[image: Train And Station, 2014, JA Van Devender]
Location: Old Mount Royal Station, Baltimore, MD.
Da 6:10
10 Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days.
Currently happening in Baltimore - See HERE.
A Federal judge has ruled that country commissioners cannot invoke the name of Jesus Christ in their public prayers at the commencement of their meeting. This judge did not rule that prayers of any type were prohibited but rather that invoking a specific rather than generic deity was a violation of the rule of separation and an infringement on the rights of those who are part of the public audience who differ in their religious or non-religious views.
Poppycock.
I do not insist that a Christian has a duty to pray publicly before any meeting which has gathered for reasons not explicitly religious. I do not agree that it is a violation of another person's right of privacy to ask them to be respectful of another person's desire to pray, openly, as an expression of their faith. I do not believe it a proper function of government to so order proceedings that every meeting must be opened with prayer by government decree.
All that is to set the stage though for the following. In a free country every person should have the right, in their individual circumstance, to pray, out loud, if they so desire. An accused person appearing before a judge should have the right to pray out loud before giving testimony and submitting to cross-examination. He must not abuse the privilege and turn it into an argument for the benefit of the jury, but he should have that freedom. A committee chair that desires to appeal to God or to his god before commencing a meeting should have the right to do so and I, as a Christian, may join with him or not depending on to whom he is praying... but it is no violation of my conscience for a Muslim to pray to Allah in my presence.. I am just not going to bow with him when he does it.
This situation is fundamentally absurd. I know that due to ancient practice the invoking of "divine" blessings is written into the required practice of many government bodies, e.g. the US Senate. I am less than ambivalent about that. I don't particularly want a non-Christian being required to do a ritual that he does not believe. However that does not mean that I am opposed to opening government meetings with prayer. If someone asks for folks to give him a moment to pray for the meeting then that is a perfectly valid request and common courtesy should allow it. It is not the venue for preaching or proselytizing and it must guard against that "praying a sermon" form and it certainly should not include an explicit request that God judge all those present and let them know they are all going to Hell if they don't repent and embrace Christ. That would be offensive because the venue was not designed to be an evangelistic meeting. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with a Christian praying for God's guidance and wisdom for himself and others if they should so desire that blessing to come on them. If a person isn't looking for wisdom from God then it should not be offensive to hear a request for it from someone who is.
Bottom line... the train of religious suppression has left the station. It is no longer a question of preventing it from happening. It is now a question of reversing a trend before the momentum is so great that only an huge brick wall can bring it to a halt.
I applaud this woman's "in your face" stand although I would ask that she learn from Daniel's tact as well as from his example. If it means that we move from public prayer in our committee rooms to public prayer in our jail cells, so be it. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are not the same as "freedom from taking or giving offense." The latter is tyranny and the former are bastions of true liberty.
Let God be true and all men liars... no man has the right to restrict the exercise of religion when it is not intentionally disruptive of other affairs or coercively requiring another person's participation. Public prayer does not necessarily fall into either of those two categories.
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