What is Prayer?
What rights should our Armed Forces have when it comes to prayer? Watch this video and tell us what you think!
23 US States Urge supreme Court to Allow Prayer in Government Meetings
A total of 23 states have joined forces to encourage the supreme Court to rule once and for all that legislative prayer delivered at the beginning of government meetings is constitutional.
By Katherine Weber, Christian Post Reporter
Indiana’s attorney general Greg Zoeller and Texas’s attorney general Greg Abbott co-authored an amicus brief, joined by 21 other states, filed in the Supreme Court case Greece, N.Y. v. Galloway, Susan, which questions the constitutionality of public prayer at government meetings. The Supreme Court will be addressing this case in its next session in October 2014, and will be considering a previous ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York which found prayers in Greece, New York to be unconstitutional because they focused predominately on Christianity.
The amicus brief filed by Zoeller and others late last week “asks the Supreme Court to overturn a U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that had prohibited legislative prayer at the start of a government assembly,” according to a statement issued by the attorney general’s office.
“When the United States Supreme Court considers major constitutional issues facing our nation, it is essential that the states make their legal position known to the Court. We ask the Supreme Court to provide clarity so that uncertainty will not hinder the authority of our state Legislatures to make decisions,” Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said in a statement.
Other states which are a part of the amicus brief include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
In 2008, Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens, residents of Greece, N.Y., sued the city, claiming that it had violated the First Amendment’s rule of separation of church and state by allowing predominately Christian-themed prayers to take place prior to government meetings. The city argued that its policy allowed for any denomination to voluntarily provide the legislative prayer, adding that it had the constitutional right to allow expression of religious heritage.
A 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York found, however, that because the city did not inform participants that any denomination could volunteer to lead a prayer, it had violated the First Amendment clause by allowing mostly Christian prayers to take place.
“In practice, Christian clergy members have delivered nearly all of the prayers relevant to this litigation and have done so at the town’s invitation,” the appeals court ruled. “The town also failed to make it clear the prayer was intended to signify the solemnity of the proceedings, which the Supreme Court has said is not unconstitutional, rather than ‘to affiliate the town with any particular creed.'”
Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nonprofit group, then filed the appeal to the Supreme Court. David Cortman, senior counsel of the ADF, said in a press release on Monday that the number of amicus briefs filed in this case in support of public prayer shows that Americans are still very committed to their religious liberty.
“Americans today should be as free as the Founders were to pray,” Cortman said. “The Founders prayed while drafting our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has ruled that public prayer is part of the ‘history and tradition of this country.’ The numerous and significant parties that have filed briefs in this case support the continuation of this cherished practice.”
The recent amicus brief co-authored by Indiana and Texas joins the U.S. Department of Justice and numerous senators and members of Congress in supporting public prayer at government meetings. The ruling on the case will be a landmark decision because it will potentially determine the future of public prayer in the U.S.
Previous state-level rulings have differed on the constitutionality of prayer at government meetings, with some finding it constitutional and others finding it unconstitutional, and therefore the Supreme Court decided to take up the case of Greece, N.Y. v. Galloway, Susan to find some uniformity in future rulings.
The amicus brief filed Friday argues that the Supreme Court should not assume that public prayers offered at government meetings are representative of the government’s religious preference; rather, they are the opinions and beliefs held by individual citizens who have a right to worship freely under the U.S. constitution.
“The Court should reject the assumption that the content of private citizens’ prayers before legislative assemblies is attributable exclusively to the government. Such prayers, rather are expressions of private belief made in service to an elected body of citizens. Those present may participate or not, but each citizen’s mode of rendering this particular service to a governmental body may rightfully be accommodated,” one portion of the amicus brief reads.
Indiana has previously won an appeals case in a 2005 lawsuit that challenged the state’s House of Representatives’ tradition of having prayer before legislative sessions. Although a judge initially halted the prayer, the ruling was later overturned in an appeals court, which found the prayer practice to be constitutional.
Read more at http://global.christianpost.com/news/23-us-states-urge-supreme-court-to-allow-prayer-in-government-meetings-101584/#cHUL6TuPJfqlymsW.99
Chaplain Alliance Files Brief With supreme Court in Support of Chaplains’ Right to Pray
By Jim Hoft on Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Gateway Pundit
It’s really unbelievable that military chaplains have to plead with the Supreme Court for the right to pray at public meetings.
What has happened to this great nation?
The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty has filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court in support of the right of Americans to pray before public meetings.
The Alliance Defending Freedom reported:
The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, an organization dedicated to protecting the right of service members to live out their faith as they protect the liberties of all Americans, has filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the right of Americans to pray before public meetings.
