Sunday, November 30, 2008
The state should pray in Christ's name
From the RoundTable blog
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Tom Taylor
Taylor, of Roanoke, is retired from Norfolk Southern Corp.
In 1946, an adventurer named John Caldwell tried to sail single-handed across the Pacific Ocean in a 29-foot sailboat. After several months at sea and nearly dead from starvation, Caldwell wrecked on a coral reef off an island of Fiji.
The islanders rescued him and, with considerable cost and effort to themselves, nursed him slowly back to health. They dove down into the water and retrieved his valuables, including his wedding ring, and gave it all back to him.
This incident is worth noting because if Caldwell had wrecked on the island only 100 years earlier, the Fijians likely would have killed and eaten him. How fortunate that Methodist missionaries had arrived a century before he did, and the Fijians and their society had been transformed by the power and name of Jesus.
I thought about this when reading of how Virginia's State Police superintendant, with the passive consent of Gov. Tim Kaine, recently prohibited police chaplains at formal functions from praying in the name of Jesus.
We Virginians should not so casually silence that name. Some 1,700 years ago, the ancestors of many of us were little different from the pre-Christian Fijians. The barbaric tribes of Europe, the Franks and Saxons, lived in savagery and blood lust. The savage Norsemen raided and killed, then drank mead from the skulls of their victims.
But, fortunately for us, our distant ancestors were gradually transformed and civilized as the Christian gospel slowly advanced through ancient Europe and Scandinavia. It is easily arguable that Western Civilization with its liberty, self-government and scientific advance came into existence because of the influence and power of Jesus Christ.
And now our state police chaplains cannot formally pray in his name. There's no record of anyone having complained or filed suit about such prayers. So it's a mystery why the superintendant felt it necessary to step forward at this time and prohibit chaplains from praying as Christians have prayed, publicly or privately, since the beginning of America.
Kaine, a former missionary himself, should realize Christians believe we approach the throne of God only by the merit of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for our sins. To forbid a Christian to pray in Jesus's name is to forbid him to pray at all. It's no wonder six troopers resigned from the chaplain program rather than comply.
Republican Dels. Morgan Griffith and Bill Carrico are reportedly planning to introduce a law to reverse the ban when the General Assembly convenes in January. I hope their efforts succeed. And, when the inevitable ACLU challenge goes to court, I sincerely hope we get a judge who knows something about American history and the source of our liberties.
We need a judge who understands, as Patrick Henry said: "This great nation was founded ... not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here."
