Richmond – Virginia state Democrats on Tuesday stormed out of the House chamber after a local black minister led the body in an opening prayer that openly and strongly condemned abortion and gay marriage.
Rev. Robert M. Grant Jr., who pastors The Father’s Way Church in Warrenton, used his few moments at the microphone addressing the newly Democrat-controlled House of Delegates to decry abortion, advocate for traditional marriage, and warn against God’s wrath if the state legislature goes against Biblical principles.
“I pray that you may understand that all life is precious and worthy of a chance to be born. God is the giver of life and people have no right or authority to take life. The unborn have rights and those rights need to be protected. They should never be denied the right to exist, the right to develop or the right to have a family,” he said from the podium.
“The word of God has given us a warning: woe to anyone who harms an innocent child,” he added, telling state lawmakers that “every one of you sitting here today can guarantee these rights to these little innocent children of Virginia.”
“Please do not ignore their little voices. I pray for a heart change today, and may the Lord God have mercy upon this leadership,” he went on.
Grant then switched to gay marriage.
“We should never rewrite what God has declared,” he continued, praying that the state would “always protect the biblical definition of marriage” between one man and one woman.
Loraine Huchler says
My pastor asserts opinions and beliefs that I don’t share. But I respectfully listen and consider his perspective. Why? Because I want the same privilege of free speech and respect and tolerance for other ideas – even ideas that I reject for my own set of morals, ethics and values. And because I want to live in a CIVIL society – not the intolerant, disrespectful behaviors of these Virginia Democrats. They were elected to serve all of their constituents – not just the constituents who agree with their ideology.
Joseph Francis Corcoran says
But do you respect The Constitution ? Separation of church and State means that the speech was in an inappropriate venue .
Ray Otton says
No such thing as “separation of church and state”.
All it says in the Constitution is that there will be no STATE SPONSORED religion.
People who say this incorrectly understand the phrase to mean either a separation of morality from lawmaking or a separation of religiously informed opinion from the lawmaker.
Both are mistaken.
First, separation of church and state does not mean a separation of moral reasoning from public policy. Such a goal would be futile. The process of lawmaking is moral by its very nature. The government’s use of coercion would lack any justification without a moral foundation behind the laws it enforces.
Second, separation of church and state does not mean a separation of religiously informed moral reasoning from public policy.
It’s often said that religious people who run for office need to check their religion at the door before they make policy.
Whether secular or religious, everyone holds moral presuppositions.
Religious people cannot not be told to check their beliefs at the door simply because they are religiously based.
This smacks of arrogance, a noted trait among Progressives in today’s society.
In the end, government must be secular in that it does not favor one religion over another…………….nor favor non-religion over religion.
Paul Plante says
And interesting post.
end quotes
Ray Otton says
And I commend you on your brevity.
Paul Plante says
Of some relevance, perhaps, to what Mr. Otton has provided us for thought above here, in 1794, in his “Age of Reason,” Thomas Paine stated thusly about the “true religion” of many of the founders, to wit:
Age of Reason, Part First, Section 11
It seems as if parents of the Christian profession were ashamed to tell their children anything about the principles of their religion.
They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call Providence, for the Christian mythology has five deities — there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the God Providence, and the Goddess Nature.
But the Christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it (for that is the plain language of the story) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better is making the story still worse — as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.
How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism!
The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical.
end quotes (per Mr. Otton to let the reader know it is my own words that will follow, which I’m cool with, this being America and all).
It is out of that, in my opinion, that we ended up with “separation of church and state,” or rather, no “state-sponsored religion,” as we can see from Age of Reason, Part First, Section 15, to wit:
Having now extended the subject to a greater length than I first intended, I shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the whole.
First — That the idea or belief of a word of God existing in print, or in writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for reasons already assigned.
These reasons, among many others, are the want of a universal language; the mutability of language; the errors to which translations are subject: the possibility of totally suppressing such a word; the probability of altering it, or of fabricating the whole, and imposing it upon the world.
Secondly — That the Creation we behold is the real and ever-existing word of God, in which we cannot be deceived.
It proclaims his power, it demonstrates his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence.
Thirdly — That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation toward all his creatures.
That seeing, as we daily do, the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same toward each other; and, consequently, that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty.
I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence.
I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the Power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter, than that I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence began.
It is certain that, in one point, all the nations of the earth and all religions agree — all believe in a God; the things in which they disagree, are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and, therefore, if ever a universal religion should prevail, it will not be by believing anything new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed at first.
Adam, if ever there were such a man, was created a Deist; but in the meantime, let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and the worship he prefers.
end quotes
Given that that is a lot of words all at once, which according to Mr. Otton, and I don’t disbelieve him, overtax a lot of people he knows and makes them fall asleep, which if you are an older person isn’t all bad, I’ll stop there for the moment, because I think those words of Thomas Paine in 1794 put the truth to Mr. Otton’s post above about how the founders, who were Deists, viewed religion.
Paul Plante says
Staying with Mr. Otton’s comment that “Whether secular or religious, everyone holds moral presuppositions,” so that “Religious people cannot not be told to check their beliefs at the door simply because they are religiously based,” which smacks of arrogance, a noted trait among Progressives in today’s society, along with self-righteousness and empty-headedness, in his Age of Reason, Part II, Section 21, Thomas Paine in 1794, stated thusly about the spiritual beliefs of the nation’s founders back then, with George Washington, John Adams, Tommy Jefferson and Jemmy Madison being Deists, to wit:
Deism, then, teaches us, without the possibility of being deceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known.
