A Thankful President

[Danno 1,228]

Seems Ole George Washington didn't get the memo about the "religious stuff" to a minimum, at our nations First Thanks Giving Proclamation.

Thanksgiving Proclamation

[New York, 3 October 1789]

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor-- and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be--

That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks--for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation--for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war--for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed--for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted--for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions-- to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually--to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed--to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord--To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us--and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Nice find. We need to get back to basics in some areas.

[lostinblue 1,989]

Print out a copy for your grand children. At some point in the future the ACLU and it's liberal friends will try to get it banned from the schools.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Print out a copy for your grand children. At some point in the future the ACLU and it's liberal friends will try to get it banned from the schools.

Ah yes, the role and goal of the ACLU is to ban history classes from our schools. Brilliant.

[Peikko 1,575]

Clearly Danno doesn't understand the concept of separation of church and state - the idea isn't to ban the church, simply to keep church hierarchy out of government. Who knew?

[HAL 9000 96]

I'm sure President Obama has sent Danno his personal Thanksgiving greetings. Very nearly now will be 'Tis the season to be Jolly.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Danno, public figures praying or invoking the name of God doesn't equate to an institutionalized church, but if you think it does, please tell us what church is the official church of the U.S. of A.? Is it the Roman Catholic Church? The United Methodist Church? The Lutheran Church? Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints (LDS)?

As for meaningful commentary from the very authors of our Constitution, one only needs to look to Thomas Jefferson for a clear understanding of the separation of church and state.

Thomas Jefferson:

I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.

We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.

Edited November 26, 2009 by Galt's gallstones

[lostinblue 1,989]

Print out a copy for your grand children. At some point in the future the ACLU and it's liberal friends will try to get it banned from the schools.

Ah yes, the role and goal of the ACLU is to ban history classes from our schools. Brilliant.

Just revise it so there is no mention of god in the class room. Ban anything that mentions god or religion and thus you ban this address to school children. ACLU at some point in time will try to bring this thinking forward. "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will" These words alone are enough to have it banned in the ACLU's eves.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Print out a copy for your grand children. At some point in the future the ACLU and it's liberal friends will try to get it banned from the schools.

Ah yes, the role and goal of the ACLU is to ban history classes from our schools. Brilliant.

Just revise it so there is no mention of god in the class room. Ban anything that mentions god or religion and thus you ban this address to school children. ACLU at some point in time will try to bring this thinking forward. "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will" These words alone are enough to have it banned in the ACLU's eves.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Print out a copy for your grand children. At some point in the future the ACLU and it's liberal friends will try to get it banned from the schools.

Ah yes, the role and goal of the ACLU is to ban history classes from our schools. Brilliant.

Just revise it so there is no mention of god in the class room. Ban anything that mentions god or religion and thus you ban this address to school children. ACLU at some point in time will try to bring this thinking forward. "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will" These words alone are enough to have it banned in the ACLU's eves.

Have you ever felt curious enough to look beyond the RWN rhetoric that you parrot?

My God...with the internet, any schmuck can research this stuff...Google is your friend.

Supreme Court's 1963 school-prayer decision didn't ban school prayer

Inside the First Amendment

Forty years may have passed, but most Americans (of a certain age) recall the day when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down one of the most vilified, controversial and widely misunderstood decisions in American history.

Abington Township School District v. Schempp — decided on June 17, 1963 — was the second so-called "school prayer" decision (the first came a year earlier in Engel v. Vitale). But it was the most far-reaching — prohibiting school officials from organizing or leading prayers and devotional Bible reading in public schools.

Since few Americans actually read the decision, a succession of opportunistic politicians and religious leaders have spent the last four decades stirring up popular opinion against the Supreme Court for "kicking God out of the schools."

But that's not what the Court said — or intended. We've spent 40 years shouting past one another using bumper-sticker slogans that have little to do with the core constitutional issues addressed in Schempp.

Let's use this anniversary to set the record straight. No Supreme Court ruling has ever banned prayer or the Bible from public schools. As legal guidelines issued in both the Clinton and Bush administrations make clear, students have a First Amendment right to pray alone or in groups, bring their scriptures to school, share their beliefs with classmates, form religious clubs in secondary schools and in other ways express their faith during the school day — as long as they don't disrupt the school or interfere with the rights of others.

True, the Schempp decision requires that teachers and administrators neither promote nor denigrate religion — a commitment to state neutrality that protects the religious freedom of students of all faiths and no faith. But by "neutrality" the Court does not mean ignoring religion. If students are to be properly educated, teaching about religion has a place in the public school curriculum. As Justice Tom Clark explained in Schempp:

"It might well be said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization … . Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment."

In the wake of the Engel and Schempp decisions, Americans were so preoccupied with fighting over "prayer in schools" that most people ignored what the Court was trying to say about the proper role for religion in public schools.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/commentary.aspx?id=11563

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights.

