Posted on 06/07/2004 7:43:41 AM PDT by BigWaveBetty
Remarks at an Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast in Dallas, Texas
August 23, 1984
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, very much. And, Martha Weisend, thank you very much. And I could say that if the morning ended with the music we have just heard from that magnificent choir, it would indeed be a holy day for all of us.
It's wonderful to be here this morning. The past few days have been pretty busy for all of us, but I've wanted to be with you today to share some of my own thoughts.
These past few weeks it seems that we've all been hearing a lot of talk about religion and its role in politics, religion and its place in the political life of the Nation. And I think it's appropriate today, at a prayer breakfast for 17,000 citizens in the State of Texas during a great political convention, that this issue be addressed.
I don't speak as a theologian or a scholar, only as one who's lived a little more than his threescore ten -- which has been a source of annoyance to some -- [laughter] -- and as one who has been active in the political life of the Nation for roughly four decades and now who's served the past 3\1/2\ years in our highest office. I speak, I think I can say, as one who has seen much, who has loved his country, and who's seen it change in many ways.
I believe that faith and religion play a critical role in the political life of our nation -- and always has -- and that the church -- and by that I mean all churches, all denominations -- has had a strong influence on the state. And this has worked to our benefit as a nation.
Those who created our country -- the Founding Fathers and Mothers -- understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human order. They saw the state, in fact, as a form of moral order and felt that the bedrock of moral order is religion.
The Mayflower Compact began with the words, ``In the name of God, amen.'' The Declaration of Independence appeals to ``Nature's God'' and the ``Creator'' and ``the Supreme Judge of the world.'' Congress was given a chaplain, and the oaths of office are oaths before God.
James Madison in the Federalist Papers admitted that in the creation of our Republic he perceived the hand of the Almighty. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, warned that we must never forget the God from whom our blessings flowed.
George Washington referred to religion's profound and unsurpassed place in the heart of our nation quite directly in his Farewell Address in 1796. Seven years earlier, France had erected a government that was intended to be purely secular. This new government would be grounded on reason rather than the law of God. By 1796 the French Revolution had known the Reign of Terror.
And Washington voiced reservations about the idea that there could be a wise policy without a firm moral and religious foundation. He said, ``Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man (call himself a patriot) who (would) labour to subvert these . . . finest [firmest]\1\ (FOOTNOTE) props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere Politician . . . (and) the pious man ought to respect and to cherish (religion and morality).'' And he added, ``. . . let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.''
(FOOTNOTE) \1\White House correction.
I believe that George Washington knew the City of Man cannot survive without the City of God, that the Visible City will perish without the Invisible City.
Religion played not only a strong role in our national life; it played a positive role. The abolitionist movement was at heart a moral and religious movement; so was the modern civil rights struggle. And throughout this time, the state was tolerant of religious belief, expression, and practice. Society, too, was tolerant.
But in the 1960's this began to change. We began to make great steps toward secularizing our nation and removing religion from its honored place.
In 1962 the Supreme Court in the New York prayer case banned the compulsory saying of prayers. In 1963 the Court banned the reading of the Bible in our public schools. From that point on, the courts pushed the meaning of the ruling ever outward, so that now our children are not allowed voluntary prayer. We even had to pass a law -- we passed a special law in the Congress just a few weeks ago to allow student prayer groups the same access to schoolrooms after classes that a young Marxist society, for example, would already enjoy with no opposition.
The 1962 decision opened the way to a flood of similar suits. Once religion had been made vulnerable, a series of assaults were made in one court after another, on one issue after another. Cases were started to argue against tax-exempt status for churches. Suits were brought to abolish the words ``under God'' from the Pledge of Allegiance and to remove ``In God We Trust'' from public documents and from our currency.
Today there are those who are fighting to make sure voluntary prayer is not returned to the classrooms. And the frustrating thing for the great majority of Americans who support and understand the special importance of religion in the national life -- the frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom, and openmindedness. Question: Isn't the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? [Applause] They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives.
If all the children of our country studied together all of the many religions in our country, wouldn't they learn greater tolerance of each other's beliefs? If children prayed together, would they not understand what they have in common, and would this not, indeed, bring them closer, and is this not to be desired? So, I submit to you that those who claim to be fighting for tolerance on this issue may not be tolerant at all.
