Thursday, July 12, 2007

God will be pissed now

For the first time in our history, a Hindu chaplain gave the daily prayer that opened the Senate proceedings yesterday. According to Reuters Hajan Zed had been invited by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And it didn't sit well with people who don't seem to get that the Constitution nowhere says "for Christians only". Ed Brayton has several reactions already, along with a YouTube video of the prayer and concomitant disruption. I am endlessly amused by the bed-wetting fears that now that we have had a single prayer by a Hindu man in the Senate, after centuries of Christian prayers, this one event will incur God's wrath and is proof that the government is hostile to the Christian majority while coddling minority religions.

But my favorite response is that by David Barton, the man responsible for spreading numerous fraudulent quotes from the Founding Fathers trying to show that the United States was created a "Christian" country:
WallBuilders president David Barton is questioning why the U.S. government is seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god. Barton points out that since Hindus worship multiple gods, the prayer will be completely outside the American paradigm, flying in the face of the American motto "One Nation Under God."

Which, aside from being wrong, is exactly the reason that this sort of thing is unconstitutional. Because it does favor--rather unabashedly so--a monotheistic religion over a polytheistic, or even henotheistic, religion.

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