As bizarre as it might sound, Christians are actually trying to argue that "The Lord's Prayer" isn't really a Christian prayer. It's part of a lawsuit in Sussex County, Delaware, where four residents are trying to get the Sussex County Council to stop reciting The Lord's Prayer as an official part of their proceedings at every meeting.
The "defense," if you want to call it that, is that government bodies are permitted to recite generic prayers or invocations. This requires arguing that The Lord's Prayer is generic rather than specifically Christian.
[County attorney J. Scott] Shannon said the language of the Lord's Prayer is tolerable and contains language that fits with widely held beliefs of people of other faiths. "It is not required that a prayer be inoffensive to all or that it be all-inclusive," Shannon argued.
In trying to determine whether the practice is constitutional, [U.S. District Court Judge Leonard P.] Stark asked several questions of both attorneys about the content of the Lord's Prayer, which begins with the words "Our Father" but does not make specific reference to Jesus Christ or the Lord. "Is there any dispute that today, only Christians say the Lord's Prayer?" Stark asked Shannon.
Shannon acknowledged the prayer is commonly associated with Christianity, but argued the prayer derived from a Jew -- Jesus Christ. "(Jesus) was not offering a Christian prayer in the Christian tradition because no Christian tradition existed," Shannon said.
The words "Our Father" are an implicit reference to Jesus, [Alex Luchenitser, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State] said. "That's a Christian way of referring to Jesus," Luchenitser said. "This is not something reasonable people disagree over."
Source: Delmarva Now
It's amazing (and perhaps a bit depressing) how far Christians will go when trying to insist that something specific to their religion is really somehow "generic" and non-Christian. At best, this is a demonstration of extreme blindness due to Christian privilege. It's like when a person assumes that some traditionally "masculine" behavior is the "norm" for all human beings, thus any traditionally "feminine" behavior is an aberration.
But that's the best excuse for such arguments and I don't honestly think that such an excuse is very often (if ever) true or legitimate. You'd have to be capable of stupendous feats of self-deception in order not to recognize that The Lord's Prayer is Christian.
Consider for a moment this argument offered by county attorney J. Scott Shannon: Jesus wasn't a Christian praying in a Christian tradition, ergo the prayer isn't Christian. By that reasoning, the entire text of the gospels isn't "Christian" because neither Jesus nor the apostles were themselves Christians acting or speaking in any Christian tradition. Not a single quote attributed to Jesus could be considered specifically "Christian" if we accepted that line of "reasoning".
But who could seriously and sincerely believe such an asinine argument? As Alex Luchenitser says, this is not something that reasonable people disagree over. J. Scott Shannon is either presenting an argument he knows is stupid and false because he has nothing better, or he is so unreasonable and dumb that he can't recognize how bad his argument is. Which do you suppose is the case?
No comments:
Post a Comment