When John Kennedy was running for President in 1960, he said that his church would not dictate his Presidency any more than he would speak for his church. Just so, and proper. But John Kennedy was speaking in an America in which the role of religion -- and by that I mean the role of all churches -- was secure. Abortion was not a political issue. Prayer was not a political issue. The right of church schools to operate was not a political issue. And it was broadly acknowledged that religious leaders had a right and a duty to speak out on the issues of the day. They held a place of respect, and a politician who spoke to or of them with a lack of respect would not long survive in the political arena.
It was acknowledged then that religion held a special place, occupied a special territory in the hearts of the citizenry. The climate has changed greatly since then. And since it has, it logically follows that religion needs defenders against those who care only for the interests of the state.
There are, these days, many questions on which religious leaders are obliged to offer their moral and theological guidance, and such guidance is a good and necessary thing. To know how a church and its members feel on a public issue expands the parameters of debate. It does not narrow the debate; it expands it.
The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.
A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens; the more decent the citizens, the more decent the state. If you practice a religion, whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or guided by some other faith, then your private life will be influenced by a sense of moral obligation, and so, too, will your public life. One affects the other. The churches of America do not exist by the grace of the state; the churches of America are not mere citizens of the state. The churches of America exist apart; they have their own vantage point, their own authority. Religion is its own realm; it makes its own claims.
We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief, to apply moral teaching to public questions.
I submit to you that the tolerant society is open to and encouraging of all religions. And this does not weaken us; it strengthens us, it makes us strong. You know, if we look back through history to all those great civilizations, those great nations that rose up to even world dominance and then deteriorated, declined, and fell, we find they all had one thing in common. One of the significant forerunners of their fall was their turning away from their God or gods.
Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.
If I could just make a personal statement of my own -- in these 3\1/2\ years I have understood and known better than ever before the words of Lincoln, when he said that he would be the greatest fool on this footstool called Earth if he ever thought that for one moment he could perform the duties of that office without help from One who is stronger than all.
I thank you, thank you for inviting us here today. Thank you for your kindness and your patience. May God keep you, and may we, all of us, keep God.
Thank you.
Maybe the Bush-bashing frenzy has exhausted itself:
BUSH-bashing belletrist Gore Vidal is refusing to promote his new book, "Imperial America." The tome, just out from Thunder's Mouth Press, consists of anti-Bush diatribes and articles Vidal wrote in the Nation, Esquire and elsewhere from 1975-2004. But Vidal recently canceled interviews for the book, which has gotten a lukewarm reception, and told the publishers he'd only give them three days of his time to promote it. "He's very prickly," huffed a Thunder's Mouth insider. "He won't even talk to us directly. We have to go through his editor at the Nation." A rep for the publisher says Vidal's time was "unexpectedly cut short." (Page Six)
For a schlumpy documentary-maker in a baseball cap, Michael Moore can sure draw a glittery crowd. So many Hollywood Democrats wanted to see his Bush-whacking movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," Tuesday night that he needed two screenings at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills.
Lining up for the 7 p.m. showing were Jodie Foster, Meg Ryan, Drew Barrymore, Ellen DeGeneres, Mark Wahlberg, Marisa Tomei, Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman, David Duchovny and Téa Leoni, Josh Brolin and Diane Lane, Viggo Mortensen, Larry David, Rob Reiner, Aaron Sorkin, Larry Gelbart, Brett Ratner, Tom Hayden and son Troy Garity, Ariana Huffington, Spike Jonze, Kelly Lynch, Camryn Manheim and Jack, Kelly and Sharon Osbourne.
Barbra Streisand couldn't escape from the set of "Meet the Fockers." But a bunch of celebs dashed over after the Lakers game for the second screening. Among them were Leo DiCaprio, Chris Rock, Matthew Perry, Billy Crystal, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, Sharon Stone and Bernie Cahill, Bill Maher, Jack Black and Wes Anderson. NY Daily News
Makes more sense for Condi to be baking cookies, she has no time, she's busy taking over the world! Although posing Condi naked is a disrespectful slap in the face. It was a win win for Paramount with Condi.
