Our Governor Rick Perry, has a big prayer event happening this Saturday (tomorrow) in Houston at the Reliant Stadium that has gained national attention. His event is called "The Response", and despite the claims that it's supposed to be an apolitical gathering of Christians asking God for guidance in a time of national crisis, it has church-and-state-combo written all over it.
He wanted to be as "inclusive" as possible because he decided to invite all of the 49 other US governors to attend. And they all declined except for Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). I remember Brownback during the 2008 election. I'm honestly not surprised he RSVPd his attendance. He's extremely right-wing, very socially conservative, and would probably support, along with Perry, doing something like putting a Federal Marriage Amendment into the US Constitution to semi-permanently eliminate marriage equality or ALL Americans. And yes, Perry has voiced his support for the FMA (Bush Jr. actually was gunning for it during his presidency, but it didn't happen since Cheney's daughter was a lesbian).
Anyway, Perry clearly chose the Reliant Stadium (I'm making an educated guess here), because of its 71,000 person capacity. How many people have RSVPd to attend? Around 1/10th that amount. Yeah.
The other thing that bothers me is that though it's supposed to be a prayer event, it's primarily for Christians, and though other non-Christian people are invited to attend, they're encouraged to convert to Christianity. Can we say "exclusive"?
Based on my experience with such Christians, it's an event that'll probably be loaded with lots of Scripture readings, praise and worship music, inspiring talks, and so forth. If every attendee, assuming they're all Christians, brings their Bible to this event, hell, if every attendee strives to follow the Bible to the letter, then they're already making several mistakes, and this op-ed article in the Austin American-Statesman (@statesman) explains exactly what's wrong with this picture: http://j.mp/pL0jaf
As for me and my faith, I consider myself a progressive Catholic. I go to Mass regularly, I pray like others do, have my own intentions to pray for, and follow some of the Church's teachings (I say "some" because I believe some of the church's teachings and traditions are too conservative for today's world). Anyway, all that being said, I can play devil's advocate and acknowledge that the intentions behind this event are good*.
*I think the Christians attending the event want to see good come to the nation through the power of God, as omnipotent as all Christians believe him to be. But when you listen to certain pastors, like John Hagee (he's attending) who calls MY church the "whore of Babylon", then you're probably easily misguided, can't think for yourself, won't challenge authority to get to the real truth, dismiss facts, and want to turn our country into a theocracy, having religion...er...Christianity...run the government.
The hypocrisy behind wanting to have a Christians-only USA is that our Constitution GUARANTEES freedom of religion for all American citizens. Look it up. There's an app for the US Constitution, and in the 1st of the first 10 Amendments, aka the Bill of Rights, it clearly states that anyone can practice any faith in this country. Not only that, the people who push for Christianity to take over the nation usually claim that, as much as they love the Bible and stick to it literally usually also look to the Constitution in an attempt to get back to basics to help return America to its fundamental roots. Well, the intention is fine, if you like fiction. If you want America to get back to its fundamental roots, then we'd ALL have to leave and let the Native Americans have their country back. After all, they were here first.
Moreover, those who "love" the Constitution only want to love parts of it that best support their ideologies. They want to do with the Constitution what they already do with the Bible. They'll quote Bible to tell us that being gay is a sin, according to Leviticus, and therefore so is marriage equality. But read a few more passages down in the same book, then we can't eat shellfish, wear clothing with mixed fabric, handle pigskin (there goes football), work on Sundays, and so forth. But no, people love to eat their seafood, they probably seldom look at the fabrics of which their clothing is made (unless they're allergic to something), they will NOT give up Sunday night football (because there's nothing gay about men tackling each other for a ball...and this was total sarcasm, by the way), and plenty of people work on Sundays, whether for a job or doing yard work or cleaning their home, etc.
I don't know whether to call this irony or hypocrisy. It's probably both! These are the kinds of people, the people who think this way (granted, I probably did exaggerate a little...but probably not by much) that are more than likely to attend "The Response". I would even expect them to think of the name of this event as a conservative, concerned American response to the Obama administration's management of the country.
Well, the event's happening. A few thousand people will show up, pray, sing, probably discuss certain conservative struggles like New York's newly-established marriage equality, and how they can reverse it or ban it in even more states. I'm very sure this will come up, especially since the American Family Association is sponsoring this over-hyped event. And they've been known as a hate-group for a while, particularly with LGBT equality.
I'd go, as a Catholic, except for a few reasons: I believe in the separation of church and state, it's too far a drive, and I don't have the gas money, I'm a Democrat who can't stand Perry or the AFA, and I don't want to be surrounded by a bunch of people who would tell me I'm going to hell because I happen to be gay...and that I can't be gay and Catholic. Well, you shouldn't be Christian and judge, but that isn't stopping you is it?
Yeah. I didn't think so.
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