The city of Aiken, S.C. has become ground zero in an ongoing debate over God’s place in government – and specifically the prayers that are offered by elected officials during public meetings of taxpayer-funded municipalities and other public bodies. The unholy drama began earlier this summer when the group “Freedom from Religion” – which supports the separation of church and state – sent a letter to Aiken City Council criticizing its invocation policy.
The group (official website here) accused council members of violating state law by exclusively using Christian prayers during their invocations. Since then, City Council has decided to only use secular prayers.
“We’re going to pray, and we are going to pray to almighty God to give us strength and to give us wisdom,” Aiken mayor Fred Cavanaugh told the hometown Aiken Standard newspaper (story here).
On Monday, hundreds of social conservatives rallied in support of Christian public prayer during council meetings. The rally was supported by the Palmetto Family Council (official website here), one of South Carolina’s largest social conservative advocacy groups. In an email to supporters, Palmetto Family Council president Oran P. Smith urged his members to attend the rally and encourage the city council to “preserve religious freedom by adopting a public invocations policy consistent with South Carolina law.”
According to state law (code section 6-1-160), “a public invocation must not be exploited to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage any other faith or belief.” However, the law does allow a public body to craft “its own policy on public invocations based upon advice from legal counsel.”
Frankly, this whole debate is ridiculous.
There should be no prayers of any sort at public meetings, period – and we’re saying that as practicing Lutherans. Government exists to provide core services to taxpayers and citizens, not to offer flowery invocations that have become so watered down by political correctness that they have lost any resemblance to actual “prayers.” Seriously, go to a University of South Carolina football game this year and listen to the nonsensical effluvium that passes for a public invocation. It’s not a prayer, it’s a meaningless hybrid of feelgood PC-babble – a cross between Spock waxing scientific about friggin’ Vulcan mind melds and that white guy with the afro talking about “happy little trees.”
Along with our fundamental opposition to government performing unnecessary tasks, this is one reason we believe fervently that every tax dollar that’s currently being spent on chaplains or other religious activities at any level of government in South Carolina should be permanently cut – with the money rebated back to the taxpayers.
We’re not saying that God doesn’t have a place in government (he has a place in everything) – we’re just saying that place should be in the hearts and minds of those who call upon him for strength and wisdom as they discharge their duties during taxpayer hours.
Now … would the ultimate authority on prayer have a problem with what we’ve just outlined? Not according to the Gospel of Matthew, he wouldn’t.
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men,” says Jesus Christ (Matthew 6:5-6). “I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
True that.
WEB EXTRA
Freedom From Religion (Official Site)
Palmetto Family Council (Official Site)
By Philip August 10, 2010 at 11:01 am
I read and agree with a lot of the opinion published on FitsNews, but this is one place where you are unequivocally wrong. To distort and pervert the freedom of religion and separation of church and state bills to become the freedom FROM all religion is completely outside of the framers intentions, the letter of the law and my interpretation of the bill of rights. Sure, every person has the right to interpret the bill of rights in their own way, but an individual’s right to pray and call upon the God whom they look to for power and inspiration is protected by the first amendment. The fact that one prays to (calls upon) God in the public arena does not establish an official religion of the country. That is what separation of church and state is about – preventing the establishment of an official church for the country, as was done in Britain. The framers wanted to protect themselves and future generations from the tyranny of a state run religion and the types of persecution that were endured.
The thought that these men wanted to eradicate God from all decisions and from the public arena is completely unfounded. But you do have one correct point that, unfortunately, leads to a completely wrong conclusion… The politically correct prayers offered at football games, whitewashed of all substance in hopes of appeasing these tyrannical “freedom from religion” types isn’t what should be offered and it is a slap in the face to the God whose name they are praying in. And that should stop. Instead, they should have the freedom to pray to the God of their choice as it is protected in the bill of rights, in a whole and substantial way without the fear of litigation.
By So What if I'm a Trekker? August 10, 2010 at 11:45 am
Dr. Spock was the guy who wrote about child-rearing.
Mr. Spock is who you meant.
By Rick August 10, 2010 at 11:55 am
If I had to live in Aiken, then I, too, would pray . . . for whatever gods may be to release me from Aiken.
By really???? August 10, 2010 at 11:57 am
Be careful Fits. There is a difference between legitimately praying to ask God to bless the meeting and guide you in your endeavors and praying to bring attention to yourself, which is what Matthew is speaking about. It does not mean for you to never pray out loud, but if you do, you better be doing it for the right reasons.
