With the Fourth of July coming up soon, violations of the separation of church and state are setting off some fireworks in Texas, where Governor Rick Perry is sponsoring a fundamentalist Christian prayer rally at Reliant Stadium in Houston. He has proclaimed Aug. 6 to be an official day of prayer and fasting.
While most might not realize the implications of such an event, it is important to remind ourselves this Independence Day that in America, it doesn’t matter what faith (or lack of) that you hold, you are still granted the same rights as everybody else. Our government has remained neutral on religion, and people of all faiths are welcomed in this country. The constitution ensures the separation of church and state so that decisions impacting every American will not be influenced by personal belief systems.
The prayer rally in Houston is organized by the American Family Association, and Perry has invited governors from every state to join him in promoting “The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis”. Initially, I thought the rally was an evangelical tool to convert non-Christians. However, rally organizers have issued a statement indicating that only Christians will be permitted to speak at the event. The Response says that if representatives from other faiths were included, that would promote “idolatry”.
Alan Parker, one of Perry’s organizers, writes, “This is an explicitly Christian event because we are going to be praying to the one true God through His son, Jesus Christ. It would be idolatry of the worst sort for Christians to gather and invite false gods like Allah and Buddha and their false prophets to be with us at that time. Because we have religious liberty in this country, they are free to have events and pray to Buddha and Allah on their own. But this is time of prayer to the One True God through His son, Jesus Christ, who is The Way, The Truth, and The Life.”
The Constitution has no problem with fundamentalists gathering for an exclusively Christian event, but things get thorny when a government official specifically promotes one faith over another. If this were a Muslim event, I venture to say that many Americans would be uncomfortable with a governor sponsoring it. The Constitution does not give Governor Perry the right to exclude people of certain faiths because they worship “false gods”. On the contrary, the Constitution forbids public officials from favoring one religion over another or religion over non-religion. This kind of behavior needs to be called out and stopped.
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