When Rajan Zed, director of interfaith relations at a Hindu temple in Reno, Nev., gave the brief prayer that opens each day’s Senate session, his prayer was disrupted by some anti-abortion activists who shouted “No Lord but Jesus Christ”, “There’s only one true God,” and ”this is an abomination.”
Representative Bill Sali from the “wide-stance state” too was upset about this and wrote an article in which he did not want principles outside the Judeo-Christian tradition to be promoted in the Congress. According to Rep. Bill Sali, United States was founded on the principles found in the Scriptures and the future of United States should depend on the Judeo-Christian convictions of the founding fathers.
Senator John McCain, ran as the maverick politician in 2000, but in 2007 he is looking more like the mango peel. To boost his campaign he has decided to suck upto the evangelicals whom he once called “agents of intolerance” and “corrupting influences.” He too declared that the constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.
In an op-ed piece in New York Times, Jon Meacham sets the record straight.
The only acknowledgment of God in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: the document is dated “in the year of our Lord 1787.” Even the religion clause of the First Amendment is framed dryly and without reference to any particular faith. The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God’s authority, but the effort failed.
In the 1790s, in the waters off Tripoli, pirates were making sport of American shipping near the Barbary Coast. Toward the end of his second term, Washington sent Joel Barlow, the diplomat-poet, to Tripoli to settle matters, and the resulting treaty, finished after Washington left office, bought a few years of peace. Article 11 of this long-ago document says that “as the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,” there should be no cause for conflict over differences of “religious opinion” between countries.
The treaty passed the Senate unanimously. [A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation]
At present it looks like Rudy Giuliani, a man who supports abortion rights, would be the presidential nominee of the GOP and the evangelicals have warned that if that happens, they would back a third-party candidate to stop him. Thus sensing an opportunity, McCain has decided to sell his soul to a bunch of folks who literally believe in the Bible, want to prevent stem cell research and think that man was created by God.
This just proves that politicians are all the same, irrespective of whether they are in a developed country or a developing county. They all need to sing and dance for the vote bank.
