[Update 5/18: apparently, Billy Graham didn't write this. Blast! Foiled again by the e-mail forward goblins.]

Yet another silly e-mail. This time, a friend of mine got one entitled ‘Prayer for our Nation.’ It started with a huge black and white picture of a seated Billy Graham, staring stoically off into space. Following that was this prayer:

Billy Graham’s Prayer For Our Nation

‘Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, ‘Woe to those who call evil good,’ but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the earth with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and Set us free. Amen!’

I don’t even know where to begin, it’s just so wrong. I guess the worst part is that it just forgoes the debate as to whether or not these things are indeed wrong, calls them a loss, and beseeches the sky fairy for forgiveness.

I think the ridiculousness of the self-flagellatory judgment is evident enough, but there is one sentence that was particularly ridic. When Graham said “We have polluted the earth…” I was on the verge of conceding that he had at least one point, but then he went on to totally ruin it by specifying “with profanity and pornography.” Damn him.

–

It’s amazing how religion mutates with time. The ’sins’ it obsesses about are totally a product of the political climate of the era. Religious people ally themselves with a certain political group, and all of a sudden, the positions of their political opponents are listed among the religious transgressions, and the behaviors of their own party that are explicitly condemned in their holy-book are just swept under the rug.

Abortion? The bible says nothing about it, but it’s arguably one of the most egregious sins, according to fundies.

Usury? The bible condemns it repeatedly, but it’s a non-issue among religious conservatives, because the business world runs on interest, and Republicans love business.

Destroying the environment? I’m sure there are plenty of verses in the bible that could be used to condemn those who knowingly destroy that which god has given us. But conservatives pussyfoot around this topic, because environmental protection is the Democrats’ bit.

Slavery, subjugating women? The bible condones it throughout, but it’s not in vogue today so religious people just jump on the bandwagon.

Homosexuality? There are a few passages about it sprinkled through the bible, but there are far more about how it’s immoral to be rich. Nonetheless Christians fixate on gay marriage, and virtually ignore the socialistic implications of their holy-book.

Religion can a tool of political movements: it allows the difference between you and me to be more than a matter of opinion, but a matter of supernatural law. It’s a powerful weapon to wield against your ideological adversary, to call him/her damned. It’s even more powerful when you try to take some kind of moral high-ground — like Mr. Graham does above — by asking for forgiveness for your rival’s political positions.

An Illinois court has ruled that a ‘moment of silence’ statute is unconstitutional. The law mandated that public school students observe a daily moment of silence, for “silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.”

Naturally, Christianists are up in arms, saying that this is another attempt by a minority of secular-progressives to push their radical separation of church and state agenda on the embattled theist majority. However, the judge had a very interesting take on the statute:

The Statute violates this [the second prong of the Lemon test] because it prefers some religions over others. It is firmly established that “[n]either a state nor the Federal Government . . . can pass laws that aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.”

…[T]he ACLU has identified a number of religious practices that are neither silent nor still…

…These includes [sic] certain Jewish traditions, Muslim prayers that require a variety of postures and gestures including bowing and prostration, Native American religions and Krishna Hinduism.

Practitioners of these religions would, apparently, be excluded from praying according to their faith during the “period of silence.”

In other words, a moment of silence could be utilized by Christian children for prayer in school, but would by definition preclude the prayer rituals of other religions, and is therefore a ‘religious preference’ of the state — Christian children may participate in semi-organized prayer during school hours, while others may not.

What’s interesting to me is how the defenders of the statute want to portray its opponents: as bloodthirsty secularists who will attack something as simple as a moment of silence if there are intimations of religiosity associated therewith.

Well, it’s very telling that the people who are most outraged by this ruling are … Christians. If it were an innocuous ‘moment of silence’ as they claim, they would have as much to lose as an atheist. The reality, which the judge was apt to point out, is that the statute was a deliberately underhanded attempt to surreptitiously slip prayer back into the public school system — and surprise, surprise somebody finally caught on.

So now we get to listen to Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh drone on and on about how this is a Christian nation*, and how our morals come from god because the forefathers wrote in the Constititution that god endowed us with inalienable rights^†, and that they wrote his name on our money and into the Pledge of Allegiance^‡, and blah, blah blah.

Well you know what, I don’t in principle have a problem with god’s name popping up everywhere — he’s kind of our mascot, like the San Diego Chicken — but the moment these things are used as evidence that we have a national religion, or that I am less of a patriot because I am an atheist, then I want it off the money, and out of the schools and courtrooms, and stricken from the Pledge.

*See the Treaty of Tripoli, article 11.

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen…”

† Actually, that was in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution is an explicitly secular document by design.

‡ There was no ‘In God We Trust’ on our money, or ‘under god’ in the Pledge until the 50’s. Look it up.

h/t Pharyngula