Who needs atheists when you have Baptists:
The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty filed an amicus brief in the appeal of a case brought by two residents of Forsyth County, N.C., who filed suit in March 2007 against the county. The residents challenged the county’s practice of allowing sectarian government-sponsored prayers at county board of commissioners meetings under the First and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution and sections of the North Carolina Constitution. They claimed the Board’s prayers advance Christianity and have the effect of affiliating the Board with it.
I can see both sides and I don’t agree with your drawing a parallel with atheists. First, I don’t understand the motivation to deliver a Christian prayer in a non-church, non-religious setting where many of the people listening are likely not regenerate. Second, despite the provisions in the US Constitution for freedom of religion, I doubt that non-Christian religious leaders are equally welcome to deliver sectarian prayers at county meetings in NC. If the prayer did rotate among different religions for each meeting (including wiccans), I suspect there would soon be strong support to end prayers altogether. Finally, advocating for rigorous application of separation-of-church-and-state principles could actually protect religious freedom for Christians in the long term.
You appear to be subscribing to the notion that these Baptists are pursuing an abstruse strategy of furthering the Gospel by working to suppress Christian prayer at state functions. It seems to me more like the act of a denomination that has lost its way.
I partly agree that the atheist parallel is inadequate: it is more insidious since atheists are not supposed to be on God’s side.
The separation of church and state – in Locke’s sense – is supposed to prevent the government interfering with individual conscience not prevent public praying – and, in any event, shouldn’t be of much interest to Baptists as Baptists.
David, I don’t know the true motivations of the BJC; if I did, perhaps I would think differently. What is public prayer? Is it public prayer when the state specifically sponsors it? Do you think that all religions are equally “free” and equally protected in NC when it comes to state-sponsored public prayer? I tend to agree with your last comment. I would rather see Christians as citizens rather than as representatives of a “denomination” pursue these sorts of issues.
Yes, I do think all religions should be equally free from interference by the state in Locke’s sense.
Christian public prayer is another matter. I hold the – undoubtedly medieval – view that: Christianity alone is true; that Western civilisation was, for the most part, built on Christian principles; that to expunge Christianity from the state and its activities is to rip out our civilisation’s underpinnings; that this, in turn, will cause the fall of the West. I think it has already started and the suppression of Christian prayer at state functions, while not necessarily hastening it that much, is a harbinger of the coming collapse.
So I think Christian public prayer is good – state sponsored or not.
I am entirely pessimistic about all this: short of God’s intervention, I think not much can be done; but I see little reason not to ridicule these Baptists lending their assistance in chipping – somewhat impotently, I suspect – at the foundations.
I agree that Christianity alone is true and that western civilization was largely built on Christian principles. Many of these principles, as C.S. Lewis aptly points out in The Abolition of Man, are shared by all major religions and philisophical/ethical systems.
I don’t agree that what the BJC is advocating equates to expunging Christianity or will result in a “collapse”. What is there to collapse? Although the percentage of Christians in North American society may have been higher in the past, I don’t believe that either Canada or the US were ever Christian nations. They have both always been part of the kingdom of man.
I know this isn’t an argument from logic, but I have been at many military functions over the past 37+ years where Christian prayers were offered – and the offering of such prayers has never made much sense to me (nor do I find a biblical warrant for doing so). In most cases the prayers were politely listened to, but were generally viewed as a quaint but essentially meaningless tradition carried over from an earlier time. Maybe God honours such prayers in ways that cannot be readily perceived; but it is not because of the faith of most of those listening.
To avoid a perception of evangelism, these public prayers were designed to be non-offensive and did not contain a gospel message. In recent years they have become increasingly non-sectarian and I don’t envy the position of chaplains who are often expected to offer them.
Anyway, unlike you, I see little value in Christian public prayer. The gates of hell will not prevail against the kingdom of God whether they are offered or not.
The point I was trying to make wasn’t so much the value of public prayer: more the harm of the viewpoint that underlies the attempt to squash it.
I don’t think the phrase “Christian nation” has much meaning – other than in the sense of a nation having an established church.
It’s not Christianity that is collapsing, it’s Western civilisation which, for all its shortcomings, is a lot better than what will probably replace it.
David, thank you for listening to my ramblings. I agree that, given the alternatives, western civilization has much to commend it.
Warren – nothing I like better 🙂