New School Prayer

Posted by Jack

Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule

For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd..

If scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.

And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene.

The law is specific, the law is precise.
P
rayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.

In silence alone we must meditate,
God’s name is prohibited by the State.

We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.

They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the ‘unwed daddy,’ our Senior King.

It’s ‘inappropriate’ to teach right from wrong.
We’re taught that such ‘judgments’ do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.

But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.

It’s scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school’s a mess..

So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!

Amen

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

16 Responses to New School Prayer

  1. Chris says:

    I’d really expect better of you than to promote such easily disprovable lies, Jack. Unlike some of your friends, you are not a theocrat, and I’ve never known you to lie in order to promote theocratic ideals.

    Prayer is NOT against the rule at schools. Any child is allowed to pray, including out loud. Teachers simply cannot lead prayer during class time. I assume you don’t have a problem with that rule, unless you want Muslim teachers leading prayers during class time as well. The Bible is also not outlawed at schools, and students do learn about the Ten Commandments along with the principles of other religions.

    Lying is forbidden by the Bible, though.

    • Post Scripts says:

      Chris, it’s a poem, its written for humor and with a bit of cynicism as most humor is. To quote the great philosopher Rodney King, ” Can’t we all just get along?”

      • Chris says:

        Cynicism about what? Things that didn’t happen. Humor about what? Things that also didn’t happen. It is meant to deceive, Jack. You cannot tell me that the person who wrote it and those who spread it–including yourself–did not intend for it to mislead people into believing that prayer and the Bible are “outlawed” at schools. There’s no way. If that’s your argument–that the intent of this is not to give people that exact false impression–then you are just piling lies on top of lies.

        And it isn’t a “poem,” it’s a dumb, dishonest political chain e-mail. Calling it a poem is an insult to poetry.

  2. Tina says:

    It’s cynical poetry, Jack, and likely written by someone born before 1950 when Christianity and Judaism were not targets of denigration and protest in America and the standards based on the Bible acted as a personal shaming device for individuals as well as those who represented us. As long as we held those standards sacred in near unity we made improvement in relationships and social behaviors were generally polite and the people well mannered. It all ended about 1965 when the “offended” decided they knew better.

    Perhaps our friend Chris can open his mind to experiences that predate his own birth.

    The so-called principles that have supplanted earlier traditions have created unreasonable divisions and contentions in our nation. New age remedies often fail to address actual problems and only add anger and fire to the contentions. The so-called “offended” really have done a number on this nation.

    Christians and Jews are warned in the Bible that lying is sinful, no doubt about it.

    No book is cited that tells us how the godless should judge or be judged. Perhaps that’s how they get away with snarky judgement and relentless demands from others. Having no standards they are free to make it up as they go along. Standards are decided by gender, race, and party affiliation.

    Christians have a simple credo, a standard to live by. It isn’t precisely Biblical and should offend no one. It’s the Golden rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Even that has been rejected in favor of hyphenated special treatment, special consideration, special rights, safe spaces, and the banning of speech and assembly.

    It’s the overall negativity toward Christians that has changed dramatically and in many classrooms, if not schools, the things described in this poem have happened as a matter of protest and even harassment….often pressed into the courts. Acquiescence was often a product of the lack of funds to defend rather than agreement. That amounts to bullying, hard core bullying.

    You were not promoting theocratic ideals, Jack.

    You were promoting the ideals that formed this free nation and acted as the conscience of what became America and the American people for a number of centuries.

    It never hurts to remind us of the things we have thrown out in the godless pursuit of a “fundamental fairness,” a thing that hasn’t a chance in hell.

  3. Peggy says:

    Tina: “Perhaps our friend Chris can open his mind to experiences that predate his own birth.”

    Sadly, this will never happen because Chris is a member of the generation that demands tolerance from everyone, but has no understanding that others with different views and values are also entitled to have them.

    Since Chris’s generation is so unaccepting of others it’s impossible for them realize what they didn’t personally experience. If they didn’t live it, it didn’t happen and therefore doesn’t matter, while telling us we’re, wrong wrong wrong and bad bad bad.

    What’s funny is every generation rebels against their parents’ generation to some degree. I would love to be here still when Chris’s own kids rebel and reject his beliefs and values. History does repeat itself. Always has and always will.

    Here’s a little something to enjoy from the internet.

    Those were the days….

    Please read to the end! You will understand when you get there!

    Do you remember Murgatroyd?
    Would you believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word Murgatroyd?
    Heavens to Mergatroyd!

