Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} The Immanent Frame, purveyor of religious cogitation from the Social Science Research Council, has begun a […]

Among the five ways Obama is, in the view of Kristol’s latest WaPo column, “surprisingly vulnerable to political and substantive attack,” is his decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Kristol does not specify the nature of the president’s Guantanamo problem, contenting himself with the reflection that it is very like Jimmy Carter’s returning […]

Madison would have liked this: On this day of unity and prayer, let us also honor the service and sacrifice of the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. We celebrate their commitment to uphold our highest ideals, and we recognize that it is because of them that we continue to live in […]

President Obama’s decision to issue a Proclamation for the National Day of Prayer but take a pass on the East Room festivities laid on by his predecessor seems pretty much of a piece with James Madison’s efforts to walk the line between custom and constitutional mandate in the matter of presidential religious leadership. As Madison […]

As a student of the history of the use of “the Judeo-Christian tradition” in American public discourse, I can’t resist posting this Blitzer-mediated exchange between Carville and Donatelli on the president’s remarks concerning the kind of nation the United States is: not Christian or Jewish or Muslim but “a nation of citizens.” That is, of […]

Let’s put the grumbling about President Obama’s corralling of clergy to give vetted invocations at his Beyond-the-Beltway town meetings together with the grumbling over his choice of Federal District Judge David F. Hamilton to ascend to 7th Circuit. The invocations, according to Gilgoff’s sleuthing, have got to be inclusive. And Hamilton’s most controversial decision–at least […]

Civil Religion is about nothing if it is not about those who have died in the service of the nation. The battlefields where they fell are their shrines, and there are war memorials large and small in every city and town and village from Washington, DC on down. And so there is something disreputable about […]

It’s worth bearing in mind that opposition to relocating the Guantanamo prisoners to the mainland may have less to do concerns about security than with fear of a kind of infection. Take this statement from Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania: I don’t think the average murderer or rapist hates all […]

Steve Waldman has a good overview of the declining inclusivity of inaugural prayers over the past half-century. I find his overall argument persuasive and would only take slight exception to his claim that the country’s founders would have disagreed on the desirability of having prayers at the inauguration at all. Steve bases his claim on […]

It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who, at his second inaugural on January 20, 1937, began the practice of having prayers at the inauguration ceremony. Prior to that, the only manifestation of religion in the ceremony was the habitual use of a Bible for the swearing in—accompanied by the traditional (but not constitutionally mandated) phrase, “so […]

Unaware of the awesome magnitude (to say nothing of the wonder-working power) of religion in inaugural festivities these days, some of us chatterers have misunderestimated the extent of Barack Obama’s commitment to religious pluralism in organizing the members of the praying class for his ascension to the presidency. Yeah, there are the two Protestants at […]

So on the one hand, you’ve got the Rob Schencks and Patrick Mahoneys of the world doing all they can to sacralize the government, and then you’ve got Michael Newdow, the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, et al. doing all they can to desacralize it. I’m inclined to say a pox on both your houses and […]