Tuesday 9 February 2010
The framers of the US Constitution were wary of all such public piety. Not for nothing did they omit the word “God’’ from its clauses. Official government exercises that assume divine license for the nation, whether celebrated with china and linen in Washington or with meals-ready-to-eat at Special Forces camps in Afghanistan, are bad politics. Equally troubling, their presumptuous appropriation of God’s will makes them bad religion. With an ideological past, and a banal present, the national prayer breakfast, given our self-sanctifying wars, bodes ill for the future. James Carroll ☀
