’s mentions of God in that speech, and many of them (as well as other great leaders throughout our nation’s history, such as Lincoln) would have said the same or “worse” in a similar situation.
And, as JohnT has pointed out, there is nothing specifically Christian in Bush’s speech, which makes the thread title and OP misleading and at least borderline unfair. If there had been something specifically Christian in it, you might—might—have a leg to stand on.
Well, it IS an inherently religious event, for a religious person (which is what’s relevant here).
You’ll have to forgive me for taking every “who cares” response as a confirmation of my essential here. That’s my point–POTUS, in his official capacity, is mentioning God and no one cares, even most atheists. Hell, I don’t even care that much, except when I think “Is this right?” Then I care.
And look at the justifications–“we’ve been doing this since forever,” as if that makes something right. We’d been enslaving people since Biblical times but that didn’t make it right. “It was an Xian speaking at an Xian’s funeral”–yes, but they weren’t televising every Xian’s eulogy, they were televising this because it was a POTUS’s funeral, with the current POTUS speaking–neither of them has any right to hold forth on religion in a public setting, however tangential. If Bush had said “As a white man, I applaud my fellow white guy Gerald Ford for representing us white folks so good,” we’d tar and feather the fucker. “It was a funeral for X’s sake, give the guy a break”–yeah, sure, I don’t see the harm here either, other than in theory. You want a private service to rant and rave about your beliefs? Knock yourself out, talk trash about them Catholics and Jews and Maori warriors, but do it in in public at an official ceremony and we’ve got problems.
In theory. In practice, it doesn’t matter a damn.
Wow…I must have misread that eulogy. Was there ranting and raving? Was there trashing of other religions? Maybe I need to read it again? 
It’s not a public ceremony, per se- it’s a private ceremony that, due to the stature of the man, is made public. Would you go to a funeral of a “common” man and protest the invocation of the deity that the person believed in? If you did that chances are you’d be arrested.
You were invited to someone’s funeral. The only disrespect here in on your behalf.
I’m not a proponent of ceremonial deism in the courts, but I don’t like this comparison - the cost is entirely different. I don’t think the President is hurting anyone by speaking in this capacity and this manner about religion. When he was asked about gay marriage and said “We’re all sinners,” I had a problem with that.
That’s exactly it. He didn’t trash anybody. I disagreed with the God-given liberty thing, but he thanked God for Gerald Ford, which as an atheist I don’t consider insulting.
There are arguable parts in this speech, you know - like the correctness of pardoning Nixon or Bush highlighting Ford’s civil rights record when he fought against any number of Great Society programs. But to focus on the very mild (from the President who thinks we need to stop the queers from gettin’ hitched) religious language? I don’t get it.
Neither one? Ford was unlikely to hold forth, don’t you think? What is the basis for your assertion that the president has no right to hold forth on religion in a public setting?
Separation of Church and State. I know, I know, that we’ve allowed a certain nominal and bland deism into every boring political diatribe ever delivered, but if the President is technically allowed to say “God bless America” as his signoff line, why can’t he say “May Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Lord our God, who died for our sins, bless each and every American, good night”? There’s a reason he can’t say the latter, and it’s the same reason I feel he should prohibited from saying the former.
This is yet another separation issue that I don’t see as being all that complicated, and so I don’t quite get the complaints. As long as the President doesn’t purport to speak for the nation on religion, pretending that his office gives him special authority to do so, then being asked to speak at a state funeral and bringing up his God is hardly a breach of anyone’s rights.
As to your first question, the point has been made here that it’s Ford’s service, if he wanted a religious serivce who are we to say No?
If he had asked that there be speaking in tongues, and ranting and raving about wiping out the infidels, and human sacrifices, we have have put a stop to it, right? Just because it’s tasteful and bland and whitebread and Protetant and dignified doesn’t make it a non-religious ceremony. As a nation, we don’t do religious ceremonies.
In theory, of course.
The reason presidents do one and not the other is probably not the reason you are thinking of. The president is not prohibited from saying either thing. It would be politically detrimental to explicitly invoke Jesus, but not illegal. A eulogy is not an executive order or a law.
I would have stopped to watch the human sacrifices. We really could have thinned the Washington herd.
Seriously- in granting a request, you always consider what’s being asked of you. Ford requested a simple, presumably religious service. That’s not asking much in comparison to the ranting and raving.
Perhaps it would help if you would explain exactly what you mean by “separation of Church and State.”
I aim to please.
What’s the reason? You do not understand the establishment clause and how it has been interpreted by the SCOTUS. The prez can say anything he likes, and the only way to prevent that is for Congress to impeach him and remove him from office. That simply wouldn’t happen if he said: “May Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Lord our God, who died for our sins, bless each and every American, good night.”
And you believe that the requirement you express above is mandated by the words “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?”
I believe you are seriously confused.
There is no legal bar to the President signing off a radio or TV address each and every day with the “May Jesus Christ…” line you mention. Hell, he could do it three times per day, if he were so minded.
Huh. Gerald Ford’s funeral services were held in Grace Episcopal Church, Grand Rapids, Mich.; the Episcopal Cathedral Church of Sts. Peter and Paul (AKA the National Cathedral), Washington, D.C. (where Mr. Bush spoke); and St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Palm Springs, Calif. And in his remarks during a funeral service held in and in accordance with the liturgical practices of The Episcopal Church in the United States of America, the President of the United States eulogized the life and character of former President Gerald Ford, and once referenced “God-given rights” (which I would have taken to be the inalienable ones with which the Declaration of Independence says they were endowed by their Creator) and closed with an expression of thanks to God for Gerald Ford’s life and a request to Him for blessings on Betty Ford and family.
Migod, it’s clear that Christians are persecuting atheists all over the place – we even have the temerity to talk to God inside our churches!