Opinion letters

Author: Various Authors

Supreme (Beings) Court have ruled...
by Richard R. Tryon

It is beginning to look like the secular crowd is winning the war to get God or prayer in his name out of our public schools. Therefore, we have to do one of two things:

A. If children are not to be allowed to pray on school property, over which the government has control, we can either privatize and have more latitutude in what speech is tolerated; or

B. We can conform and invent a new way to invoke God’s blessing on our human actions as we work and play together.

I submit that we start a system of “1984 Newspeak” that looks like we are paying homage to the Secular Supreme Beings known as Supreme Court Judges who know best how to save us from ourselves!

All public prayer then could start with...”Dear Supreme Court Judge Stevens, (or just SCJS) possessors of infinite knowledge and power to direct our lives, we publicly plead that you call upon your and any other powers available to you here on Earth or elsewhere in the Universe, to bless, direct, and encourage our performance at this [Name the event here] held on property deemed to be under control of the laws and governmental agencies of the nation.

Because we have the privilege of knowing of the eventual magestic disposition of your omniscient body and soul, we might better pray .....”Our Father, which art in Heaven, etc. or any other suitable language to meet the needs of the occasion.

Because we are all entitled to praise the Court, it should be hard to find any officer of the law wanting to try to stop anyone from paying homage to the Secular God, even though it should be impossible that this God not relay the message to another.

Of course, we can know that God will hear us directly although the Judges can't admit to that, but then, how can they deny our prayerful petitions to them?

The Ueasy Case for and against School Prayer
by Richard R. Tryon

For this writer, the first of a series of seminal event involving what today is a misperceived notion of separation of Church and State, began in 1953 with the study in college of the famous McCollum vs Champaign Unit #4 School District. Throughout childhood and early adult years it was clear to me that I had only witnessed one slight flaw in an otherwise unbroken string of observations that led me to believe that our government did not spend taxpayer money to support any individual church as an officially sanctioned representation of a state church. I thought I knew that such did not exist.

The closest to any challenge to this seemingly certain knowledge involved a young male friend. In fact, I had lived as a neighbor of a young boy who rode from the countryside with me to his Catholic parochial grade school in Princeton, NJ every day as my bus took me to Princeton High School for the school year of 1947-48. The bus turned at his school as the direct path to mine and had many empty seats available to carry one small boy! It never occurred to anyone that we were violating a sacred Constitutional prohibition that forbade the state from helping anyone if it looked like it was making some specific church an official part of the government. In those days, nobody thought that allowing churches to own tax exempt property was more than a courtesy aimed at helping religion in general- not in particular!

Since that time, we have come into the Age of Civil Liberties and many profound changes have been promoted because of it. One of them is linked to the weak idea that any such evidence such as the one cited above constitutes a violation of the doctrine of ‘Separation of Church and State”. In fact, most people now think that these words are found in the Constitution. They are not! However, those who profess themselves as atheists now contend, with a lot of legal firepower, that they are entitled to live in our nation in a way that leaves them publicly free of any evidence that other organized religion exists. I say other because all atheists have a religion! It is based upon a philosophy that excludes the existence of God and requires no organized church to represent any liturgy or community of like minded people. Nihilism may be the absence of belief, but it is generator of a position called non-belief. It may not require buildings, organizations that are known as the Church of Nothing or some such, but such persons are automatically believers in their position of having a faith only in living animals and themselves.

Out of their demanding position’s nature we are now forced to require of our public institutions a great concern for a wide variety of politically correct positions. Public prayer is but one. Many other groups compete for support of their advocacy for countless ideas that seem to deserve either support or acceptance. Many of them run into conflict with the ideas that enjoy a long history of acceptance by those who have a belief that God is an entity that is involved in all of life!

Taking prayer in school as just one of such points, it is important to note that what began as the McCollum case in 1948 has now spread far beyond its authors dreams. Invocations even at a Rotary lunch are now often given in such bland manner that no member can feel excluded or offended, although I do not believe that I have heard one that called for the application of a blessing from the distant source of power of the atheists!

In collecting a variety of writers words on the issue of prayer in school, I found the words of Cal Thomas to be most cogent. I repeat them here and comment further after...

The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Prayer
June 26, 2000 by Cal Thomas

“For more that 50 years since a 1947 case called “Everson,” the Supreme Court has been getting it wrong on religion. In that long-ago case, the Court ruled that what the federal government was prohibited from doing — establishing a national church —the states also could not do. Fifteen years later, atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair successfully challenged prayer and Bible reading in public schools, and it’s been downhill for certain expressions of religious views ever since.