[ScratchIt 12]

Print out a copy for your grand children. At some point in the future the ACLU and it's liberal friends will try to get it banned from the schools.

Ah yes, the role and goal of the ACLU is to ban history classes from our schools. Brilliant.

Just revise it so there is no mention of god in the class room. Ban anything that mentions god or religion and thus you ban this address to school children. ACLU at some point in time will try to bring this thinking forward. "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will" These words alone are enough to have it banned in the ACLU's eves.

And the ACLU has done nothing to protect your right to post your thoughts here? Lostinlube, there are none so blind as those who refuse to see. "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will" is exactly what some fundamentalist religious zealots are trying to force upon us today. I don't give a rats azz if the kid next to my grandchildren prays to God, Jehovah or Budda, just don't force it on your neighbors and claim it is your way or the highway and don't interupt their education for the sake of a minute of prayer.

[Niels Bohr 72]

I like that, very succinct.

Heck, I want to be able to run my life any way I want. Who cares about religion? Who knew that I turned into smart guy and sane without religion. The religious zealots would deem that a heresy.

Print out a copy for your grand children. At some point in the future the ACLU and it's liberal friends will try to get it banned from the schools.

Ah yes, the role and goal of the ACLU is to ban history classes from our schools. Brilliant.

Just revise it so there is no mention of god in the class room. Ban anything that mentions god or religion and thus you ban this address to school children. ACLU at some point in time will try to bring this thinking forward. "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will" These words alone are enough to have it banned in the ACLU's eves.

And the ACLU has done nothing to protect your right to post your thoughts here? Lostinlube, there are none so blind as those who refuse to see. "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will" is exactly what some fundamentalist religious zealots are trying to force upon us today. I don't give a rats azz if the kid next to my grandchildren prays to God, Jehovah or Budda, just don't force it on your neighbors and claim it is your way or the highway and don't interupt their education for the sake of a minute of prayer.

Edited November 26, 2009 by Niels Bohr

[Danno 1,228]

Clearly Danno doesn't understand the concept of separation of church and state - the idea isn't to ban the church, simply to keep church hierarchy out of government. Who knew?

MC again, you are in over your head.... while you conceptualize about these issues many of us have experienced what "separation of Church and state" has evolved to mean.

Your child will be taught "Thanksgiving" is about turkey and Indians in an effort to stay clear of the "church state" line which keeps moving.

While at one time school children where read such things as this on such holidays.

-------------------------------

James Buchanan, President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting, & Prayer.

To the People of the United States. A Recommendation.

Numerous appeals have been made to me by pious and patriotic associations and citizens, in view of the present distracted and dangerous condition of our country, to recommend that a day be set apart for Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer throughout the Union.

In compliance with their request and my own sense of duty, I designate Friday, the 4th of January 1861, for this purpose, and recommend that the People assemble on that day, according to their several forms of worship, to keep it as a solemn Fast.

The Union of the States is at the present moment threatened with alarming and immediate danger; panic and distress of a fearful character prevails throughout the land; our laboring population are without employment, and consequently deprived of the mans of earning their bread. Indeed, hope seems to have deserted the minds of men. All classes are in a state of confusion and dismay, and the wisest counsels of our best and purest men are wholly disregarded.

In this the hour of our calamity and peril, to whom shall we resort for relief but to the God of our fathers? His omnipotent arm only can save us from the awful effects of our own crimes and follies -- our own ingratitude and guilt towards our Heavenly Father.

Let us, then, with deep contrition and penitent sorrow, unite in humbling ourselves before the Most High, in confessing our individual and national sins, and in acknowledging the injustice of our punishment. Let us implore Him to remove from our hearts that false pride of opinion which would impel us to persevere in wrong for the sake of consistency, rather than yield a just submission to the unforeseen exigencies by which we are now surrounded. Let us with deep reverence beseech him to restore the friendship and good will which prevailed in former days among the people of the several States; and, above all, to save us from the horrors of civil war and "blood-guiltiness." Let our fervent prayers ascend to His Throne that He would not desert us in this hour of extreme peril, but remember us as he did our fathers in the darkest days of the revolution; and preserve our Constitution and our Union, the work of their hands, for ages yet to come.

An Omnipotent Providence may overrule existing evils for permanent good. He can make the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath he can restrain. -- Let me invoke every individual, in whatever sphere of like he may be placed, to feel a personal responsibility to God and his country for keeping this day holy, and for contributing all in his power to remove our actual and impending calamities.

James Buchanan.

Washington, Dec. 14, 1860.

Edited November 26, 2009 by Danno

[Peikko 1,575]

Right Danno. I am quite sure that is your line of reasoning. The problem is, it isn't reasoning. Church and state separation is nothing to do with whether people in government pray or not.