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    The God Complex

    By DF on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 1:55pm | Politics

    Greta Christina has written a straight-forward piece at AlterNet that addresses what was wrong with all of the piety at the inauguration.  For my money, here's the quote:

    Look. You can't spend all day talking about how God's grace is upon the nation, and how everything that happens comes from God, and how equality and freedom and opportunity are promised to us by God, and how the elected leader of a democratic country is God's servant, and how forgetting God is a sin that requires forgiveness -- and then mention once that some of the people making up the strong patchwork of this country are non-believers -- and call that real inclusivity and recognition of non-believers.

    This gets right to what's really at issue in such proceedings.  The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution exists so that government is not the hand sowing seeds of division in our society.  We ignore this proscription at our peril.

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    Good quote DF.  Maybe in MY lifetime they will stop prayers at inaugurations. 


    by Bluesplashy on Fri, 01/23/2009 - 4:45pm

    DF, I'm not sure if you saw my mea culpa on the other thread, but about Warren: you were right and I was wrong. It was important for Obama to reach out to the evangelical community, but he could have found another way to do it. Warren likes to pretend inclusion, but he doesn't come close to putting his money where his (big) mouth is. I was, and remain, horrified at the inclusion of the Lord's Prayer. 

    I wish we didn't have prayer at public events period, but as long as we do, I think they must be non-denominational.


    by Orlando on Sun, 01/25/2009 - 1:33am

    I hope you don't feel like you owe any mea culpa.  FWIW, you have a very valid point about making the effort to reach out to evangelicals.  I, too, see this as essential.  I don't believe in quashing religion.  In fact, I believe that this would be dangerous and could lead to a sharpened fanaticism and extremism.  To that end, I would have preferred to be wrong about Warren in this case.

    RE: public prayer, I think that there's a growing consensus on a sort of non-denominational presentation in recognition of religious diversity.  I would like to have seen that spirit at the inauguration, as I think it would have been particularly apropos.  Even so, I puzzle over whether it's right or prudent to ban prayer at a public event.  It's an easier call in a case like a monument to the ten commandments in a public courthouse.  However, I think we have to be careful about regulating individual religious behavior.  I'm not sure how this works around the country, but I know that California public schools have allowed for prayer gatherings on campuses so long as they aren't compulsory and are organized and attended on a volunteer basis.  In that sort of sense, I don't think it is possible, nor just, to try and prohibit anyone's religious belief or expression thereof (with sensible and requisite concern for existing time, place and manner regulations on speech in general).  So, if an incoming president wants to say some things about God because that's what he or she believes, so be it.  Even so, the more insitutionalized approach that we saw this year could use some refinement, at least IMHO.


    by DF on Sun, 01/25/2009 - 11:57am

    I don't have a problem with public prayer in general, but it bothers me that there is an assumption that everyone is a willing participant. The ones I like the best are the ones that begin with a kind of disclaimer or at the very least an invitation to pray to the god of your choice. The more I reflect on Warren at the inauguration, the more horrified I am. 

    To me, the most amazing part of the whole experience was this shared energy that we all had. And when he started the Lord's Prayer and so many thousands joined him, I was thinking about all the people who don't pray to the Christian god and how all of the sudden they were shut out, if even for a few moments. I did not like it at all.


    by Orlando on Sun, 01/25/2009 - 1:12pm

    There's a great angle that I haven't seen anyone write about yet, which is the angle of shared experience.  I've heard people mention how incredible it was to have the experience at the inauguration, but I haven't heard anyone really get into how incredible it was to have a shared experience that large in an era where those kind of experiences are on the wane.  Especially when you consider that many are quick to blame technology as a divisive force, the culmination of the Obama campaign was that it used technology as a means to an end, but the ultimate end was bringing people together and not the technology itself.  There's a great essay in this somewhere, but I think it would be better written by someone who was there.


    by DF on Sun, 01/25/2009 - 9:42pm

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