In his dissenting opinion on the latest case, which forbids student- led prayer at public-school football games, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the majority opinion “bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life.” He is right, of course. But the decision offers an opportunity for religious believers if they will seize it. The greater power to do lies within individuals, not with the state. Conservative Christians, especially, are fooling themselves when they think public prayers are a sign that all must be right with the world.

Such prayers before football games do nothing for the quality of the game, and there is no evidence, nor could there be, of fewer injuries because God’s name has been invoked over the loudspeaker.

Furthermore, such prayers trivialize the act of prayer. No less an authority than Jesus spoke about public displays of worship when He said of the Pharisees (the fundamentalists of His day): “Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them ‘Rabbi’ “(Matt. 23:5-7).

Elsewhere, Jesus has this advice on prayer: “Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them.... 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 .... But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. (Matt. 6:1 and following). The Supreme Court said nothing at all about that far more powerful and effective type of prayer.

But in our culture, which highly values what the world values (filled stadiums, television appearances and other visible expressions of “success”), things done out of public view don’t count for much. In fact, the only kind of faith that actually does work is that which is first practiced. St. Francis of Assisi is credited with the statement: “Preach the gospel. Use words if necessary.”

The behavior of the Court did not and cannot proscribe is the kind that will make a far greater impression than teenagers praying at high-school football games. It is the behavior that begins with the discipline of deeds, including prayer for one’s enemies, visiting those in prison, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for widows and orphans.

Conservative Christians ought to stop looking to the state for permission and validation and start looking to God for their commission and marching orders. With this kind of faith, they won’t have to petition government. Government will petition them to find out why what they’re doing works. If and when they do, they will find they are exerting real influence. They will stop believing that public displays of their faith are changing anything, from the outcome of football games to the transformation of culture.

Their influence is needed more than ever, but it will not be felt so long as they settle for a lesser, worldly power, which is really no power at all.

People with faith that the next election will turn the Court and the nation more to their way of thinking might wish to consider that three of the justices who voted to prohibit prayer at football games were appointed by Republican presidents.

If George W. Bush is elected president, who can guarantee any judges named by him will not also lean to the left? Whether they do or don’t should have no effect on the prayer life or acts of people who worship an authority higher than the state.”

What Cal Thomas has said so well is related to the point that those who believe in one God, and that man enjoys a subordinate relationship to God, should not try too hard to force public efforts to display it. Especially when one is anxious to pray for health and success for the players of one team vs another! Not much is achieved by such efforts unless one is willing to think that such a God plays favorites, or otherwise makes promises to some that are not made to others.

There is no evidence in life to support the idea, so common in history that one can give him or herself to God, and win in exchange a quid pro quo called God’s protection against accident, disease, and failure in sports or academic or business pursuit! In fact, the far more reasonable thought is that God protects our souls, not our earthly body! We may let our faith help us focus on the need to look after our own well being, but no hard evidence exists to show that God intervenes to cause us to avoid accident or disease. Faith healing aside, it is not good thinking to assume that all who die of accident or disease do so just because they lacked faith! God does not control who gets in the way of a crashing plane or a meteor. Death dealing accidents happen.

Our soul can and does leave our body, when we lose the ability to hold it in place at death. Some interesting possibilities are explored in the book “You Can’t Escape God” found on this site, that deal with the ways that God has possibly provided for our reincarnation elsewhere in this universe as our souls learn to eventually be at one with God. Given that time is not relevant with immortality, there is no reason for us to think that we must achieve the ultimate during our soul’s stay on this planet! Or for that matter, in the next number of places required for our development.


But, do we need to fear the utilization of public prayer or the right of persons to speak at a football game in a way that calls for all, in the name of God, to keep the game goals inside the bounds of proper ethical and moral perspective? Is is perhaps good to recognize that good sportsmanship is consistent with the Ten Commandments! And therefore, invoking the call for help from God to assist us in remembering this rule of conduct may be more than acceptable. It certainly leads to better thoughts and cleaner play than do calls for “kill the quarterback” or other such similar epitaphs found at many athletic events.

Still, in the narrow sense, it is fair to note that a Supreme Court decision about the right of public prayer is perhaps not best decided over the intent and form of it at a football game. Therefore, all of this being said about school prayer at a football game may be accepted. But it fails to address the real question:  Do we allow God into our public life? Or do we insist that any reference is tantamount to an invasion of the Constitutional prohibition against the state trying to organize and direct a state religion or church?

