Obama Should Drop Warren and All Prayer from Inauguration
After being heaped with abuse over the past eight years, the Establishment Clause needs a 'fierce advocate' indeed in the White House. Take this unparalleled opportunity, Mr. President-Elect, to rebuild that wall of separation between church and state."
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a state/church watchdog, and the nation's largest association of atheists and agnostics with more than 13,000 members, has gone one step further than others decrying the selection of Rev. Rick Warren to lead the inaugural invocation.
The Foundation is asking President-Elect Barack Obama to drop prayer and religious ritual entirely from the official ceremony, and to keep the Presidential oath secular. The Presidential oath or affirmation, as dictated in the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 8, has no reference to a god, or instructions to place a hand on a bible.
"The First Amendment guarantees all American citizens the free exercise of religion. But the Establishment Clause requires that the President or other elected officials be scrupulous in conscientiously separating personal religious views from their government actions and duties," write Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-presidents, in a letter to Obama.
"Wholly aside from the selection of the unsuitable Rev. Warren, the scheduling of prayer by two Christian ministers at the formal Inauguration gives the unavoidable appearance of uniting Christianity and the Presidency," they wrote President-Elect Obama. The pair point out that choosing two Christian ministers to pray simply signals "religious orthodoxy," but that any ministers chosen would by definition alienate or exclude at least some Americans.
However, Barker and Gaylor added:
"We agree with Rev. Warren’s critics that such an unsuitable choice is a slap in the face to countless Americans besides the sizeable 16 percent who are nonreligious. You chide critics of this selection by saying people can 'disagree without being disagreeable,' yet ignore the fact that your selection confers the Presidential stamp of approval upon Rev. Warren and appears to legitimize some very disagreeable pronouncements. To reward such a divisive figurehead is an unnecessary affront, not only to gay Americans, feminists and supporters of our Constitution, but to anyone who is concerned about nipping in the bud our country’s 'roadtrip to theocracy.' "
They took issue with Obama's defense that choosing Warren shows that “we are diverse and noisy and opinionated.”
"A little more diversity and a lot less noise from the religious right in our government proceedings would be far much appreciated!" added Gaylor in a separate statement.
"The selection of a prominent supporter of California’s Proposition 8 to pray at the Inauguration inflicts insult upon gays and lesbians already grievously injured by the purely religious-based campaign to deny them marriage equality," the Foundation letter says.
Noting Warren's cruel disagreement with the idea that "abortions should be safe and rare," the Foundation letter adds that American women "surely do not deserve to be preached at by someone who belongs to a denomination that refuses to ordain women and openly tells wives to 'submit' to husbands."
The Foundation also noted that Obama "would be properly appalled if a hostile international leader singled out a cleric who had endorsed assassination of the American President," as Obama has done in inviting Warren, who publicly stated that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad needs to be assassinated.
"After being heaped with abuse over the past eight years, the Establishment Clause needs a 'fierce advocate' indeed in the White House. Take this unparalleled opportunity, Mr. President-Elect, to rebuild that wall of separation between church and state," concludes the letter.
"Obama played too close with the ministerial fire with Rev. Wright," adds Barker. "He's already been burned once, but apparently hasn't learned his lesson."
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You have a quote taken out of context and then modified to give yourself some sense of legitimacy in your name, and you have another out of context quote in your description. Neither of those quotes, by the way, are from the Constitution that you claim to be defending. The Establishment Clause states simply that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Nowhere does it say that they must ban religion from the public square, which would actually be unconstitutional, being as that would establish secularism as an official religion. Nowhere does it say anything about the Executive at all, or even suggest that he must keep his religion personal.
While you are correct in stating that Article 2, Section 1, Clause 8 makes no reference to a god or have instructions to place a hand on the Bible, (you really should capitalize that, not for any religious reasons, but being as it is a book title) it is also not forbidden, and George Washington (a Founding Father) started those traditions, and all Presidents thereafter have had the option to not carry them on, but they all have out of respect for the tradition that this country was founded on.
The First Amendment does guarantee all American citizens free exercise of religion, but the Establishment Clause absolutely does not require the President or anyone else to "be scrupulous in conscientiously seperating personal religious views from their government actions and duties," it simply forbids them from establishing a religion similar to the Church of England.