    Lost Words from our childhood:
    Words gone as fast as the buggy whip!
    Sad really!
    Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle.
    About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions
    that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology.
    These phrases included
    “Don’t touch that dial,”
    “Carbon copy,”
    “You sound like a broken record”’
    “Hung out to dry.”
    Back in the olden days we had a lot of ‘moxie.’
    We’d put on our best ‘bib and tucker’ to’ straighten up and fly right’
    Heavens to Betsy!
    Gee whillikers!
    Jumping Jehoshaphat!
    Holy moley!
    We were ‘in like Flynn’ and ‘living the life of Riley’’,
    and even a regular guy couldn’t accuse us of
    being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill.
    Not for all the tea in China!
    Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was swell?
    Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.;
    of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes
    and pedal pushers…AND DON’T FORGET… Saddle Stitched Pants
    Oh, my aching back! Kilroy was here, but he isn’t anymore.
    We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, Well, I’ll be ‘a monkey’s uncle!’ Or, This is a ‘fine kettle of fish’!
    We discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent, as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.
    Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we’ve left behind
    We blink, and they’re gone.
    Where have all those great phrases gone? ( My Favorite)” Let’s all go to the beach Saturday”….
    Long gone:
    Pshaw,
    The milkman did it.
    Hey! It’s your nickel.
    Don’t forget to pull the chain.
    Knee high to a grasshopper.
    Well, Fiddlesticks!
    Going like sixty.
    I’ll see you in the funny papers.
    Don’t take any wooden nickels.
    Wake up and smell the roses.
    It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff! (“Carter’s Little Liver Pills” are gone too!)
    We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeable times.
    For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age.
    We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words
    that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory.
    It’s one of the greatest advantages of aging.
    Leaves us to wonder where Superman will find a phone booth…
    See ya later, alligator!
    Okidoki
    WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE FABULOUS 50’S..
    NO ONE WILL EVER HAVE THAT OPPORTUNITY AGAIN…
    GOD GAVE US ONE OF OUR MOST PRECIOUS GIFTS:
    ………..OUR MEMORIES……

  4. Tina says:

    “Unlike some of your friends, you are not a theocrat, and I’ve never known you to lie in order to promote theocratic ideals.”

    Gosh Jack I didn’t know you had any “theocratic” friends.

    I do know that none of the Christians who post regularly on this blog have ever favored or promoted a theocracy. We are all proud patriots who stand firmly behind the republic our founders created and in particular the ideal that the people need protection against such an abhorrent, tyrannical ideal.

    Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry of Forbes takes on the left and the right in his piece, “Sorry Liberals, America Was (Also) Founded As A Religious Nation.” His article expresses my thoughts pretty well:

    …if there’s anything the Founding Fathers understood–and that too many progressives seem to have a harder time getting a grasp on–it’s the difference between the state and the society. And another difference they too rarely seem to grasp is the difference between a government explicitly affiliated with a religious tradition and a government animated by values drawn from this religious tradition.

    The argument was never that America had or ought to have a religious government, it’s that it was founded as a religious nation. The nation includes the government (at its various levels), but also the society. And this is indisputably true.

    Because there is one inescapable fact: at the time of the American founding, the reason why so many Englishmen had come to settle in the United States was for religious reasons. They were Puritans and other sorts of radical Christians whose religion had been oppressed in Britain and who came to the United States to practice their religion in peace.

    It is this crucial fact that gave the wonderful balance that gave rise to America: because so many Americans were fervently Christian, the Nation would have a Christian culture and society; but because they had seen their religious freedom oppressed, and because they were so many denominations, the government would be neutral with regard to institutional forms of Christianity and with regard to specific denominations. It was seen as self-evident than in a country where most people were Christians, their democratic representatives would govern according to Christian values.

    Hence the Establishment Clause, which says absolutely nothing about Christian values in government, but says everything about the English experience and the experience of some states in the United States: the belief by the new Americans that having an established religion is wrong, not so much to protect the government but rather to protect religion.

    Even the non-Christians among the Founders knew this. The Founders were nothing if not steeped in the Enlightenment and its rationalism, but they also understood the importance of Christian values in animating society and government. A great example of this is the famous “Jefferson Bible”, which Jefferson built by literally cutting out the miraculous elements of the Bible, but keeping the ethical teaching. In other words, even as Jefferson rejected the core of Christianity as it had been understood for 17 centuries–the divinity of Jesus, and his atoning death and bodily resurrection–he recognized that the ethics of Christianity were still vital to a sound moral order and a sound life. (And yes, one can’t help but wonder if he had accepted everything about Christianity, how his behavior in re: slavery would have been different.)

    And of course, it is no coincidence that the Founders proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that the reason why people had human rights was because they were so endowed by their Creator. (Even as they said nothing about the precise identity of this Creator, to protect religious pluralism.)

    The radical ungodly left in this country, because of the tolerance of the American people, have had decades to destroy the “ethics of Christianity” and they have done a bang up job of it. The tragedy is the millions of children whose futures have been destroyed by the alternative counter culture morality: “If it feels good do it,” “Love the one you’re with,” “God is dead,” “Question authority,” “Drugs, sex and Rock and Roll,” “Turn on, tune in, drop out” “Do your own thing.” The cry was for peace but the protest was often out of control, belligerent, and violent. There was not much that was civilized or tolerant about the leaders of this movement who we discover are narcissistic ideologues who secretly think that if only the world were run by them everyone would experience bliss. They see themselves as gods, no wonder they wanted to trash every ethical or moral standard their parents held.