I should like to offer first a novel observation. In my opinion the state is offering a state religion when it contends that it is against the laws of the land and foreign to the demands of the Constitution when it forbids any evidence of the right of the people to publicly call for a recognition of our allegiance to God as a higher authority than that offered by the state! In short- the state is the one guilty of violation of the prohibition when it sets itself up as the supreme authority. It tends to force us to think in terms of how to beat the state at its own game! See the appendix following for a 1984ish twist on how to pray to the Court!

Of course, good liberals contend that the state acts this way only in order to protect the individual from religious activity on public property. This so called logical extension of a concept of civil rights is not very sound thinking. If carried to the extreme, it should be against the law to damn anything in a way that invokes the name of the Lord as the agent that we want to do the work of killing or damning the opponent! No such law has ever been considered and it should not be done as the law that is controlling is one of the Ten Commandments! It follows by logical extension that we should also not use the Lord’s name to seek special favor- only to help us focus on our own ability to deal with our personal concerns.

What is needed is a Court opinion that shows that it is not a violation of the First Amendment prohibition against using the income of the federal government to support any specific Church organization as the official one of the government. This prohibition was put into the Constitution to avoid doing what the founders saw happening in Europe for over a thousand years. In fact, the early Christian church became the tool of the Roman Empire to control the people! The Roman Church became far more politically powerful than any other previous religious based government except for that of the Muslims. This rivalry lead, of course, to the time of the great Crusades. The Pope of the Roman Church in 1999 publicly admitted to the fact that the Pope is not able to be free of sin, and he sought forgiveness for the sins of those in the past. He did this just before going to visit the Jewish state of Israel and the media strongly reported this event as an evidence of the desire of the Pope to build a new bridge or dialogue with those of the Jewish or Hebrew tradition of the Old Testament with God.

While the press only saw and wrote about the Holocaust as the reason for the need to apologize, because some want to think that Pope Pius XII stood by and let the Germans kill six million Jews in WWII, without invoking the words that would have condemned the systematic murders; it missed the chance to see several far more important meanings. Yes, the press did observe that the Crusades and the Inquisition could also be part of the reason for the Pope to seek a chance to publicly apologize for such sinning by earlier Popes.

But, it is necessary to note that the doctrine of Papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals could only make all such Papal decisions of the past correct. It is hard to maintain the idea of such a doctrine, after apologizing for such sins as these, which relate to decisions that certainly dealt with matters of faith and morality! Yet, the media looked only at the political impact of the Pope’s expected visit to Israel.

But, the reader should not take these words as evidence aimed at ‘bashing’ the legality and morality of just the Roman Catholic Popes. No church in history is free of such errors although few have the capacity for matching the Romans in terms of magnitude for obvious reasons. Racial bigotry has permeated virtually every religion at one time or another. Sexual impropriety may be easier to find among avowed celibate males than among married clergy, but both are all too common.

Yes, it is true that organized religions of all sorts, throughout the ages and the world can only admit to the fact that none has achieved the goal of helping people achieve a common understanding of how we should live, as communal animals, together in peace, harmony, and love. Perhaps China, where 95% have no evidence of any religious thinking, much less involvement in any organized, state encouraged or tolerated church, is not all that much different than what is found today in the rest of the world.

All churches are continually bent, rent, and challenged to figure out how to deal with immorality in the ranks of the leadership, both clerical and secular. Fraud, abuse, and all of the seven deadly sins are found and in a few cases, wholesale death has befallen the hapless victims of faiths that let one or more individuals hold such absolute power over its members that mass suicide has happened! What is the difference between a James Jones in South America and a Pope that sent thousands on the great Crusades? Both are guilty of sins that a loving God would not require.

What then, is the point of resisting the Court and the will of the people that want no religion? Why should we oppose those who fear religion so much that they would have us change even our money’s notice that we trust something more than man?

How can we find ways to allow that the churches of the world need to find the common ground that supports their role without generating such fears among the people who want to live a communal life that bears witness to the highest principles of morality that are universally accepted?

It may well be that God does not want such to happen here on Earth! For, if we ever find an evidence that makes all mankind want to accept God and live in a way that is compatible with God’s desire and will, we then will face the reality that our children will not know what sin is from any personal experience. How then can they prepare for a hereafter, even if they learn from hard indisputable evidence to accept the reality of it?

On this conundrum we could walk away and choose to ignore any ideas aimed at promoting world peace, understanding and love of one another. Fortunately, it is against our human nature to want to do so! So it is that God gave us a mind that can take us beyond the rest of the animal kingdom.

