Tony’s Tantrum: After Hindu-Led Prayer In Senate, FRC President Perkins Boosts Bigotry In U.S. Government

The flap over the first prayer offered by a Hindu in the U.S. Senate continues. We wrote yesterday about the event being disrupted by three Religious Right protestors, who taunted Rajan Zed as he began his invocation. The two women and one man begged Christ’s forgiveness for “allowing a prayer of the wicked” and shouted that Zed’s offering was an “abomination.” The prayer was interrupted three times before the protestors were removed by the sergeant-at-arms. 

Now, the leader of the Religious Right’s most prominent voice in Washington says it’s “inappropriate” for anyone other than a Christian or Jew to offer the legislature’s opening prayer. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wrote in today’s e-mail to supporters that Zed enjoys religious freedom in this country, “but does that mean it is appropriate for him to open the nation’s highest elected body in prayer? I think not.”

Perkins continued, “No one can legitimately challenge the fact that the God America refers to in the pledge, our national motto, and other places is the monotheistic God of the Jewish and Christian faith. I seriously doubt that Americans want to change the motto, ‘In God We Trust’… to ‘In gods We Trust.’ That is essentially what the United States Senate did today.”

Interestingly, the invocation – addressed to the “Deity Supreme” — seemed both monotheistic and largely non-sectarian. This fact was either lost on or ignored by Perkins because the fact that a Hindu was invited to participate as an equal in his government’s proceedings undermines the Religious Right’s view that America is a “Christian nation.”

Indeed, Religious Right activists cling to the fact that the first Congress hired chaplains, who in Perkins’ opinion, were selected to seek “divine direction for the leaders of a nation that had staked its future on principles of the Jewish and Christian scriptures.” It disregards the fact that our Founders took affirmative steps to preserve religious equality in our earliest statutes.

In 1779, for example, the Virginia legislature foiled an attempt to mention “Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion” in the preamble of the Statute for Religious Freedom. Thomas Jefferson, the bill’s author, later recounted that “the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.”

The Religious Right’s attitude towards religious diversity in public life is deeply troubling. Its leaders’ reaction to yesterday’s prayer makes clear that they are only concerned about their faith getting more attention in the public square.

Perkins’ comments are especially troubling because they suggest the Religious Right is becoming more theocratic than ever. The FRC condemned the first Hindu-led prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives seven years ago. “[W]hile it is true that the United States of America was founded on the sacred principle of religious freedom for all,” the group’s statement said, “that liberty was never intended to exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country’s heritage.” “Our Founders,” it concluded, “would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference.”

But Ken Connor, who took the helm of the FRC just afterward, was clearly embarrassed by the overt bigotry. He clarified the group’s position after Americans United released the biased FRC statement to national media and he was barraged with questions from an outraged news media. “We affirm the truth of Christianity,” the new statement read, “but it is not our position that America’s Constitution forbids representatives of religions other than Christianity from praying before Congress. We recognize that decisions on this matter are the prerogative of each house of Congress.” 

Perkins, in contrast, has given no indication he plans to clarify his position.   

This week’s flap over the Hindu-led prayer in the Senate is another example of why government meetings should not open with prayers. If they are going to, however, they must be nonsectarian and should reflect the diversity of the American people.

Remember, Tony, “the nation’s highest elected body” belongs to all of us.

By Lauren Smith