Posted on 04/04/2003 12:58:36 PM PST by joesnuffy
FAITH UNDER FIRE State Senate bars Christian prayer Jewish lawmakers threaten walk-out over reference to Jesus
Posted: April 3, 2003 6:30 p.m. Eastern
By Diana Lynne © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
A Maryland minister was barred from giving the opening prayer in the state Senate after he refused to drop a reference to Jesus.
The Rev. David N. Hughes of the Trinity and Evangelical Church of Adamstown, Md., intended to round out his invocation yesterday with the line, "In Jesus' name, Amen." But the sergeant at arms – on the orders of Senate President Thomas Mike Miller Jr. – shut the reverend out of the body's chambers.
Miller issued the orders after two Jewish lawmakers threatened to stage a boycott of the legislative session if the phrase was not removed.
"I'm shocked by the response. I've never had this happen in 26 years," Hughes told the Frederick News-Post. "It just makes me feel that they've taken away my right as an American to pray, and this is the seat of government, and that's scary."
The pastor – a Vietnam veteran – was invited to give the prayer by Republican Sen. Alex Mooney. Hughes was Mooney's fourth guest. The other three were Jewish rabbis.
Opening up legislative sessions with prayer is a longstanding tradition in Maryland, as it is in states across the country. Mooney told WorldNetDaily no one had been barred from giving an invocation before. He sees irony in yesterday's "censorship."
"We were the first state to address religious tolerance in our state charter," he told WorldNetDaily. "This just shows a lack of tolerance for peoples' religious views."
Mooney recalled numerous instances of invocations referencing Jesus throughout the four years that he has been in office.
But at the beginning of the session this year, a string of invocations by Baptist preachers invoking the name Jesus Christ sparked debate on the issue. Miller appealed to lawmakers for tolerance and urged they stick to guidelines that call for invocations to be of an ecumenical nature and respectful of all faiths.
Webster's New World Dictionary defines ecumenical as "promoting cooperation or better understanding among differing religious faiths."
Since the debate, the Senate clerk screens prayers ahead of time and flagged the written text submitted by Hughes.
When Sens. Ida Ruben and Paula Colodny Hollinger – both of whom are Jewish – heard of the reference, they asked Mooney to strike it.
"I said, 'Hey, I'll let him pray however he wants to pray. I'm not going to censor him and tell him how he needs to pray,'" Mooney told WND.
Ruben told the Frederick News-Post she then urged Hughes to substitute "messiah" for Jesus, telling him the reference could offend non-Christians and goes against the guidelines.
Neither Ruben nor Miller returned calls seeking comment.
"This is part of my faith," Hughes responded, according to Mooney. "The Gospel says when you pray, pray in Jesus' name."
The senators next asked to be excused from the floor during the prayer.
Paradoxically, a walk-out over a Muslim cleric's prayer opening a Washington state legislative session last month backfired on one Christian lawmaker.
As WorldNetDaily reported, Rep. Lois McMahan, a Republican from Gig Harbor, Wash., refused to participate in the prayer and declared, "My god is not Muhammed."
"The Islamic religion is so ... part and parcel with the attack on America. I just didn't want to be there, be a part of that," she said in an interview with the Seattle Post Intelligencer. "Even though the mainstream Islamic religion doesn't profess to hate America, nonetheless it spawns the groups that hate America."
But a day later, McMahan apologized on the floor of the state House of Representatives amid mounting furor over her stance.
Debate over invocations is raging elsewhere in the country. As WorldNetDaily reported, several Southern California cities are grappling with threats from both sides of the issue.
Under pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union to quit using the name Jesus Christ in invocations, the city of Lake Elsinore, in Riverside County, decided to eliminate mention of "religious figures." The decree subsequently had the apparent effect of eliminating the prayer altogether, as no local pastors would accept invitations to deliver the prayer, and city councilors adopted moments of silence instead.
The ACLU contends that praying at the request of a government entity is a violation of the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of religion.
But the nonprofit United States Justice Foundation, which threatened to sue the city if it failed to reverse its decision, maintains telling a pastor what to pray is a violation of his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion.
