Posted on 03/02/2018 9:09:48 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
For seven hours Wednesday, the remains of the Rev. Billy Graham lay in honor at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Hundreds of people streamed past his coffin, many with tales of how the iconic pastor brought them closer to Jesus Christ. The coffin was to be escorted out of the Capitol Thursday morning for its journey to Charlotte, N.C. for a private funeral Friday.
Wednesday began with a private, televised memorial at the Rotunda, the nation’s three most powerful politicians — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and President Trump — speaking of Graham’s great gift to America: his evangelism....
....But Graham, who died Feb. 21 at age 99, was of a different era, a different America in which there was even roughly a shared idea of religion....
“I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like this again,” said John Fea, a historian of American religion at Messiah College. “Graham represented the white middle class religious revival of the post-World War II era. He was the embodiment of a mass culture that was largely white and Protestant....
Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center for presidential and political history at the University of Virginia, said she thinks honoring someone whose primary service was the conversion of people to a certain faith with a Rotunda ceremony violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment....
“Not that he shouldn’t be lauded, but does he deserve to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol? And once you open that door, where do you stop?” Perry said. “Lying in honor should be someone who served their country. Well, how did he do that?”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
And yes, we have had pastors on the payroll since the beginning it all.
You want a "purely secular government"? Move to france.
We had slavery are the beginning too. Did that make us stable?
You want a "purely secular government"? Move to france.
No need. Religion is in terminal decline. I'll just wait out here.
You know what's in "terminal decline?" Look in the mirror.
Everyone's done for in the other guy's theology.
When Benjamin Franklin died, and plans were being made to mark his passing, George Washington worried to Thomas Jefferson about having to make such a todo about the passing of every founding father. Jefferson’s reply was (I quote from memory since I can’t seem to find it on the web) to the effect that“Mankind has set such a gulf between yourself and Doctor Franklin, on the one hand, and the rest of humanity on the other, that what is done for either of you sets no precedent for anyone else whatsoever.”. . . and you will be hard pressed to name anyone who had the prestige of Billy Graham. Nobody before or since has made the impression he has.
I guess it depends on who's doing the assessing. Among older white protestants he was very prestigious. I don't think he means that much to anyone under 35. I always thought of him as a self promoter and professional White House buttinski.
Nobody before or since has made the impression he has.
I can think of plenty of people who have had a bigger impact on society.
The nation of france with it's multitude of revolutions awaits to welcome you with open arms.
Watch — some obscure imam in Dearborn will croak and there will be riots because he is not laid out in the Capitol.
At the University of Pennsylvania last year (not Penn State! UPenn was founded by Ben Franklin before the American Revolution), a bunch of BLMs screamed and removed the portrait of SHAKESPEARE that had been hanging in the ENGLISH DEPARTMENT for a century or more and pressured the dean to hang a portrait of an obscure black lesbian poet no one has ever heard of. Just disgraceful—not so much the ignorant desire of undergraduates, but that the administration caved in.
Religious leaders were not laid out in the Capitol.
One man—who was a religious leader, and also a cultural leader, a quasi diplomat, a globally admired spokesman against communism, a celebrity of lifelong personal humility and integrity, and an advisor to every President since Truman—was laid out in the Capitol.
Your comment exemplifies the current media-speak that communizes and collectivizes everything, generalizing outward from one single event as if it is a universal standard applying to all people in a broad general category. Graham was an unique individual and his life was uniquely excellent—another quality that socialism and collectivism rejects completely and finds offensive. Socialists hate excellence.
That is not the vision of the Founders, who believed in individual rights and responsibilities, individual freedoms and private property (including intellectual property), keeping the government out of religion, not the other way around. Thomas Jefferson institued Sunday church services in the Capitol Building for lawmakers. He also, as head of the public schools during his term, directed that the two books every child should have for lessons were the Bible and a hymnal.
How far we have fallen.
I so totally agree. I was just reflecting on that today, how sad it was for him, after all his months-long trips around the world, to finally be home and retired from traveling, but his beloved wife had died 11 years ago. Being nearly immobilized by illness, yet without her day after day—surrounded by memories of her in the house she had created—must have made him wonder why the Lord was keeping him alive.
You can be sure that the news of his death, had it occured during the past administration, would have been suppressed.
Because he was spared until this year, he is sent off with accolades from public figures, and there is an outpouring of his words over YouTube and television in a way that would not even have been so readily possible eight or ten years ago, due to the increase in computing power and media saturation in the past decade. God's own timing.
It depends on the Founder. Madison wanted ZERO religion in government. He opposed having chaplains in Congress and the military. I think he would have been opposed to this.
Speak for yourself. Many of us see a much clearer distinction between society and government.
True. And he has a permanent statue on the National Mall, and hundreds of streets, parks and schools named after him thoughout the country.
It's just that the National Cathedral is run by the Episcopal Church USA, which has aggressively promoted gay marriage and would probably have aggressively tried to resist hosting the event, due to Graham's Biblical view of marriage. Episcopalians think the Bible is so last millenium.
January 2013: Washington National Cathedral Announces It Will Hold Same-Sex Weddings
From the National Cathedral's web site:
A longtime supporter of the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the life of the church, the Cathedral considers LGBT equality the great civil rights issue of church in the 21st century.
If you don't see religion in the founding document, then you are seeing something that's not there. We are a secular Republic.
I searched for the quote you referenced and could not find it, either. But it does put me in mind of JFK's famous quip in 1962 as he hosted a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prizewinners of the Western Hemisphere:
"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
No, we’re not. And you don’t speak for the nation, FRiend.
The county where I live is named after him. It was originally named after some long-forgotten politician named King, but they changed it to MLK some years ago.
People claiming false projections, like you, are projecting.
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