Prayer Day

It's not just at Christmas anymore.  Christians have gotten used to the annual holiday objections over creches, carols and decorating with red and green in public settings.  The trend is growing: this year a federal judge ruled that the National Day of Prayer was unconstitutional.   In Davenport, Iowa the Civil Rights Commission prompted the City Administrator to rename Good Friday "Spring Holiday."  Groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which filed the Day of Prayer suit, exist primarily to finance these fights.

Court cases like this have been framed as constitutional issues with plaintiffs representing themselves as patriots defending the nation from religion.  But we didn't always have these objections.  Quite the opposite was true, with "under God" written into the Pledge of Allegiance, "In God We Trust" stamped into the coinage and the National Day of Prayer being created in 1952.  None of these was controversial.

Now they are. Why?  For people to spend time and treasure fighting these battles it's got to be a bigger issue than just resolving arcane legal interpretations.  There's got to be a bigger underlying reason for them to work this hard to expunge expressions of faith from the public arena.

It's at least partially because many Christians are on the opposite side from secularists on controversial issues.  Over the years differences have enraged people and Christians have been tarred as oppressive and hateful.  Nobody likes hateful oppressors; maybe that's why there's such a virulent opposition to faith that's magnified by a media bent on spotlighting the acts of the most outrageous fringe elements.

The point that's never made is that Christians try to live according to biblical teachings and one of the rules is to love those you disagree with.

Unless we engage in sophistry, we have to admit abortion does result in the willful termination of life (as writer Peggy Noonan once put it, "Anyone who's ever bought a condom knows when life starts).  Gay marriage also runs counter to the Bible.

They're sins.  So are gossiping, judging others, arrogance, drunkenness, taking revenge, envy, folly, anger, having evil thoughts and lots of others.  All of us, Christian or not, are guilty of at least some of them.  The goal is to recognize our shortcomings, ask forgiveness and work to curtail them.  It's not to persecute others who also miss the mark - it's to love them anyway.

All Christians are sinners of one stripe or another, and we know it.  Given our imperfections we're not in a position to judge - but we can disagree.  Contrary to popular opinion, disagreement doesn't equal hate.

This truth is lost amidst the turmoil.  We'd understand each other better if we all assumed an attitude of prayer and reflected on what our differences really are.  But discussion of polarizing hot-button issues seems impossible since hackles go up as soon as they're broached. 

If we could talk, we could at least dispel the "Christians are haters" mantra.  Maybe we could even make the point that Americans have freedom of religion (the right to choose any or no faith) and not a freedom from religion that seeks to destroy it.


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