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PetraG
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Do name names, particularly with regards to “outright support,” because I don’t know who you mean.
(By my count, there hasn’t even been a “staggering number” of posters to this thread.)
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Alaska officials walk out of session after Satanist Gives Invocation, ‘Hail Satan’
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(By my count, there hasn’t even been a “staggering number” of posters to this thread.)
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Asinner
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Did everyone miss the naked threat contained in her so-called “invocation?”
Meanwhile, real invocations from sincere religions have nothing but goodwill towards all those in attendance.
That sounds like something Chairman Mao would have said (and it wouldn’t surprise me if he did).
Meanwhile, real invocations from sincere religions have nothing but goodwill towards all those in attendance.
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EnglishTeacher
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Not the same thing; sorry. I wouldn’t have a problem sitting by respectfully while the prayer was said by someone of a different faith, generally speaking. But a Satanist is a whole other ball of wax. The whole premise is worshipping the one who brought evil into the world. I’d walk out, too.
(And I know some of these types they say they don’t actually believe in Satan and blah, blah. Then they are basically like spoiled kids throwing a tantrum and messing around with something they don’t understand and will which will come back to bite them.)
I can’t imagine our Founding Fathers, Deists though many of them were, could have even conceived that we would get to this point. (See Benjamin Franklin’s address on prayer to the Constitutional Convention.)
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ProdglArchitect
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May God have mercy on her misguided soul, and may she never meet the one she so carelessly invokes.
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Calliope
Guest
I didn’t suggest anyone sit and listen. I suggest that there be no religious invocation of any kind at non religious meetings and events. Sometimes people can’t understand that the issue is real until they themselves are made to feel uncomfortable.
I belong to a group of mixed spiritual paths, before our meetings we read a list of governing concepts to remind us of our purpose and the manner in which we make decisions. This reading is pertinent to the purpose of the meeting and it gives us all an opportunity to set aside our personal issues and focus on the task at hand.
Often people who work on civic councils have taken an oath, or there is some set of guidelines they agreed to that could be read at such time.
If individuals choose to pray silently in personal preparation that is fine, but it serves no purpose to read an invocation that does not apply to all the parties involved or the task at hand. If it alienates any member, it’s counterproductive.
I belong to a group of mixed spiritual paths, before our meetings we read a list of governing concepts to remind us of our purpose and the manner in which we make decisions. This reading is pertinent to the purpose of the meeting and it gives us all an opportunity to set aside our personal issues and focus on the task at hand.
Often people who work on civic councils have taken an oath, or there is some set of guidelines they agreed to that could be read at such time.
If individuals choose to pray silently in personal preparation that is fine, but it serves no purpose to read an invocation that does not apply to all the parties involved or the task at hand. If it alienates any member, it’s counterproductive.
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Frankenfurter
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Of course there will not be a state sanctioned religion. If you fall into that trap then the win by default. And that is the goal - to remove religion altogether, because, they find it offensive.Frankenfurter:
In the absence of a state religion they have a point.
It should be removed or replaced with a moment of silence.
The US has a government based on theological principals. The constitution is very explicit in this regard. They do not get to rewrite if that makes them uncomfortable.
I would prefer to confront the fact that their religion is false. They do not actually worship Satan by their own admission and they do not believe in religion. They can’t have it both ways.
Their fake religion is not protected and they do not have the right to hide behind religion for something that is false. Protection of religion is important because it is fundamental to our concept of government and they are making a mockery of it. It is just a filibustering tactic for a special interest.
I challenge the claim that they are a religion and therefore get to claim protection. That is false and they know it too.
If I stood up and started reading the dictionary word for word and took up time at the congress, and then claimed it was religion, would you let that stand? No. Same thing.
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DarkLight
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From what I understand, Satanists believe that much of religion calls evil good - which to be fair, isn’t always an unreasonable interpretation of how people act. So their invocation of Satan is their invocation of what they see as an immoral demonizing of good or at least neutral behavior.
I do not support it, but I understand.
I do not support it, but I understand.
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adgloriam
Guest
It’s much worst than that fellow CAF’er.