By Florida Watching August 10, 2010 at 1:02 pm
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Enjoy
By tammy August 10, 2010 at 2:11 pm
It is wrong and these groups will lose but unfortunately not until they have cost taxpayers a fortune across the state.
By south mauldin August 10, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Will,
This is the 5% of the time where you are EXACTLY right. And extra props for being a fellow Lutheran.
By Fred August 10, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Me thinks that Mayor Fred should stick to politics. Although he has an incredibly bad tutor in Ryberg. They are the “STEP and FETCH IT” of Aiken’s Republican Party!!!!!!!
By darksied August 10, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Never have understood why southerners cling to their religon so desperately. This is just one step above the wars we had in Europe between catholics and protestants that raged until just the last hundred years. It is the following of a philosphy or idealogy, wheather political,religious,economic,social, racial,etc. that will hold people back. With that in mind, can you really be surprised then that SC is last or lacking in so many areas??
By Jacob August 10, 2010 at 6:35 pm
You’re right on this one.
By Aquinas August 10, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Sorry, Will, but you’re flat out wrong on this one. And bringing up that you’re a practicing Lutheran doesn’t give you a free pass, either. You’re wrong because history shows that a society/government void of religion eventually falls. I’ll defer to Dr. Peter Kreeft who put it best in an article entitiled, “Your Inner Cop”:
“…Any individual human body that loses its internal immune system will die, unless propped up by many artificial, external aids: pills, operations, prosthetics — and even then, it’s only a matter of time. The same is true of social bodies: Police states without consciences are brittle. The ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ lasted twelve years. The longest-lasting societies in history were all highly moralistic: the Confucian (over 2,100 years), the Roman (about 700 years), and the Islamic (almost 1,400 years). The longest-lasting moral order in history has been that of Mosaic law: It has structured Jewish and then Christian life for 3,500 years (though not as a continuous civil society).
“Confucian society, which held together the world’s largest nation for the world’s longest time, was toppled from without by the world’s greatest mass murderer, Mao Zedong. Rome began as a moralistic republic and ‘evolved’ into an amoral empire that became a totalitarian police state and fell from within. Islam’s society is still growing, especially in places that used to be Christian, and Christianity is still growing everywhere except in places that used to be Christian, especially in anti-Christian societies like Sudan and communist China.
“A …community’s longevity is proportionate to its morality — and to its religion, for no society has yet existed that has successfully built its morality on any other basis than religion. In theory, the natural law can be known without knowing the divine law, but in practice, it is very rare; there has never been a whole society of Platos and Aristotles. It is a massive and obvious fact of history that religion has always been the primary source of morality. This fact is so massive and obvious that no age ever ignored it except the one so blind and arrogant that it labeled the era lit by the Christian faith ‘the Dark Ages’ and called its own time of darkness the ‘Enlightenment.’
“No officially secular society has yet survived more than 72 years — the Soviet Union being history’s test case. If the results of this test are not clear, nothing in history is: the deliberate, systematic murder in one century of quite possibly more people than have lived everywhere on earth throughout all of time until the modern era.”
By Brenda Sue Tucker August 10, 2010 at 10:33 pm
I’ve got a new theory of evolution that I’d like to tell everyone about. It’s on my website, but maybe if I just use 12 paragraphs that I wrote recently that will be a quick enough summation. Here it is:
I studied new age literature in theosophy and Saint Germain Foundation for over 20 years and then had an epiphany. If you want to read about a new theory of evolution discernible within this literature, you could search the word: girasas which I designed to use in reference to a higher kingdom that is descending into the human kingdom. The reverse side to this current trend is the descent of the human into the animal. In the process of human becoming material through the animal kingdom, the e. animals (evolving animals) were ascended off the earth. According to this view or theory, what we see around us are involving animals, plants, and minerals or i. animals for short.
Due to these new concepts and meanings: girasas, involution, i. animals, and a few others such as shistas, we can DECIPHER what we find in books such as the ones I have read outside of the school system to provide deeper meaning to our understanding of evolution.
While humans on earth today would be evolving and we would be meeting and interacting with another evolving kingdom at this time, the girasas kingdom, the other lives on the planet create an illusion for us of evolution because we see the complete (relatively completed) gamut of forms from higher to lower. There are many filled in creatures from the e. animal stage to the human stage.
The theory that is detailed a bit on my website, but also in internet postings by me, puts the evolving animals at a point about midway through their entire growth which extends from plant to human.
With a kingdom descending into the human (or animal or plant) and then sharing that form for a time before the lower kingdom vacates the earth, we have the illusion that we are better than we are because of the interactions and learning that takes place.