The notion of "separation of church and state" is derived from the dissenting opinion of the 1946 Supreme Court case Everson vs. Board of Education, which upheld a program allowing parents to be repaid from state funds for the costs of transportation to private religious schools. The court required only that the state maintain neutrality in its relations with various groups of religious believers.
"The decision in Everson does not rise to the level of being a battle cry for those who would wish to remove every vestige of religion from the public forum," USJF litigation counsel Richard Ackerman asserts.
"There's a push in this country to remove religion from society," Mooney echoed, "from the Supreme Court's decision on the Pledge to the ACLU going after all the Ten Commandments posted across the country. ... Nothing in the church-state relationship allows censorship and the removal of religious values from society."
Related articles:
Lawmaker sorry for snubbing imam's prayer
Lawmakers snub imam's opening prayer
City council bars prayers to Jesus
He is risen.
Luke 19:40
"I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."
Even in the People's Republic of Maryland, the King is still the King.
He is Risen Indeed.
There was no need for any of this to happen and the ironic part is that, multilingual, 24x7 prayers with a loudspeaker wouldn't help most of our worthless politicians.
Yes, I wonder if the Catholic form: "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost" would have passed muster? Since it doesn't specifically mention the diety, objections could spawn protests that no legislator could use the words father, son, or holy ghost in any speech...and on and on.
Obviously this jackass doesn't know too many Jews, if he's never had this happen in 26 years. As a Jew, I've run into this on a significant number of occassions, and I can tell you that it's quite alienating and irritating.
His insistence that he must close a supposedly "ecumenical" invocation with "In Jesus' name, Amen" simply indicates that he doesn't understand the meaning of the world.
Crying "censorship" is just a big steaming heap of bull. If he doesn't want to give an ecumenical invocation, he's welcome to not do so in the Statehouse.
I know it's tradition and all, and any legislator has the right to pray openly in session and invite others to join, but I would like to see the day when government does not begin its official business with a semi-mandatory endorsement of any particular religion, Christian, Muslim, Wiccan, whatever.
I like the principle of the "separation of church and state." We are no longer a just a country of Christians. We're also a nation of Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, etc., and our legislative sessions should reflect the religious evolution and, dare I say it, diversity of our country.
It's about our government religion-neutral, which is the way I believe it should be. Of course, some will charge it's about making gov't "godless", and that's a fair charge. But which "god" should the gov't officially (either by habit or law) endorse? Obviously there's more than one.
That said, if a legislator wants to open remarks and arguments with a prayer, hey, go for it. It just shouldn't be rote, expected or, in other words, "established."
Flame away at will.
(First post! Whoo-hoo!)
Exactly. And to expect a Christian minister to deny his Savior just because there's a Moslem, Jew, Hindu or whatever in the same room is simply disgusting bigotry. He is praying as his Bible tells him to, and if anyone has a problem with that, then it is their problem, not his.
Exactly.. Why not just get the janitor to say a few words if you don't desire all this religious entanglement?
After all, they expect to reduce a prayer to the level of a speech.. At that point, what's it matter who mouths the words?
He is praying as his Bible tells him to, and if anyone has a problem with that, then it is their problem, not his. Exactly.. Why not just get the janitor to say a few words if you don't desire all this religious entanglement? After all, they expect to reduce a prayer to the level of a speech.. At that point, what's it matter who mouths the words?
True words.
I guess the idea is for the State to "establish" a "faith-neutral" religion that every would-be chaplain must subscribe to. To be faithful to one's own religion is now considered "irritating" and "establishing your religion".
You would think with all this diversity garbage being tossed around people would be appreciative of the fact that anyone would pray for them or bless them in the name of whatever deity they happened to believe in and take the intent for what it's worth. Instead, you have to be forced to strip yourself of your distinctive worship to fit into the pantheon of acceptable gods.
Ten will get you twenty that if he was a Native American praying for the Great Spirit to rest on the assembly, it would have been hailed as a "breakthrough" in inter-faith, intercultural relations.
-cb
Completely accurate, and shamefully so.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.