Posted on 04/03/2003 6:25:58 PM PST by honway
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."
Maryland state Republican Rep. Alex Mooney
"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 Gloria 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.
Washington state Republican Rep. Lois McMahan
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."
Secondly, the issue is not your beliefs, unless sharing a meal with a non-believer in Christ is a violation of your faith.
Thridly, trere are thousands of chaplian, priest, ministers, and rabbies that routinely officiate at inter-religious ceremonies. No problem ever arises on Capitiol HIll when the Chaplain leads in a prayer there.
All these people are Christian, educated, and even ordained. None of them betrays Christianity.
It's not about one's beliefs: it's about tact and unity.
There are a lot of things posted here I never thought I would see on any American posting board - certainly not a so-called conservative or Republican site.
If you haven't noticed, Christianity is under fire - big time. It is being helped along by the so-called conservative movement and even our PResident sided with the Muslim in a religious debate.
That sounds like a Wlat-ism. It was, it existed, and the heritage is still celebrated. Just recently, political groups like the NAACP decided that it was much easier to attack Southern Heritage as racist than actually do anything for the people they claim to speak for. Some of the politically correct on this forum have allied themselves with this revision.
Are there Maryland Senate rules on the books outlining standards for "ecumenical prayer"?
I'm sure he knows this.
I'm sure Rev. Hughes knows all he wanted to do was praise his Savior.
Failure to do so is an unnecessary provocation on his part.
Doubtless the utterance of the word "Jesus" is provocative to some.
And it is one more brick in the wall toward the day when such prayers will not be allowed at all. I would rather have them, than nothing at all.
Thanks to folks like Sens. Ida Ruben and Gloria Hollinger, yes.
It's too bad that "compromise" isn't possible with some who think this way.
You are correct. "Compromise" isn't acceptable here. A professed, committed believer agreeing to strike "In Jesus' name" from the end of a prayer would be akin to him saying "I reject you, Lord," which, if the profession and commitment are true, would never happen.
You can post that 100 times, but it is still PC BS.
::Sigh:: It's always sumpn'.
As a Noachide I grow extremely tired of the replaying of the same old song over and over again--Jews representing "freedom of conscience" and chr*stians representing objective religious truth that transcends all other concerns. Maybe it's time that Jews cut the "pluarsims" crap and started speaking the language of religious objectivity?
I am a non-Jew who believes that the Torah is the Absolute Objective Truth. Where do I fit in in this little dialogue? Nowhere apparently. I believe praying to J*sus or anyone else other than to the True G-d is wrong--not in a sense of insensitivity, but an act of idolatry. But is anyone going to inject that position? No. It's always liberal Jews vs. pious chr*stians. Judaism always gets cast in the role of the advocate of religious subjectivism while chr*stianity represents simple truth. What a chillul HaShem.
Because of the very nature of religion no sincere chr*stian, however pro-Jewish, can in good conscience not pray to the Nazarene. It doesn't matter how politically incorrect it is or how much trouble it causes, they must put their religion first just as everyone must. I don't defend idolatrous prayer, but I do understand that the "pluralism argument" is sheer poppycock, however embedded it is in our American (enlightenment/Jeffersonian) consciousness.
Instead of demanding that chr*stians stop praying to J*sus in the name of "tolerance" and "pluarlism" (which two things are totally irrelevant anyway), why not tell them the Truth--that J*sus isn't G-d and that it is forbidden to pray to him or to any other entity other than HaShem? I realize Jews haven't been in a position to do this for most of two millenia, but that is no excuse in this day and age.
I will gladly support Theocratic legislation against praying to J*sus. However, anti-J*sus legislation based on the theory that J*sus represents the "reactionary" concept of Objective Religious Truth (and the concomitant implication that Judaism is opposed to Objective Religious Truth) is absolutely blasphemous. Once again Jews are cast in the role of opposition, not to false religion, but to religion per se. How tiresome this grows.
I wish some of you on the two conventional sides of this issue would put yourselves for just a moment in the shoes of a Noachide. If you're really that "tolerant" it shouldn't be that hard for you!
Amen!
Jesus is LORD and part of the Trinity. The Old Testament and the New Testament are not two separate books but parts of the same organism.
I reject your argument entirely.
BTW I recommend you read a book called "How To Win Friends And Influence People",you'll find the information he offers much more valuable if you dedicate some time to digging into it. I think it will help you immeasureably more than my advice which would be,"stop stop patronizing me".
I was happy to see that you did close with acknowledging that it was the way you felt about it. That you recognize that,is good.
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