Taken from:
L’Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
29 January 1997, page 10
https://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/satan1.htm
https://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/satan2.htm
https://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/satan3.htm
https://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/satan4.htm
https://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/satan5.htm
https://www.ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/satan6.htm
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adgloriam
Guest
Jonestown, Waco, and the list goes on… Nxivm from NYC is on trial this month seems to have a really colorful initiation for the ladies…Church of Euthanasia is another US product.adgloriam:
I appreciate that Alaska is part of the United States, not part of Europe.
Again, these are examples of people not protected by the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution.
I wonder what the bill of rights says about the underage victims of those cases?? Can anyone address that, directly, without inflection towards abstract concepts. Hyper-empirical applied?
From Rolling Stone magazine:
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
And as @TheLittleLady well noted, your “freedom of religion” is more a product of the contemporary legal bureaucracy than a historical landmark.
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adgloriam
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God help US!!
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francisca.chapter3
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Exactly how the father of lies (John 30:44) workout his schemes: it appears so harmless, sounds like the name of a halloween costume character.
But in Gods court (Job 1), he will say, “How? They invoke my name instead of Yours? Are they still Yours? Can I claim them as mine now?”
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Calliope
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Having religious invocations to open government meetings in a country with no state religion makes no sense. Should we likewise fly the flags of other countries or sing their national anthems because some people present might have those countries in their heritage?
Divisive practices don’t foster unity.
There is zero reason for anyone to feel compelled to either walk out or stand respectfully in silence due to a prayer at a gathering that has nothing to do with religion. What if your employer required you to stand and listen to a prayer or invocation of another faith daily at the start of your shift? Requiring those who serve on public councils to do so is likewise ridiculous.
They are there for a specific task, not to either participate in, show respect for, or show disapproval of a particular faith.
Divisive practices don’t foster unity.
There is zero reason for anyone to feel compelled to either walk out or stand respectfully in silence due to a prayer at a gathering that has nothing to do with religion. What if your employer required you to stand and listen to a prayer or invocation of another faith daily at the start of your shift? Requiring those who serve on public councils to do so is likewise ridiculous.
They are there for a specific task, not to either participate in, show respect for, or show disapproval of a particular faith.
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Elf01
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I wouldn’t be much more comfortable with a prayer to Vishnu.
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EnglishTeacher
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Yes, I agree with this.
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EnglishTeacher
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Perhaps we have reached the point where doing so no longer makes sense. This is an interesting issue that I would like to do more research on. It is clear to me that our Founding Fathers, though they certainly were not all devout Christians, did not intend for the church-and-state issue to evolve the way it has. They did not view prayer or mention of God at a public meeting as constituting an “established religion.” Interestingly enough, the First Amendment basically punted the issue to the states by allowing the states to pass laws that established or favored a particular religion; only the federal government was barred from doing so under the First Amendment.
I am not saying we should go back to that. But it should at least be recognized that the issue of separation of church and state (a phrase that does not appear in the Constitution) has traveled a very long way from its original intent.
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PetraG
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We should indeed pray for our nation. We just shouldn’t expect to evangelize anybody by requiring them to pray as we do by cornering them into our prayers as a condition of conducting public government business. After all, we won’t submit to being forced to pray (or invoke or whatever) as others do, quite obviously.
Our faith does not require public displays. If anything, our faith discourages public displays: “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.” (Matt. 6:5)
Why should we imagine that raising prayers in public for the consumption of non-believers is something that pleases God? The Gospels do not say that! Our Lord and the Apostles told us to gather with each other to pray, not to raise invocations as a form of street preaching.
In the end, isn’t that the central question–that is, how likely is this public prayer to evangelize or edify those who do not have a prayer life of their own?
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VanitasVanitatum
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I couldn’t care less.
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Finn
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An empty statement, heavy with implication yet devoid of meaning - the type often found in employee behaviour manuals.
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adgloriam
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Hi @PetraG,
I took some time to reply because I wanted to ponder my response…You’re one of posters whos contributions I appreciate the most. That’s also why I took the trouble to build up exposition I did.
