Last week the U.S. Senate had a Hindu priest give their opening invocation. As Rajan Zed, director of interfaith relations at a Hindu temple in Parma, Ohio attempted to speak, three unruly "Christian patriots" seated in the public gallery shouted him down.
One of them chanted, "Lord Jesus, forgive us Father for allowing a prayer which is an abomination in your sight. You are the one, true living God."
Ante Nedlko Pavkovic, Katherine Lynn Pavkovic and Christan Renee Sugar were arrested and charged with unlawful disruption of Congress.
The conservative American Family Association had been asking its members to protest via email and letters to senators because Zed, the first Hindu to offer the senate prayer, would be "seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god."
Debi Hartley, a Christian from Mobile, Alabama, wrote her senator to express her outrage that a Hindu would be allowed to say a prayer in Congress. "This is where the problems lie in our country... compromise!"
"Our founders expected that Christianity — and no other religion — would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate peoples' consciences and their right to worship," the conservative fundamentalist-evangelical Family Research Council said on its website.
What utter bullshit, Widow's Son said on his blog.
"They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference," the group's statement continued, according to an article on Belief.net. "As for our Hindu priest friend, the United States is a nation that has historically honored the One True God. Woe be to us on that day when we relegate Him to being merely one among countless other deities in the pantheon of theologies."
Woe indeed.
Watch it on YouTube or below.
Image: Shiva
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