May 5th was the so-called National Day of Prayer. It is an ad hoc “day” sponsored by the religious right front group Focus on the Family to misinform us all about the erroneous claims that fundamentalist Christians are being persecuted in the United States. President Bush made a public spectacle of the “event” but President Obama only continued the proclamation part. That is a good sign, but there are other reasons to drop the National Day of Prayer.
Tag: church and state
Once again, President Obama gave support to the secular focus of our republic, where people of many religions and no religion can live and be free. At his stop in Turkey, another country founded on seperation of church and state, the President made his comments during a press conference.
On Wednesday, February 25th, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling on a Utah monument case that involved the city of Pleasant Grove and religious group which tried to donate a monument to their Seven Aphorisms to be placed near an existing one with the Christian 10 Commandments. Unlike most cases like this, it was considered on Free Speech grounds rather than on religious establishment grounds. The court ruled that a government can pick and choose what gifts to receive and in doing so seemed to open them up to establishment challenges in the future.
During the campaign President Barack Obama promised to change how the federal government gave money to religious groups. While he did change the title of the office created under President Bush, he has yet to remove the rules and regulations that allowed religious groups to discriminate when getting federal grant money.
In the latest news article on the Darwin Day dust up (see my previous post) there was a quote that caught my eye. It seems that the former mayor of Reynoldsburg Ohio Robert McPherson said he didn’t remember signing a similar proclamation for a Darwin Day in his city in 2006. Well it seems there is proof that he did in fact issue such a proclamation.
The other day I posted a story about the conflict in the Whitehall city council about naming a Darwin Day to celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, who developed the concept of Evolution. At a meeting on Tuesday, January 27th, the Darwin Day follies focused on actually naming a scientist to honor for the compromise “Science Month”. And then it got funnier.