I could go on much longer, I actually have a lot to say about your "roadtrip to theocracy" comment, as well as your fallacious claim that Prop. 8 was passed solely on religious fervor, but I have to go practice for the very inauguration we are now discussing, so that will have to wait for another time.
Even your organization's name has it all wrong... Nowhere within any of our founding documents are the phrases or concepts of "Freedom From Religion" found. Neither will you find the separation of Church and State a concept engraved upon the soul of that document or its amendments. The first amendment simply provides for those with a religious desire to exercise that freely. The actual wording states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
For once in your life take a look at that statement and read it for what it actually says, not what you hope it to say. It simply says Congress shall make no law establishing an official religion, nor shall it make any law prohibiting the practicing of any religion. Your own bias and misguided view of the document places a non-existent restraint on the ability of any government official to choose how they wish to exercise their own faith, whatever it may be, so long as they do not establish it as an official religion of the nation.
I know you as an organization are not so ignorant that you do not know the history of the phrase "separation of church and state." I can only conclude then that it is with willful malice that you seek to mislead my fellow countrymen as to the intentions of the Constitution of these United States and the Amendments thereto. You must look, in context, at the message from Jefferson the Danbury Baptists and realize that the "wall of separation" mentioned has more to do with assuring those in that religious minority that the Government would let them be and allow them to worship as they saw fit than it has to do with whether or not the Government itself was allowed, in any way, to worship or pay respects to any deity, most likely at the time to be the God of the Christians.
To prove my point I will end my rebuttal to your answer with the actual text of the letters, which show unerringly the meaning behind Jefferson's words and will hopefully clarify the subject for many of my fellow citizens of these great United States.
In an 1802 letter from Thomas Jefferson as sitting President to the Danbury Baptists:
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their "legislature" should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."
Writing to another church, the Virginia Baptists, he wrote in 1808:
"We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries."
Clearly we can see by the actual texts of the Constitution, the First Amendment and the letters where the separation of church and state is a fallacious idea and should not be propagated any further.
I will, as a Christian and an American, always fight for the right of any Muslim, Hindu, Agnostic, Atheist and any other religion to practice that religion freely, regardless of their status or station within our government, so long as they don't force me to participate with them. Which by the way, having an "Evangelical" Christian preside over an inaugural prayer is not forcing anyone to participate, simply don't listen, or listen but disagree with anything he says, the choice is yours, freely to make.
"Clearly we can see by the actual texts of the Constitution, the First Amendment and the letters where the separation of church and state is a fallacious idea and should not be propagated any further."
Oh no, what we can clearly see is that you have cherry-picked the sources available to find a set of quotes that you appear to believe support your argument. While somehow managing to ignore the facts that have led to your ability to practice your faith in relative safety.
It won't be long now, before you will find that, while you can continue to practice your "faith" in your home or church, bringing it out in the public eye will just get you laughed at.
I will, as an atheist, always fight for your right to get laughed at, if that's what it takes for you and other wishful thinkers to get off the mythological kool-aid.
Lazareus,
There are many things I would love to say to you right now... but won't due to my self restraint. It is weird how you accuse me of cherry picking the quotes to support my position and ignoring facts yet you yourself provide no proof that my argument is wrong.
I am amused at how crazy it makes you a-theists when this topic is discussed logically. It's probably because somewhere deep inside you know that this entire universe could not have just erupted out of chaos and has to have some type of creator... whether you will admit it consciously or not.
Refute my argument with facts, not suppositions and lies and maybe we can talk. Otherwise go back into the ignorant, hateful hole you crawled out of.
His reading skills seem fine. What we can clearly see is that you absolutely refuse to admit that you are beaten, and resort to attacking your opponent's reading level when you are. You say he cherry picked quotes, but it looks to me he has taken the quotes that you and yours have cherry picked, and given them context, and what the text giveth, the context hath taken away. If you come up with a quote, with context, that supports your claim, we'll all listen. It's the least you can do to give us the same courtesy. As for your delusional belief that "it won't be long now" before people of faith are laughed out of the public square, I must remind you that the vast majority of Americans believe in a god of some kind, and that the majority are Christians. How many Atheist Presidents have there been? It seems you are a bit mistaken as to whom is being laughed at.