The religious liberties case, Town of Greece v. Galloway, provides the U.S. Supreme Court the opportunity to affirm America’s long-standing practice of opening public meetings with prayer.
“We are calling for the Supreme Court to affirm public prayer, which is rooted in our nation’s history and tradition, and to allow chaplains and others to continue to pray in public meetings, just as our founding fathers sought to ensure,” said CH (COL) Ron Crews, executive director for Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. “Our military chaplaincy provides an elegant model, created by the Founders and upheld by the courts, of a respectful accommodation of religious belief–a model whose principles can and should be applied to legislative prayer.”
“Our brief makes the point that a military chaplain, just like a chaplain in a town council meeting, cannot fulfill his or her duties with the federal courts looking over one shoulder and a hypothetical observer looking over the other to assess when a religious activity may make an observer feel like an outsider,” Crews explained.
Related… The First Prayer in Congress
Something liberals frown at today–
“O Lord our Heavenly Father, high and mighty King of kings, and Lord of lords, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers on earth and reignest with power supreme and uncontrolled over all the Kingdoms, Empires and Governments; look down in mercy, we beseech Thee, on these our American States, who have fled to Thee from the rod of the oppressor and thrown themselves on Thy gracious protection, desiring to be henceforth dependent only on Thee. To Thee have they appealed for the righteousness of their cause; to Thee do they now look up for that countenance and support, which Thou alone canst give. Take them, therefore, Heavenly Father, under Thy nurturing care; give them wisdom in Council and valor in the field; defeat the malicious designs of our cruel adversaries; convince them of the unrighteousness of their Cause and if they persist in their sanguinary purposes, of own unerring justice, sounding in their hearts, constrain them to drop the weapons of war from their unnerved hands in the day of battle!
Be Thou present, O God of wisdom, and direct the councils of this honorable assembly; enable them to settle things on the best and surest foundation. That the scene of blood may be speedily closed; that order, harmony and peace may be effectually restored, and truth and justice, religion and piety, prevail and flourish amongst the people. Preserve the health of their bodies and vigor of their minds; shower down on them and the millions they here represent, such temporal blessings as Thou seest expedient for them in this world and crown them with everlasting glory in the world to come. All this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, Thy Son and our Savior.
Amen.”
Reverend Jacob Duché
Rector of Christ Church of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
September 7, 1774, 9 o’clock a.m.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/08/military-chaplain-alliance-files-brief-with-u-s-supreme-court-in-support-of-chaplains-right-to-pray/#sthash.MVXYsPwE.dpuf
One Navy SEAL’s Tale Of Survival
“Eternal Father, faithful friend, Be quick to answer those we send In brotherhood and urgent trust, On hidden missions dangerous, O hear us when we cry to Thee, For SEALs in air, on land, and sea.”
The Taliban had seen me by now. I was the only one they could see, and I heard a volley of bullets screaming around me. One shot smacked into the tree just to my right. The rest were hitting the dirt and sending up puffs of dust. I heaved at the log. I heaved with all my might, but I could not move that sucker. I was pinned down.
I was trying to look backward, wondering if Mikey had seen me and might try a rescue, when suddenly I saw the stark white smoke trail of an incoming RPG against the mountain. The RPG smashed into the tree trunk right next to me and exploded with a shattering blast as I tried frantically to turn away from it. I can’t tell what happened next, but it blew the trunk clean in half and shot me straight over the cliff.
I guess it was about fifteen feet down to where Axe was moving into firing position, and I landed close. Considering I’d just been blown over the ledge like a human cannonball, I was pretty lucky to be still standing. And there right next to me on the ground was my rifle, placed there by the Hand of God Himself.
I reached down to pick it up and listened again for His voice. But this time there was no noise, just one brief second of silence in my mind, amid all the chaos and malevolence of this monstrous struggle for supremacy, apparently being conducted on behalf of His Holy Prophet Muhammad.
I was not sure whether either of them would have approved. I don’t know that much about Muhammad, but, by all that’s holy, I don’t think my own God wished me to die. If He had been indifferent to my plight, He surely would not have taken such good care of my gun, right? Because how on earth that was still with me, I will never know.
That rifle had so far fought three separate battles in three different places, been ripped out of my grasp twice, been blown over a cliff by a powerful grenade, fallen almost nine hundred feet down a mountain, and was still somehow right next to my outstretched hand. Fluke? Believe what you will. My own faith will remain forever unshaken.
― Marcus Luttrell, Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10
About Us – The Case for Prayer
Who are we and what are we about? Watch this short vid to find out!