The creation is the Bible of the Deist.
He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of his existence and the immutability of his power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.
end quotes
Now, there is an indication of how differently people two hundred twenty-six years thought about reality than do people of today, who see creation in the little box in the palm of their hand and nowhere else around them.
Continuing on, Paine said:
As this is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher, or even the prudent man, that would live as if there were no God.
But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in the Bible, and of the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog.
Viewing all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all.
end quotes
Now, we have to consider that when Paine wrote those words, TWITTER did not yet exist, so people back then were able to think larger thoughts than is the case today, where the average TWEET is just 33 characters long, which isn’t very long, at all, which takes us back to “The Age of Reason,” which this time we are in no longer is, or we wouldn’t need TWITTER to communicate with, to wit:
The notion of a Trinity of Gods has enfeebled the belief of one God.
A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided it is weakened.
Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form, instead of fact — of notion, instead of principles; morality is banished to make room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of God; an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and condemn the Jews for doing it.
A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the creation with the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there were none.
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity.
Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics.
As an engine of power it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple Deism.
It must have been the first, and will probably be the last, that man believes.
But pure and simple Deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments.
They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine, but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming, like the government, a party in the system.
It is this that forms the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the church humane, and the state tyrannic.
Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either.
To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone.
This is Deism.
But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits.
Ray Otton says
While we’re on the subject of rights, this would be a good time to remind the audience the government does not bestow our rights. If it did, they could also rescind those rights.
The Constitution doesn’t either.
The Constitution defines those rights AND states that they are bestowed by our creator, or if you are an agnostic, simply be being conceived.
Remember this the next time some idiot claims abortion, gay marriage and healthcare are rights but the 2nd amendment isn’t.
Paul Plante says
With respect to the right to bear arms in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Section 13 of Article I of the Virginia Constitution, the Virginia Bill of Rights, states thusly:
That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
end quotes
Notwithstanding that in Virginia, the Virginia Bill of Rights states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, we just saw the Virginia “Red Flag” Gun Confiscation Vote come up in the Virginia Senate as Senate Bill 240, sponsored by Senator George Barker, which would have granted the “state” the authority to seize a person’s firearms on baseless accusations without a hearing or other opportunity for a person to be heard in court, thus permitting the government to seize firearms based on weak evidence and nebulous standards of evidence.
So, does the right to keep and bear arms in Virginia really exist if the “state” can indeed step in and take it away, which it almost did, but for?
And the government in fact is bestowing “rights” all the time, as well as stripping them, as we see in the thread on Age of Reason where we had this stripping of rights presented to us, to wit:
The AGE OF REASON in the United States of America is unequivocally and officially dead as of December 2005 when now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer, then an appeals court judge on the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, ruled that it was for the good of society-at-large that a professional engineer who would not lie to them or deceive them with “scientific falsehoods” should be declared “mentally ill and dangerous” by the State of New York and consigned to a gulag (state mental hospital) for drug-induced “mind wiping.”
end quote
So much for due process of law and equal protection of law, which supposedly are guaranteed by the US Constitution.
In the meantime, in Juliana v. USA, a federal judge created out of whole cloth a brand new “right” which never existed before, as follows:
Exercising my “reasoned judgment,” id at 2598, I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.
Just as marriage is the “foundation of the family,” a stable climate system is quite literally the foundation “of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”
end quotes
So what really are “rights,” and where do they come from, especially when they can be stripped from a person as was the case of the engineer in New York state, which has a RED FLAG law?
As to the 2d Amendment, it is an amendment that was added by vote of the people, and hence, can be stripped from the Constitution by vote of the people, or simply ignored by federal judges, the way due process and equal protection of law can be ignored.
In the end, Mr. Otton, you have the “rights” you can afford to buy, and that is it.
Stuart Bell says
God may have already blessed us with the cure for cancer and that child was murdered in the name of Abortion.
Chas Cornwell says
Or…on a battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan. According to your logic. Unless you are a woman or the woman’s husband Stuart, you have no real say on bearing and raising a child. It’s their choice not yours. Until then, if you care so much for the sanctity of life, stand up against the imperialistic practices of this nation and pray for peace. Also, you could get a vasectomy.
Joseph Francis Corcoran says
Better yet , SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION AGAINST ALL ENEMIES BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC .
rick says
Are you really comparing Abortion to being killed defending your country in war? I bet you don’t stand for the National Anthem either.
Good Day sir
Stuart Bell says
HEAR! HEAR!!!!
Thanks, I have little interest in helping Liberal Democrats, especially a grown man who allows himself to be called Chas. I no longer view them as my fellow Americans.
I do pray for them.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when liberal men are afraid of the light.
Publius Americanus says
No, the grown man or woman on the battle fields is there by CHOICE.
The Baby had none.
You are intelligent enough to see that, yes?
Stuart Bell says
Exodus 20:12
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Kind of hard to do if your mother kills you!
Matthew 5:21
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’
Keep listening to failed governments telling you it is legal to kill humans…
Paul Plante says
You do have a way with words, Stuart Bell – plain and simple!
Well said.