Hindu shouted down by 'Christian patriots' as he prays in U.S. Senate

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

Senate | Hindu | Religious Intolerance | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Blogs against theocracy: 'We're not gonna take it!'

Bro. Don Tansey of the blog Movable Jewel has already said it better than I could. He said it politely. I'm more prone to ranting when it comes to this subject.

I stand with him and other bloggers this weekend in putting Christian fundamentalists on notice: We're not gonna take it!

Keep your hypocritical, overzealous, ultra-conservative, paranoid religious hands off the U.S. Constitution, the judiciary, federal, state and local governments, our schools, our kids, our bedrooms, our lodge rooms, and every other aspect of our lives you would like to control. Your twisted theological views do not represent the views of the majority of Christians or Americans, and your actions certainly aren't what Jesus would do.

The United States of America is not a theocracy. It will never be one.

Keep your church separated — stand way back! — from our state.

• Jesus is not a Republican. Or a Democrat. Or even an American.
• The Bible ain't science. Don't try forcing teachers to teach creationism in public schools. Take your own kids to that silly dinosaur park Kent Hovind created to teach that dinosaurs roamed the earth a couple of thousand years ago, but leave my kids out of it.
• Decisions about health and the use of medicines, alcohol and plants, abortion, and how to end your own life are personal decisions, not decisions to be made by your groups.
• All people are God's children... "red and yellow, black and white," as the Sunday School song goes. "Love one another," as Jesus said. "All you need is love," sang the Beatles. Stop being racists, sexists and homophobic. You're not any more special than the rest of us.
• God didn't tell George W. Bush to invade Iraq, and He damn sure doesn't support the war.
• God doesn't "hate fags," no matter how many signs you wave at soldiers' funerals.
• All families should be respected, no matter what form they take. It's none of your business who someone marries, or what someone does behind closed doors.
• Art is art. If you don't like it, don't watch it, read it, or look at it. Quit trying to keep the rest of us from watching it, reading it or going to museums to see it. (I thought the Chocolate Jesus was a minor masterpiece.)

Inside the dome of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a quotation by Thomas Jefferson: "I swear upon the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Let his words be a warning to those who would replace American democracy with a Calvinist theocracy. Millions of us agree with Jefferson.

I have one suggestion for the fundamentalist Christians who want to rule America using eye-for-an-eye, hateful, vindictive, archaic Old Testament rules and practices and Paulian propaganda: Rip every page out of your Bible and burn them, except for one verse.

1 John 4:8 — Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Related websites: Blog Against Theocracy, First Freedom First, Journeys with Jood, Center for Inquiry, American Humanist Association, and many more.

Theocracy | Church and State | Religious Intolerance | Freemasonry | Fundamentalist | Christian | Fundamentalist |Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com