Posted by The Marines in the picture below are all bowing their heads. Are they all ashamed of something? Is this the military equivalent of “taking a knee”? No. Guess what! They bow their heads because they are all praying! Oy, oy, oy! Not woke.
This happened on November 10, 2017 during a ceremony in honor of the birthday of the Corps and the ACLU was horrified.
“ACLU” stands for “American Civil Liberties Union”, i.e. an organization that supposedly defends the civil liberties of American Citizens. The term ‘liberties’ is typically used for liberties that are not religious and based on our Constitution or tradition. For liberty in the field of religion or for just “being free” in a general sense the English language prefers the term “freedom”.
Many of you have probably noticed that the ACLU has been rather selective about what civil liberties it defends. Or have you ever heard the ACLU say a word in defense of the terrible 2nd Amendment?
About the praying Marines, Lucius Traveler, a spokesman for the ACLU, had this to say:
“These are federal employees on federal property and on federal time… For them to pray is clearly an establishment of religion, and we must nip this in the bud immediately.”
In other words: the ACLU sees praying soldiers as a violation of the principle of the separation of church and state.
The ACLU seems to be unclear on various concepts. While the Constitution does not mention the principle of separation of church and state, it is certainly a very viable principle, but it does not mean what Mr. Traveler seems to think it means.
Some European constitutions mention the separation of church and state. The German Basic Law for example says: “There shall be no State Church”. This means that the State should remain neutral in matters of religion and church. But the German Basic Law is also based on the “recognition by the German people of their responsibility before God and humanity”.
In France, the Roman Catholic Church has been the state religion and state church for hundreds of years. The French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on December 9, 1905. Enacted during the Third Republic, it established strict state secularism in France. At the time, France was governed by a Left Coalition (Bloc des gauches). Still, the law enshrined not only religious neutrality of the state but also freedom of religious exercise for the people. It is seen as the backbone of the French principle of “laïcité” (secularism).
Although the term ‘church’ has also come to mean a building or organization, the original Greek term ‘ecclesia’ meant ‘a gathering, an assembly’, in Latin ‘congregatio’ from which the English ‘congregation’ is derived. Originally, a church was the people who came together to worship in a common way, not the building in which they did so. Today, it is often used to mean a particular Christian denomination. But the truest meaning of the word ‘church’ is still ‘an assembly of religious believers’.
The Oxford Dictionary defines religion as the “belief in and/or worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods”. However, religions are always associated with human core values and general rules for human behavior.
In fact, for a religious person, religion provides guidelines for all aspects of life, death, and even afterlife. For a religious person, religion is not limited to praying and singing in church on Sundays from 11 – 12. Religion pervades all aspects of a religious person’s life. Religion tells a believer how to seek consolation from God in difficult situations and when dealing with serious problems. Religious values serve the religious person as a decision-making compass that facilitates navigation through the storms of life. Soldiers may also be religious persons.
Most of the early European settlers left Europe because their governments, their Kings and other noble rulers, usurped the right to dictate what religious beliefs their subjects should have and in what manner they should congregate and worship. Henry VIII, for example, tried to force all of his subjects to switch from Catholicism to Anglicanism when he cut his ties with the Pope, who would not allow him to divorce and remarry.
During the 30-years war (1618 – 1648) in Europe between Catholics and Protestants the rule of “Cuius regio, eius religio” prevailed: Subjects were expected to adopt the religion or church of their ruler. That really was a union of state and church or state and religion.
From these conditions of forced religion, the first settlers ran away, and this is the reason why the first segment of the 1st Amendment reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…”
Note that this says two different things:
- Congress shall not establish any religion, i.e. a religion mandated by the state;
- Congress shall not interfere with the free exercise of religion.
How come then that the ACLU finds it unacceptable that soldiers of the United States of America freely exercise their religion?
Even if this happens on the taxpayer’s dime, the few minutes spent on praying are nothing compared to the many enormously wasteful government spending programs. If this gives the soldiers emotional fortitude and spiritual consolation when they are deployed to face death for the taxpayer’s benefit, the few tax dollars spent on praying time may be a very good investment.
Maybe it is because the ACLU does not consider religious freedom a civil liberty? They would have a point if it were not mentioned in the Constitution. Making the free exercise of religion a constitutional right, however, makes it also a civil liberty! Soldiers praying is not a union of state and church but their free exercise of religion as per our Constitution.
But I doubt that the ACLU was motivated by any of this. This organization has long since mutated into a left-wing socialist and now woke spearhead in the culture war against traditional American mainstream culture, which includes religion and churches, of course. The final goal of the woke culture warriors is the destruction of our core values and our Constitution, which happen to be rooted in our Judeo-Christian religious beliefs and history.
Man bashing, transgenderism, post-partum “abortion” (infanticide in my book or a repetition of the Baal cult), race baiting and hate mongering, entitlement thinking, and the dissolution of marriage, of the traditional family, and of the nation state are almost all incompatible with the core values of most Christian, Jewish, and Islamic denominations.
This is why all religious people – even the Muslims – have a cross on their back. But it’s not a Christian cross. It’s the crosshairs of a rifle scope. Religion is an obstacle for the implementation of the great new liberal world order, which is by nature atheist, collectivist, and totalitarian. Religion must go.
That’s why the ACLU is upset about praying soldiers.
Thank God, there are still some men with toxic masculinity in this broke woke world. When asked about the ACLU’s charges, Colonel Jack Fessender, speaking for the Commandant of the Corps said:
“To hell with the ACLU! God Bless Our Warriors. Send the ACLU to Afghanistan! Then watch those sons of bitches pray.”
Amen. And bless you, Colonel Fessender.