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Source
In addition to opening proceedings with prayer, the Chaplain provides pastoral counseling to the House community, coordinates the scheduling of guest chaplains, and arranges memorial services for the House and its staff. In the past, Chaplains have performed marriage and funeral ceremonies for House members.
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Throughout the more than 200-year history of our nation, prayer has played a vital role in strengthening the fabric of our society. The purposes of the Congressional Prayer Caucus are to 1) recognize the vital role that prayer by individuals of all faiths has played in uniting us as a people and in making us a more generous, more cooperative, and more forgiving people than we might otherwise have been; 2) collect, exchange, and disseminate information about prayer as a fundamental and enduring feature of American life; 3) use the legislative process – both through sponsorship of affirmative legislation and through opposition to detrimental legislation – to assist the nation and its people in continuing to draw upon and benefit from this essential source of our strength and well-being. Members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus also work together to preserve the presence of religion, faith, and morality in the marketplace of ideas.
originally posted by: Secret009
a reply to: Xcathdra
Please name the atheist holiday you are referring to / making up.
originally posted by: Xcathdra
originally posted by: Secret009
a reply to: Xcathdra
Please name the atheist holiday you are referring to / making up.
Since atheists don't have "holidays", and since religions don't have holidays every single day, it was a sarcastic comment that was saying Atheists get their own "holidays (IE a normal day no religion claims as a holiday). When taken into account religious holidays can account for maybe 30-50 days out of the year.
meaning religious groups celebrate their religion far less frequently than atheists celebrate their non holidays.
From 1999 through 2007, and again from January 2009 through June 2010, every meeting was opened with a Christian-oriented invocation. In 2008, after residents Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens complained, four of 12 meetings were opened by non-Christians, including a Jewish layman, a Wiccan priestess and the chairman of the local Baha'i congregation. Galloway and Stephens are described in their court filings as a Jew and an atheist.
But a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that even with the high court's 1983 ruling, the practice of having one Christian prayer after another amounted to the town's endorsement of Christianity.
Kennedy, however, said judges should not be involved in evaluating the content of prayer because that could lead to legislatures requiring "chaplains to redact the religious content from their message in order to make it acceptable for the public sphere."
The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.
originally posted by: grainofsand
It still makes me chuckle to think that politicians/lawmakers of any flavour anywhere actually pray for guidance or whatever before a meeting these days. When did a prayer ever settle a budget deficit or assist in a planning decision? Lol ...kind of cute really, if it wasn't by people who are supposed to be looking for rational ways to govern a society.
originally posted by: Secret009
a reply to: TiedDestructor
"It's called Reverence and it requires humility.
Some of us are still humble you know? "
The irony is completely lost on you, isn't it?
May the flying spaghetti monster grant you a favorable crop yield this season.