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Ooh, the last time I saw Vidal live on Maher's show it was embarrassing. He's morphed into a rat faced pansy that appears to be detoxing from every known drug on earth.
I hope Aaron was doing some 'shrooms so he could get the full effect of Moore's celluloid excrement.
Off to do some running around... back soon
Thanks for this thread, it has been a great start on the "catching up" process. Thank you Lord for the gift of Ronalad Reagan both as President and also as Governor of my state of California.
On a lighter note, saw the tabloids in the airport of Chelsea's one month makeover and was so dismayed that I might have missed the lively discussion of it. I think she had major surgery, especially going from a round chin to a pointed chin. How very sad that someone so relatively young felt it necessary to take such drastic steps....but she does look better and less like a Hubble offspring...
Well, I haven't been away on vacation. And I've seen nothing about Chel's makeover, except I did comment on her new hairstyle some time ago and that the new highlights were flattering.
Did you see a thread discussing Chel's having other work done? It must have been on the General Interest side, I seldom check those threads.
Welcome back ds.
Welcome back - sounds like another wonderful trip for you guys.
Given Gore's (Vidal, not Al) sexual preference, maybe it's a mind-eating STD that has brought him to this point. Al's problem, of course, is Dutch Elm disease.
Chelsea Clinton looks fantastic. That's right, the once-gawky kid with buck teeth, bedspring hair, and her father's bulbous nose is suddenly a sleek-tressed, lip-glossed looker.
At 24, the daughter of former President Bill and current U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton is turning heads and fueling rumors. Did she or didn't she? Is her new smile anchored by a chin implant? Has the tip of her nose been trimmed?
At least two supermarket tabloids, the Globe and the Star, couldn't resist publishing before-and-after photos of the former first daughter this week with headlines posing the question. MIRACLE MAKEOVERS! shouts the Star, calling Clinton "the Real Life Swan." CHELSEA PLASTIC SURGERY RIDDLE, screams the Globe, quoting an anonymous "inside source," speculating: "It suddenly seems as if all her facial features - eyes, ears and nose - are all perfectly proportioned."
In one photograph she's ruddy-faced and weak-chinned, and in the other, buffed and polished.
One Dr. Paul Parker, a Paramus, N.J., plastic surgeon who has not treated Clinton, says in the Globe that Clinton looks as if she may have gotten a chin implant, a nose job and maybe even an eye lift.
Nobody in the Clinton clan is talking. Calls to Chelsea's Manhattan job site, the consulting firm of McKinsey & Co. where she's reportedly earning a six-figure salary, were funneled directly into voice mail. E-mail messages and phone calls to her father's office in Harlem and her mother's office in Washington were not returned.
This is not the first time Chelsea has gone glam and set tongues wagging. In 2002, she stunned photographers by showing up at a fashion show in Paris with a sleek bob haircut, a Versace pantsuit, and celebrity pals Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow at her side. Now, she's a college grad sporting honey blond hair, slender cheeks, and an expert makeup job.
But, says Dr. Algird R. Mameniskis of the Rittenhouse Plastic Surgery center, she probably has not had plastic surgery. "Judging from these pictures, I'd say it's mostly a result of weight loss," he said after studying the magazine spreads.
"I don't see anything around the eyes, and I'd have to see other pictures to be definite about the chin," he added. "But in a woman her age, the skin is taut enough that weight loss could change her look."
EVERY day, a worker climbs to the roof of the Clinton Presidential Center here and hoists three seven-foot-high numbers onto a steel frame. The numbers tell drivers on Interstate 30, just west of the site, how many days remain until Nov. 18, when Bill Clinton is expected to open the $175 million project that embodies his postpresidential ambitions.
Millions of people pass by that sign every year, Skip Rutherford said. And as president of the nonprofit William J. Clinton Foundation, which is overseeing the construction, Mr. Rutherford figures that at least 300,000 of them will want to visit the 11th, and by far most expensive, of the nation's presidential libraries each year. The runner-up, the library built for the first President Bush in College Station, Tex., cost about half as much to construct.
