Public prayer fanatics borrow page from enemy's script

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>


Public prayer fanatics borrow page from enemy's script

March 5, 2003

BY ROGER EBERT
<<http://www.suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/cst-edt-ebert05.html>http://www.
suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/cst-edt-ebert05.html>

The Bush administration has been dealt a setback in its campaign to
allow prayer in our public schools. The full 9th Circuit U.S. Court
of Appeals has voted 15-9 to back the 2-1 vote by its earlier panel
finding the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of the
words ''under God.''

The pledge, written in 1892, had those words added to it in 1954,
during the Eisenhower administration, and I remember a nun in our
Catholic school telling us we had to say it because it was the
law--but it was wrong, because it violated the principle of
separating church and state.

We started every day with classroom prayer at St. Mary's School, of
course, but Sister Rosanne said there was a difference between
voluntary prayer in a private religious school and prayer in a school
paid for by every taxpayer--a distinction so obvious that Bush and
Attorney General John Ashcroft are forced to willfully ignore it.

Ashcroft said after the ruling that his Justice Department will
''spare no effort to preserve the rights of all our citizens to
pledge allegiance to the American flag''--a misrepresentation so
blatant that it functions as a lie. The pledge remains intact and
unchallenged. The court said nothing about pledging allegiance to the
flag. It spoke only of the words ''under God''--which amounted, the
court said, to an endorsement of religion.

This is really an argument between two kinds of prayer--vertical and
horizontal. I don't have the slightest problem with vertical prayer.
It is horizontal prayer that frightens me. Vertical prayer is
private, directed upward toward heaven. It need not be spoken aloud,
because God is a spirit and has no ears. Horizontal prayer must
always be audible, because its purpose is not to be heard by God, but
to be heard by fellow men standing within earshot.

To choose an example from football, when my team needs a field goal
to win and I think, ''Please, dear God, let them make it!''--that is
vertical prayer. When, before the game, a group of fans joins hands
and ''voluntarily'' recites the Lord's Prayer--that is horizontal
prayer. It serves one of two purposes: to encourage me to join them,
or to make me feel excluded.

Although some of the horizontal devout are sincere, others use this
prayer as a device of recruitment or intimidation. If you are
conspicuous in your refusal to go along, they may even turn and pray
while holding you directly in their sights.

This simple insight about two kinds of prayer, which is beyond
theological question, should bring a dead halt to the obsession with
prayer in public places. It doesn't, because the purpose of its
supporters is political, not spiritual. Their faith is like Dial
soap: Now that they use it, they wish everyone would. I grew up in an
America where people of good breeding did not impose their religious
convictions upon those they did not know very well. Now those manners
have been discarded.

Our attorney general, John Ashcroft, is theoretically responsible for
enforcing the separation of church and state. He violates his oath of
office daily by getting down on his knees in his government office
every morning and welcoming federal employees to join him in
''voluntary'' prayer on carpets paid for by the taxpayers.

His brand of religion is specifically fundamentalist evangelical. As
his eyes lift from beneath lowered lids to take informal attendance,
would he be gladdened to see a Muslim, a Catholic, a Jew, a Hindu, a
Buddhist, a Baha'i, a Unitarian, a Scientologist, all accompanied by
the chants of Hare Krishnas?

Under Bush we have had a great deal of horizontal prayer, in which we
evoke the deity at political events to send the sideways message that
our enemies had better look out, because God is on our side. This
week's Newsweek cover story reports that the Bush presidency ''is the
most resolutely 'faith-based' in modern times.''

Because our enemies are for the most part more enthusiastic about
horizontal prayer than we are, and see absolutely no difference
between church and state--indeed, want to make them the same--it is
alarming to reflect that they may be having more success bringing us
around to their point of view than we are at sticking to our own
traditional American beliefs about freedom of religion. When Ashcroft
and his enemies both begin their days with displays of their
godliness, do we feel safer after they rise from their devotions?

Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>


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