Rick Warren Prayer

Yesterday's inaugural prayers, including the prayer of Rick Warren, signal yet another potential shift away from public spirituality in the never-ending quest of liberalism to create a thoroughly secular world where acknowledgement of God takes place only in private and becomes a shameful act to be hidden away from those too sensitive to view.

Under the mantel of "freedom from religion," public ceremonies like yesterday's inaugural are becoming more and more ridiculous. Almost stopped altogether by lawsuits from atheists, Christian Pastor Rick Warren managed to stand before the world and deliver a "diverse" prayer, including nods to Judaism and Islam. (You can read a fawning article regarding diversity in the inaugural prayer here.)

Besides the absurdity of seeing "America's Preacher" become pantheistic, there is the serious question of how much longer a public person will still maintain the constitutional right to freedom of religion. As a Christian, I would not acknowledge other faiths in prayer, and while Obama, who wishes to be everything to everyone, finds it suitable and right to stand before the country and give a nod to nonbelievers, as he did in his address, this will soon be expected behavior from every public official whether they wish it so or not. And the step after will be the loss of the ability to mention religion in any way at all.

This country needs to recognize that specifically secular behavior and speech should be categorized in the same way as religious behavior and speech. All should be protected equally, and those who are traditionally religious or practice secular religion should be encouraged, whether publicly or privately, to be open with their beliefs. Instead, we find ourselves in a world of secular evangelists spreading the anti-religion word as aggressively as any religion is being spread currently in the world. There is, in fact, a sort of secular jihad, or crusade, to wipe religion from public view.

The reality of the U.S. Constitution, and regardless of what activist judges may have ruled in the past, is that there is no reason for municipalities to have to remove things such as the Ten Commandments from public buildings or to take nativity scenes off of public green space. None of these acts establish a state religion, nor deny anyone their right to worship, as is stated in the First Amendment.

Expressions of religion should not be considered to be "establishing" a state religion because nothing is required of the populace. A requirement, just so that we know the difference, would be to force public school students to say the Lord's Prayer, a specifically Christian act. To be even more specific, I believe that to encourage a "moment of prayer" in school is a possible violation, but a "moment of prayer or reflection" is definitely not. Yet the mere mention of the word prayer in school sets off a secularist's alarms and sends him into an emotional breakdown.

And so this is the battle that we are facing today, that progressive secularists are waging an escalating war over the very basic right to practice religion openly. People of faith, of all faiths, need to band together and fight for their religious freedom.