A New Tradition for Obama's Presidential Events: Opening With a Prayer
Reader Comments
separation?
"..it's the reason our Founding Fathers believed in the separation of church and state...."
Where did that gem of misinformation come from? Founding Fathers? All of them?
If you are citing Jefferson's letter, you are going in the wrong direction. Jefferson was referring to keeping the government out of religion, NOT keeping out of government.
Separation of Church and State
Although I understand the motivations behind this policy, in the long wrong I think it is wrong -- as demonstrated by some of the comments above. As soon as you get into religious prayers at a secular political event, you are asking for trouble. If the people authoring the comments above about the disgrace of leaving "the Son's" name out of prayers to "the Father" don't get that many many people of different faiths (just for instance, Jews) would be offended by the very concept of addressing God as "Three persons," they are woefully ignorant of their own "Holy Book," which contains hundreds of verses inveighing against multiple deities and proclaiming that God is "One." This is the precise problem with mixing religion and politics, and it's the reason our Founding Fathers believed in the separation of church and state. Let's return to that founding principle, shall we? Please?
:(
The thought of praying to the Father without the name of the Son is absurd. Knowing that without the Son, it would be impossible to come to the Father with requests and praise...how could any truth believer agree to this sort of blasphemy? Sounds like the work of pharisees.
This nation is dying very fast!
I sense this nation is surely going "south"... we are a people that will soon be in the past because of our leaders, having forgotten our Lord Jesus and His Grace and Mercy, the manifested Mercy of God the Father... He will come again in Glory, you know.
I, as a bishop, am not ashamed of His Name.
I will proclaim Jesus' Name no matter what the President vets. But, then, I will never be asked.
Abba Anthony
Obama praying
I am appalled and disappointed in Obama. Mr. Obama, you must have been asleep in class when you took constitutional law. You missed the first amendment.
This is a secular nation and religion should play no part in government.
Inconceivable!?
It is amazing that a country founded with the intent of having religious freedom is yet again putting a strangle hold on an individual's religious rights. It may seem like a small thing but to dictate an individual's prayers is merely one more step toward dictating an individual's thoughts. A country may dictate actions for the good of a community(don't steal, don't kill, etc.) but no government has the right to dictate an individual's thoughts and feelings.
Now the liberals reading this will say I'm being an alarmist. But remember the frog that was boiled to death. It was placed in a cold pan of water over heat and acclimated to the increasing heat until it died. Chip away your rights one at a time and you won't notice that they are gone until they are.
God's Desire for His People's Prayers
God gives His desire for each of us: that we refrain from the cruelty of backbiting and hurtful criticism and follow His way. Thus one of His requests of us is given in II Chronicles 7:14-15. (NIV)
"if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place."
James 5:16 instructs us to pray for each other and we are encouraged by its statement that "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."
1 Timothy 2:1-2 requires us to pray for those in authority over us and to submit to that autohority for according to Romans 13:1b "The authorities that exist have been established by God."
As we are able to yield our personal weaknesses, strengths, and imperfections to God's power and His perfect will for our lives, He will help us to develop the relationship with Him that He desires. He can then use us more perfectly to help to strengthen others and be able to assist with positive means to restore America to the place God wants her to be.
A God-blessed Nation Falls...
This appears to be a conflict of church and state to a grand scale. When government would have a hand of sway or direct what a 'man of God' or 'spiritual leader' would believe Almighty God would have him present to this nation founded "under God," we have a major landslide of ideals. Yet we sit here behind our computer screens and shake our heads. "What is this world coming to?" we might add. It is coming to, quite possibly, the end of a God-blessed nation.
prayer at Presidential events
To begin Presidential events with a prayer, panders to the right-wind religious groups. It is against the separation of church and state regardless of their attenpts to make "sanitize? them. Who are these people who are selected essentially at random to deliver these opening remarks.? Of course, their "prayers" have to be vetted to make them seem ok to us. STOP THIS PRACTICE, MR. OBAMA.
It's all for show
Obama uses whatever he can, includiing someone else's carefully censored prayer! — to try to convince Americans who distrust him that he is harmless. EVERYTHING he does is studied and contrived exactly because he is untrustworthy. Vetting someone's prayer to Almighty God — and getting away with it — is abhorrent. Whoever agrees to this arrangement is not praying to God but to thin air.