That being said, we can return to the original “issue” which is “freedom of religion” and what differences can be established between religions that would justify censorship or differentiated access to public events.
My first point: this can’t be resolved on principle alone because it is multi-disciplinary. You wouldn’t allow radical muslims delivering a hate-speech in a government session, and that prohibition wouldn’t be based on religious principles, per se - but on the form of application they represent.
The second point: I’d like to make (also by example) is based on the whole of society: During “segregation” a public speech based on racism might have been allowed whereas today it might be consecrated illegal by law.
If you take the above 2 key-ideas, we could notice that one of the TOP Vatican scholars on sects went on to teach ethics in business administration. What’s the link?? Well, his work on sects allowed him in-depth experience with groups/societies of widely varying values.
Thus, drawing analogy form the legal and business worlds, we should notice that one of the aspects where society is lagging most TODAY in terms of ethics is the legal provisioning of “coercion” and “moral harassment”.
Perhaps the lagging in terms of “coercion” is due to government itself -everywhere- being the most powerful institution mandated to “coerce” and thus a revision of “coercion” would imply a profound revision of the State itself.
In terms of “moral harassment” (in social networks or the workplace), the lagging can be attributed to the difficulty to legislate and enforce. Thus, for example, the “right to be forgotten” is just a recent episode in the legal history of privacy, that in many one’s opinion should have been legislated long ago…
In a nutshell, contemporary legislation has a long way to go in terms of analyzing “coercion” and also “moral harassment” in social groups, and giving that a legal framework. Perhaps, because the whole of society isn’t ready to think in those terms. But if they did, plenty of sects and sub-cultures would find themselves bordering illegality (for reasons other than religious) - and that would mandate a difference in access to the public stage.
I suppose this much is a vision of the future pushing beyond the current horizon of events.
I took some time to reply because I wanted to ponder my response…You’re one of posters whos contributions I appreciate the most. That’s also why I took the trouble to build up exposition I did.
On a whole, my concerns go in a different direction of where you took it in this last post. I think public testimony to belief in God is good, and it is also tradition. The end isn’t to force, but to give testimony (that faith exists). In recent times -speaking with the youth- a lack of testimony is common. Thinking of “the new evangelization”, I think taking faith away from public view in certain government events would be a wrong step.
That being said, we can return to the original “issue” which is “freedom of religion” and what differences can be established between religions that would justify censorship or differentiated access to public events.
My first point: this can’t be resolved on principle alone because it is multi-disciplinary. You wouldn’t allow radical muslims delivering a hate-speech in a government session, and that prohibition wouldn’t be based on religious principles, per se - but on the form of application they represent.
The second point: I’d like to make (also by example) is based on the whole of society: During “segregation” a public speech based on racism might have been allowed whereas today it might be consecrated illegal by law.
If you take the above 2 key-ideas, we could notice that one of the TOP Vatican scholars on sects went on to teach ethics in business administration. What’s the link?? Well, his work on sects allowed him in-depth experience with groups/societies of widely varying values.
Thus, drawing analogy form the legal and business worlds, we should notice that one of the aspects where society is lagging most TODAY in terms of ethics is the legal provisioning of “coercion” and “moral harassment”.
Perhaps the lagging in terms of “coercion” is due to government itself -everywhere- being the most powerful institution mandated to “coerce” and thus a revision of “coercion” would imply a profound revision of the State itself.
In terms of “moral harassment” (in social networks or the workplace), the lagging can be attributed to the difficulty to legislate and enforce. Thus, for example, the “right to be forgotten” is just a recent episode in the legal history of privacy, that in many one’s opinion should have been legislated long ago…
In a nutshell, contemporary legislation has a long way to go in terms of analyzing “coercion” and also “moral harassment” in social groups, and giving that a legal framework. Perhaps, because the whole of society isn’t ready to think in those terms. But if they did, plenty of sects and sub-cultures would find themselves bordering illegality (for reasons other than religious) - and that would mandate a difference in access to the public stage.
I suppose this much is a vision of the future pushing beyond the current horizon of events.
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