A book such as THE SECRET DOCTRINE by H.P. Blavatsky could be a resource that is used to present this alternative theory to Darwin’s and in fact it was published in 1888. People have elected to reject this work, and I myself, felt compelled to drop out of college in order to study the material with a more knowledgeable group in a more conducive environment, namely while a staff member at The Theosophical Society.
While studying there, I never once heard their ideas presented in the way that I am presenting them to you (and to others over the past 15 years) now. No one bothered to name a kingdom that descends into humans even though Jesus Christ often speaks of this kingdom in the Bible. In fact, an intentional BLIND is used by H.P. Blavatsky in writing THE SECRET DOCTRINE by her putting limits on the number of kingdoms that evolve on earth throughout 7 rounds. She gives details of the 7 kingdoms that are required to inhabit a globe such as earth with the human kingdom being the highest of 7 kingdoms.
In order to connect the dots, we must see the necessity of taking her fundamental presentation of life one step further by allowing a girasas kingdom to descend into humans and ascend us off the globe just as each kingdom has encountered before us. The difference would be that the girasas kingdom is not limited in their existence to this round-taking that occurs in the kingdoms that exist on earth. They may very well have graduated into another type of evolutionary-existence though their duties and tasks take them back to earth at the time humans make their ascent as they are needed in the process.
The illusion that the life around is evolving is enhanced by the fact that the girasas kingdom may have angelic lives (those are all the involving kingdoms) that accompany them and so when they begin their descent they bring with them angels that they somehow work into our ecological systems and where our human (accompanying) angels complete their tasks the girasas angels begin the further development for their own occupation of the forms. Likewise, we will trade some of our angels off to the animal kingdom so that as evolution occurs so does growth in our environments simultaneously.
Adam fits in nicely with this scenario because each of the 7 human races has a buried shista or prototype to be used as a starting point from the last time the earth was inhabited by humans (see my webpage). Adam is drawn up from its burial place and converted (last round was watery) from a water-dwelling human into a land-dwelling human. When this occurs for the fifth race, our present race, there is already in existence a fourth race on the earth (which we are told has since become completely extinct), and hence the form needs to become capable of living on land as well as capable of replacing the previous race. (The 4th race has no contact with any indwelling evolving animal as all animals were ascended in the previous 3rd race and totally off the earth.)
Here is a theory that I can present to you with the addition of the word girasas which could be presented as giving meaningful insight to life and why religions differ. Each religion as well as each continent is said to exist in a special relationship with one of the races, so that Egypt would be first race, India second, Greece third, China fourth, Europe fifth, N. America, S. America, and Australia (future) sixth, Africa seventh. The religions correspond with Egyptology, Hinduism, Mythology, Buddhism, Christianity, ???????, and Judaism (7th subrace of 5th race)-Muslim (7th subrace of future 6th race).
At least we could understand why Christianity keeps its form of teaching and instruction to humans even in the face of “overwhelming” evidence against its logical truth. But then, the beauty of science is that they constantly refute each other and even the 98% similarity that we have so often heard of human and ape is being altered (see SURVIVAL OF THE SICKEST) to the current understanding that only 3% of our human DNA is actually involved in the building of our forms and nearly half of the remaining DNA takes part in advancement of our lives in regard to our health and ability to fight disease or adapt to disease causing agents.
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By carl the greenskeeper August 11, 2010 at 10:40 am
I’ve been, you know, accused of descending into animals but most of those girls were just homely. I’m studying and striving and I think, in a few years, I’ll achieve a higher plane where the vibrations will make me invisible. Everything is connected and happens for a reason. So, not long ago I’m in the redwood forest when I see, guess who, James Redfield. The flowing yet thinning, receding hair, the jeans, the birkenstocks with socks, impressive. So I says to him, Hey! How about a little higher vibration, you know, for the effort? I could use a little enlightenment among these thousand year old mystic trees who have so much wisdom to give. Redfield says, Oh, you’ll get no vibrations but your girlfriend will. So, you know, She has that buzz buzz going for her, which is nice.
By Brenda Sue Tucker August 11, 2010 at 4:35 pm
So what should our country do to find out for certain if this higher kingdom is descending into us as an evolutionary process? A great deal of good could come from efforts towards accomplishment. In the past, they have had to hide their efforts in Mystery Traditions, where initiation would delve you deeper and deeper into the secrets, but I don’t like finding this out after years of participation. I want our young adventurous Americans to have the information upfront, like science, out in the open.