US Government Sponsored Prayers and The Pledge of Allegiance

The American Way

BBSNews 2008-05-01 -- By Naman Crowe. I've sung this song but I'll sing it again. Let's get real. Let's start looking to the day when we can put to rest the tired tradition of opening Congress with the Daily Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance, on the grounds that they go counter to our Constitution which requires a separation of Church and State.

I know it will happen at some time in the distant future, but I'm tired of waiting for the cake to bake. Is it needful for these honorable men and women to reaffirm their fidelity to their country every time they open their sessions?

Don't any of these people deserve the respect of having their allegiance go unquestioned? Doesn't every citizen deserve the respect of having their allegiance accepted as a given? Does reciting the Pledge of Allegiance make it so?

Wouldn't a spy or some other type person working undercover for a foreign country or some terrorist organization just go ahead and recite the Pledge of Allegiance anyway? So, what does it prove? It proves that America pays too much attention to the vain and superficial than it does to reality and substance.

And look at these prayers every morning. What are they but Christian preachers delivering up instructions to God? Listen to these prayers closely and see if they are not just basically asking God to do the right thing and follow their instructions and explanations as they recite them publically before Congress and the nation?

There is no Separation of Church and State in this practice, which should never have been started in the first place. I believe it was Ben Franklin that started the mess. I don't fault him for it. We all make mistakes. Besides, that was a special moment and place. I wouldn't have offered up a prayer but probably would have let out a yell and thanked God for the birth of the United States of America.

Ben would have to agree with me today when I say that was the birth of freedom, not only freedom of religion but freedom from religion. Good God All Mighty, spare me from the bonds of revealed religion. Thomas Paine, without whom it could not have been accomplished, would agree with me too.

So, what are we doing 232 years later starting the whole thing off with a Christian prayer? We even pay for these prayers. Both the House and the Senate have their own chaplains. Often there are guest preachers. And then the first order of business (as I saw this morning) is for the congressman that invited the preacher, a relative of his, to get up and talk about what a jewel of a Christian he is.

And what have all these daily prayers gotten us? What good have they been? What good are they? What's the purpose? I can see no other purpose than the natural inclination to continue a worn out tradition and vain ritual that, in effect, bonds the Church with the State right out of the box.

And as for the Pledge of Allegiance, again, we should have never allowed that to get started. No child in school should ever be subjected to a Pledge of Allegiance requirement. That may have been fine for a nation ruled by Hitler, but it doesn't represent Freedom and it shouldn't represent the United States.

We're living in the most dangerous times in the history of humanity, because of nuclear weapons, greed, ignorance and hate, even among the religions, and having the only Super Power in the world also showing itself to be the greatest warmonger in the world.

It's time for the U.S. Congress to get real and put away all the foolish trappings and get serious about this world that we're living in. It's time for all Americans to wake up to it. It's time to bring true intelligence and moral wisdom into the fray and push the Bushites back so far that their ideological hats float.

Never forget that Bush himself has made the claim that he was led to pull a preemptive war on Iraq by God. There can be no separation of Church and State when the president claims to have the ear of God and is allowed to act accordingly.

I don't doubt that Hitler believed in God and thought he had the same ear as Bush. But I'm not a believer in revealed religion. I don't believe that anybody has ever had the ear of God. I believe that we should take God out of it and admit that it is us that is responsible for this stinking mess that we've gotten ourselves into.

As for God, that's God's business. Let God take care of God and let humans start taking care of humans. If God wants to get involved, fine. But let's begin to realize that we cannot continue to instruct God or claim that we have the ear of God. There's no reason and no time for that. It's time to take on the responsibility of being a human facing human problems that only humans can solve.

I'll conclude with what Job took from his run-in with God. God is God and Job is Job. And that's the way it's always going to be. Humanity has a responsibility down here on Earth to take care of its own and it's time that it started getting down to business and doing it.

As long as the U.S. Congress continues to open its sessions with a vain and ignorant prayer and a phony Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, there is no reason to believe that we truly understand the concept of freedom and the true price that has to be paid for it.

It's time to get real. That's the price. Throw all the unnecessary baggage overboard. It's too heavy and it's sinking the boat. Freedom is freedom. Period. Freedom to do and think and act as one pleases as long as it doesn't cause any legitimate harm to another individual or the human race in general.

We must first understand this for ourselves before we can begin to comprehend the world and our place in it. Humanity is humanity, made up of equal and joining parts. And God is God. We don't speak for God, we don't have God's ear and we are not God.

In the end, as in the beginning and the here and now, we are two different things. God is God and man is man. Don't make the mistake of converging the two. Let's do away with the daily instructions to God and the silly Pledge of Allegiance and get down to the business that we were sent down here for.

We're here to spread the idea of freedom. Spreading peace, not war, is the only way to do it. Let's get real and really get down to business while we've still got time to do it. It's time to throw off the false and put on the armor of truth, justice and the American way.

Naman Crowe, a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, is an award winning journalist who has been practicing his craft since 1971, working first with The Chattanooga Times and later with various North Georgia newspapers including The Summerville News, The Dalton Daily Citizen and The Catoosa County News, as well as numerous other publications.

A poor boy, born in Atlanta and raised and educated in the Chattanooga area where he still resides, Naman Crowe is - in the words of the late, great John Popham, the legendary Southern correspondent for The New York Times - "a delight in today's world. His background is something you can't get every time you study the masses."

Naman Crowe, continues Popham in his tribute, "Is an excellent writer and thinker and is committed to the best world he can help create on his own terms."

What you will find within the columns and writings of Naman Crowe is just that, a commitment to the best world possible, on his own terms, which is the right to stand up and talk back. The tools of his craft are the thinking mind and the written word.

We are in agreement with Popham's conclusion. "You will like him."