Sad Things Are Happening In Congress

This is the transcript of a prayer offered in Congress yesterday. Please note that ‘this transcript was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning.’

The transcript is taken from the C-SPAN website:

I have some problems with this. The monotheistic god and the god known by many names and faiths? Awoman? What in the world?

Just for the record, the history of America is infused with Christianity. It is not a country of religions of a god known by many names. It is a country founded on Judeo-Christian principles.

In an article posted in November 2019, Christian Action reminds us:

In 1892 Supreme Court Justice David Brewer ruled, “The United States is a Christian nation.” He may have been the first high-level government official to refer to America as a Christian nation, but he was not the last.

In a letter to Pope Pius XII, President Harry S. Truman wrote, “Your Holiness, this is a Christian Nation.” And his letter made a direct reference to Justice Brewer’s ruling in the Holy Trinity vs. United States court decision.

“More than a half century ago that declaration was written into the decrees of the highest court of this land,” President Truman told the Pontiff. “It is not without significance that the valiant pioneers who left Europe to establish settlements here, at the very beginning of their colonial enterprises, declared their faith in the Christian religion and made ample provision for its practice and for its support.”

In 1931 the Supreme Court once again ruled, “We are a Christian people.” The court also made direct reference Justice Brewer’s 1892 decision for the basis of this claim.

The 1931 case involved a Canadian-born Baptist minister, Douglas Clyde Macintosh, who applied to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Mr. Macintosh, though he previously served as a military chaplain for the Canadian Army during WWI, objected to swearing an oath of allegiance to the United States if it involved supporting a war that he found morally objectionable.

Writing for the majority in a 5-4 decision, Justice George Sutherland found that “We are a Christian people” and, as such, following the laws of the land is “not inconsistent with the will of God.” In essence, the court acknowledged, significantly, that there was a “God” and that laws passed by “a Christian people” would never violate God’s “will.”

The prayer was simply unacceptable. It did not reflect the values of the majority of Americans. Hopefully someone in Congress will have the courage to speak out against something that is not appropriate in a Christian nation.

 

Sometimes People Don’t Like Hearing The Truth

According to Snopes (a source I don’t recommend, but happened to be accurate in this case):

In January of 1996, when the Rev. Joe Wright, senior pastor of the 2,500-member Central Christian Church in Wichita, was invited to deliver the opening prayer at a session of the Kansas House of Representatives. On that occasion he offered the following “Prayer of Repentance” (which was not entirely of his own crafting but rather was a version of a prayer written in 1995 by Bob Russell, who had offered it at the Kentucky Governor’s Prayer Breakfast in Frankfort):

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance.

We know your Word says, “Woe to those who call evil good,” but that’s exactly what we’ve done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.

We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word and called it moral pluralism.

We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism.

We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.

We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.

We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.

We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem.

We have abused power and called it political savvy.

We have coveted our neighbors’ possessions and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us O God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.

Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by you, to govern this great state.

Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will. I ask it in the name of your son, the living savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

I received an email from a friend which included the Reverend Wright’s prayer and the following:

The response was immediate. A number of legislators walked out during the prayer in protest. In 6 short weeks, Central Christian Church, where Rev. Wright is pastor, logged more than 5,000 phone calls with only 47 of those calls responding negatively. The church is now receiving international requests for copies of this prayer from India, Africa and Korea. With the LORD’S help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and WHOLEHEARTEDLY become our desire so that we again can be called “ONE NATION UNDER GOD.”

Ultimately, that is the only answer for America.

The Results Of Our Education System And The News Media

The Wall Street Journal posted an article today about the changing values of Americans. The article includes the chart below:

According to statistica.com (2017 data), there are 97 million Americans born between 1928 and 1964 currently in America. There are 65.45 million Americans born between 1965 and 1980 currently in America. There are 72.06 million Americans born between 1981 and 1996. I realize that these dates do not exactly correspond to the graph above, but they give you a general idea of the age of the American population. Thank God the old people still have the young whippersnappers outnumbered. Evidently we are the generation with the strongest traditional values.

This shift in values did not happen in a vacuum. In 1962, prayer was taken out of American schools. Students no longer started the day with some sort of simple prayer. I remember in Junior High School (now Middle School) we began every day with an assembly where we said the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and sang The Lord’s Prayer. I don’t remember being significantly harmed by that. By high school, the prayer and the Pledge were gone.

The article at The Wall Street Journal goes on to describe different feelings about racism.

The article reports:

The survey also found partisan divides on views of race relations. When surveyed six years ago, about half of Republicans and a slightly larger share of Democrats said relations among the races were on a good footing. Today, half of Republicans say race relations are good, while only 21% of Democrats say so.

Overall, the latest poll found 60% of adults saying race relations are in a bad state, a smaller share than in mid-2016, before Mr. Trump took office, when 74% said relations were poor. At the time, two incidents of police shootings of African-American men had been in the news.

In the new survey, only 19 percent of African-Americans said race relations were fairly or very good, the lowest level in Journal/NBC News polling over more than two decades.

While views on race relations improved overall, the change didn’t come through when Americans were asked about Mr. Trump’s time in office, the poll found.

Fifty-six percent of adults said race relations had gotten worse since Mr. Trump became president, while 10% said they had improved.

The Journal/NBC News poll surveyed 1,000 adults from Aug. 10-14. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

I blame the news media for that one. We had more racial unrest under President Obama than we have seen under President Trump.

The article also includes an interesting comment on patriotism:

Megan Clark, a 31-year-old from Austin, Texas, said her experience as a child living overseas due to her father’s military career influenced her views on patriotism.

“Patriotism for the sake of patriotism means nothing to me,’’ she said. “If you believe in the values that your country is expressing and following and you want to support those, then, sure. But just as a blind association with wherever you happen to be from, that just doesn’t seem logical.”

Generational differences on personal values were most pronounced among Democrats. In fact, the views of Democrats over age 50 were more in line with those of younger Republicans than with younger members of their own party.

Part of the responsibility for the decline in patriotism goes to our schools. It is disconcerting to me that the Advanced Placement U.S. History books focus on the negative aspects of American history–slavery, mistreatment of Indians, etc. They don’t focus on how unique the concept of God-given rights and freedom were at the time of the American Revolution. Part of the responsibility for the decline of patriotism also falls on parents. It is up to us to teach our children to love our country. Our freedom is always only one generation away. Hopefully we are not currently watching that generation grow up.

This Is What The Past Few Days Have Been Like Here

This is a video of some of the news coverage in New Bern during the past few days:

The flooding from Hurricane Florence is mainly in the downtown area. I live about six miles outside of town. We are fine. Our power is restored. Our cable and internet has been restored. Some neighborhoods near us were hit hard. There are some people who are not able to get out of their neighborhoods because of flooding. Prayers are needed.

This is an aerial view of the city: