There are 60 million non-Christians in the United States. Maybe someone can explain to me how having a state-sponsored prayer, specifically to the Christian deity, Jesus, at the inauguration of the new President is not the government endorsing Christianity and saying screw you to those 60 million people.
Think it's just ceremonial and doesn't mean anything? Fine. Then get rid of it.
Think that non-Christians should just grin and bear it? Think how you'd feel if the prayer focused on Islam.
The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.
2 comments:
Hear, hear! At least he mentioned us in the speech, but really. I suppose the country can only take so much change at once, though.
I did think it was interesting that Obama mentioned non-believers in the speech but you have to wonder how and why he came up with Warren. Clearly, he is trying not to burn his bridges with the Christian right and I think he figured that, given what he is actually planning to do re abortion, etc., this was a relatively costless way of throwing them a bone. But I agree it did send a bad message--not so much because it was a Christian prayer--that's sort of SOP--but because Warren hates a significant segment of Obama's constituency. On the other hand, it's probably fair to say that a significant portion of Obama supporters in the African-American community probably agree with Warren on gays. But he certainly could have found someone better; I suspect this was, in part, a way of saying, thanks for not going after me during the campaign. It could have been uglier than it was. It's also illustrative of Obama's style of reaching across partisan divides, which I agree with, but which has its own perils as well because at some point, you have to, as the saying goes, dance with who brought you.
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