In striving to help organize a healthy understanding of these realities, we must deal with the fact that many of those living are unable to think about any of this for simple lack of mental opportunity to know how to do so. It is not just the children that need to learn of the fact that the world has many religious organizations that call for prayer at Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, or Temples of one sort or another, or none at all. Until we learn to find the common ground among all such, we have no way to really approach those who live in total ignorance of a God. Such persons are therefore driven by either no sense of any higher authority than man or a false sense that man alone is paramount!

I submit that this paradox will last until we find ways to convince all of the need to recognize that the one true God is exactly the same one that many have called by different names for thousands of years, but that the nature of God can somehow be finally determined in a way that all can accept. When that happens, we may still need to allow a variety of practices or forms of worship to help deal with different cultures and variations that relate to the fact that we do not all live in the same spot on Earth.

When we reach such a point, and it may take some clear signal from God to help us, we may at last get to the time when a prayer for good sportsmanship at a football game can be invoked as being consistent with God’s Will without offending anyone! We will also be able to do the same in many other places of public accommodation.

In the meantime, we can wonder why the Hebrews, after 2,000 years of additional waiting for the Messiah have not yet discovered that one of their number, a man named Jesus was not an Anti-Christ? With three major divisions among their own general grouping, one might think that something might happen to bring people together. We currently see the divisions in Jerusalem reaching the point of ultimate calamity or peaceful combination.

Given a chance to live in peace and harmony in an international ‘free-city’, would there be any new chance for such people to discover that all people are the children of one God? The perpetual views of hatred, distrust and honor, seem to demand an incessant turmoil punctuated by moments of violence. This is true of at least such other major hot spots in the world as Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Indonesia, just to name a few; but, in truth the problem is almost universal.

Until God reveals a sign that none can help but accept, we are forced to live in a world where sin and dispute exist. If we can not figure out how to advance to a universal knowledge and love of God, then we shall have to live and die with the consequences.


Appendix:

In the age of Civil liberties in the United States of America we are getting closer to the ideas of George Orwell the author of “1984”. He invented “newspeak” as a language learned to be politically correct.

Here is what he might have put forth as a way to give an acceptable public evidence of concern that would have been labeled as prayer in the past:

Inclusive prayer....inspired by Supreme Court Justice Stevens decision:

Dear SCJS et al...

Help us to pray in a PC acceptable manner not only to you, our esteemed and most honored protectors, but let us insure that we mean to leave nobody out of our public call for your help.

Help us to reach the ethos of those who are nilhists and believe in nothing; those who are Buddhists and believe in many idols, those that are Hindus and believe in reincarnation in many different forms, those who are Muslims and believe in the Prophet Mohammed’s writings as found in the Koran.

And yes make sure that you know that we are including the Hebrews who believe in the same God of Abraham that Christians also accept along with their Savior Jesus Christ, whom they know to be God’s Son that came down from Heaven to live with us on Earth 2,000 years ago.

With this order of secular recognition we hope that our inspired and prayerful words will not be found to be representative of any religion that would make them seem to represent an official church, but rather that they will be accepted as praise to the Court and to all groups that may not want to feel ’left out’ in any public petition for external spiritual encouragement.

In this manner all can interpret our clumsy petitions for guidance in their own way, taking care that they try to avoid any interpretation that is not acceptable to the thinking of the members of the Supreme Court; but, allowing that somehow our following petitions will not be misconstrued as being illegal representations of the First Amendment Right of Free Speech.

With this understanding we seek guidance and encouragement from a power beyond our own and perhaps even beyond the members of the Court to help us, as we endeavor on this day or evening to achieve our planned goals. Take care that we know that we must limit our goals to those attitudes and positions which are Politically Correct to all of your knowledge.

We petition for the safe enjoyment for the players of the game about to be played. We ask for guidance to control our emotions as we encourage our favorites to play to win a contest that is authorized by law to be enjoyed at this place on this date.

Please allow that nobody will be allowed to call to ask that you deny our opportunity to engage in this vocal demonstration of our feelings. Amen.



In time, we may be able to devise a ‘Miranda like’ short-cut to invoking the call for the Supreme Court’s answer to our heavenly petitions:



In the meantime it is beginning to look like the secular crowd is winning the war to get God or prayer in his name out of our public lives. Therefore we have to do one of two things:

A. We get government out of our lives by privatizing schools, for example, so that we have more latitutude in who decides what behavior is tolerated. Apparently children are not to be allowed to pray on property that any branch of the government has control as all must conform to federal mandates and regulations in order to feed at the public trough; or

B. We have to invent a new way to invoke God’s blessing on our human actions as we work and play together.Perhaps others will invent better ways to get to the same results.