The Clinton center, at 152,000 square feet, far exceeds the 70,000-square-foot guideline included in a 1986 law on presidential libraries. But that "one size fits all" approach did not anticipate the fact that Mr. Clinton, who served two terms in the age of computerization, has a far larger collection of documents — 90 million — than any president before him. Nor could it have accounted for the fact that Mr. Clinton, the youngest ex-president since Theodore Roosevelt, is determined to make a splash.
Polshek Partnership Architects of New York designed the museum in the shape of a bridge [in the shape of a mobile home]. The center will also include a park, archives and a public policy school named for Mr. Clinton. If the exhibits (including Hillary Rodham Clinton's inaugural gowns and a description of the Monica Lewinsky affair) aren't enough, the possibility of seeing the 42nd president might be: Mr. Rutherford said Mr. Clinton expects to spend 7 to 10 days a month in a glass-walled penthouse. [Wow, like reality TV, almost. MTV could call it "Real World Little Rock"] Its floor-to-ceiling windows will be visible not only from the grounds of the museum but from downtown Little Rock (and from the condo of two Friends of Bill, Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, across the freeway).
"I fully expect that when the president is here, he'll be going downstairs and giving tours to a little old lady from Des Moines," Mr. Rutherford said. With Mr. Clinton's memoir, "My Life," due from Knopf on June 22, Mr. Rutherford expects the former president to resume active fund-raising for the library, which began early in his second term.
"I'm starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not a freight train," he said of his seven-year fund-raising effort.
But the tunnel keeps getting longer. Mr. Rutherford's latest estimate of the overall cost is $175 million (about half of it in building costs), up from $125 million in 1999. He will have to deliver a $7.2 million endowment to help pay the federal government's cost of upkeep. The presidential libraries are built with private money but, except for the Nixon library, they are run by the National Archives and Records Administration. That agency estimates that it will cost over $4 million to operate the Clinton library in its first year.
After rejecting several sites that would have been easier to build on, Mr. Clinton chose a 28-acre abandoned warehouse area across the freeway from downtown, with the aim of creating a vast urban renewal project. Already, according to Little Rock's city manager, Bruce Moore, the Clinton library has brought almost $1 billion in private investment to the area around it. Barry Travis, chief executive of the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau, said a study commissioned by the bureau found that "if the library attracted 150,000 to 300,000 visitors a year, we calculated there would be from $8.6 million to $17.5 million in direct tourism expenditures, and that doesn't include any other types of economic development that the library might spawn." The 11 existing presidential libraries, counting the Nixon library, average about 150,000 visitors a year each. ...
But, says Dr. Algird R. Mameniskis of the Rittenhouse Plastic Surgery center, she probably has not had plastic surgery. "Judging from these pictures, I'd say it's mostly a result of weight loss," he said after studying the magazine spreads.
****
Dude, get yourself some cheaters.
Let's just hope this summer doesn't bring another round of "Chelsea in a skimpy bikini" photos. I don't care whether she's lost weight, I just don't want to see them.
Thanks for that info on Chels. I must have been under a rock, I'm sure this isn't the first time this has been discussed.
Well, with all that you guys have going on, I can understand missing a few items from time to time...I just happened to catch the post yesterday, when M was tempted to break her world record of NEVER having bought a tabloid.
One year, I gave Mrs.L a year's subscription to the Enquirer: she didn't find it nearly as informative as I. We did not renew...she said that she was embarassed that the postman would think that we were "that kind of people."
LOL
Having met Mrs. lodwick let me assure everyone she is definitely NOT 'that kind of people'.
Great!
I'll let Pam know that she could have been a Stephen's gal. (But then, she'd never have met me...life's funny, these ways.)
Cheers, up there, friend.
Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, right, spreads rose petals in the path of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., remembering all the while not to look directly into the Beaste's eyes.
Oops, actual caption: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., center, and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, right, greet supporters and sign autographs after speaking to alumnae at Wellesley College, Saturday, June 5, 2004, in Wellesley, Mass.
Another AP caption from the same event added: When asked where they expected to be in a decade, Albright answered, 'I would like to be serving another president Clinton.' She didn't explain what type of service she envisioned, but Sen. Clinton added, "No one ever got our toilets as clean as Maddie. She's a peach."
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