    It isn’t the state so much as the society that could use some good old fashioned Christian inspired standards. See also The American Thinker:

    Since the pursuit of happiness, as Sigmund Freud surmised, is tied to human love and to creative work and play, the principles of American Judeo-Christian Values can rightly be summarized as the honoring of God-given Life, Liberty and Creativity. This seed of American Social Justice was then fleshed out in the U.S. Constitution through reason and common sense, unencumbered by the dysfunctional religious and secular traditions and laws of Old Europe.

    Our Founding Fathers separated church from state, but they wisely did not separate God from state; they acknowledged God as the source of our rights, and, in fact, they were careful to place Biblical morality directly into our founding documents and laws, and into our values and culture precisely to help prevent a future of totalitarian or tyrannical rule in America. The combination of keeping Judeo-Christian religious morality in the state, as opposed to the church it’s self; and, additionally, setting up our laws based on reason and common sense has contributed to the American Character, and to what is known as “American Exceptionalism.”

    Our Founding Fathers were religious in a new way, the Judeo-Christian way, and they were the liberals of their day by deducing that our political and human rights come from a power higher than human government; but they were conservative to Biblical morality. There was and still is a connection between God and Liberty; He is the author of it. It is ironic that American Conservatives are now the champion of this our most liberal founding principle; and also an irony that most American Conservatives are wholly unaware of their connection with the liberal founding ideas of this great republic. It is also an irony that many American Liberals have turned a blind eye to the required connection between God and Liberty. As Thomas Jefferson and John Adams noted, as you will see below, Liberty cannot survive among men without its Divine connection.

    In Judeo-Christian America one finds the idea of equality before God and the law, but not government forced economic equality. Modern European culture has stressed the value of economic equality rather than Liberty, and their governments unjustly enforce the principle. This has led to the failed European inventions of Socialism and Communism. Socialists in America have been lured into this failed European idea of social justice. Socialism is a failure in that it unjustly suppresses human creativity by excessively taxing away its rewards, and by foolishly giving economic reward to many who, even though mentally and physically able, fail to honor their Divine privilege and duty to work creatively.

    Thus, Socialism is a dual insult to God-given creativity. Communism was much worse in that it also dishonored the sacredness of human life and liberty. Communism was the inevitable result of separating not just church from state, but God from state. Communism dishonored God’s gifts of Life, Liberty and Creativity. European cultures have historical ties to authoritarian and totalitarian systems dating back to the Roman Empire. Even European Christianity was, for a time, contaminated by its links to authoritarian rule.

    American Judeo-Christian Culture, on the other hand, has been linked to honoring Life, Liberty and Creativity from the outset; deriving its wisdom from the lights of reason, common sense, and both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament Christian Bible. Thomas Jefferson and the great majority of our Founding Fathers explicitly put God into the national life of the United States, by putting the Creator into the Declaration of Independence. It is important that American Liberty has something to do with God; that is something for students to know and discuss, even if they are not particularly religious. This does not represent some form of tyranny of the religious majority or an injustice; it was in fact the wisdom of our Founding Fathers to stand in opposition to tyranny and injustice by acknowledging the source of our rights — those rights originating from God rather than from King George III, or for that matter from the Soviet or Chinese Politburo, or a courthouse, or a legislature. …

    The ideals we value as Americans, as expressed by Dennis Prager, as well as quotes from our founders follow…I urge anyone interested to read the entire article.

  5. Tina says:

    Another great article on this general theme can be read today at The American Thinker – “Anarchy Is Swallowing Up the Social Order,” by E. Jeffrey Ludwig,

  6. Chris says:

    So neither of you are going to a) acknowledge that this garbage chain e-mail masquerading as a “prayer” is full of lies done in the Lord’s name or b) try and rebut the fact that it is full of lies. You’ve chosen c) sling insults at the person who pointed out that it was full of lies. Typical.

    You literally do not care that it is full of lies. You do not care about the truth. You only care that it gave you another reason to hate your enemy.

    I’m really glad I don’t spend significant time here anymore.

  7. Tina says:

    I described it as cynical poetry, Chris. The author used a common nursery prayer to begin his poem but it was meant as political/social commentary.

    At times you read way too much into a posting, IMHO.

    “lies done in the Lord’s name”

    It’s hardly a lie when you’ve experienced it. I experienced the removal of Christian values, music, and images from our schools, including secular images like Santa. I’ve seen the transition to secular ideas and the negative results of that transition. I’ve witnessed the lone activist-offended parties who manage to bully an end to Bible verses, music or prayer, even very generic music or prayer, and even in a predominantly Christian communities. I watched as tolerant, predominantly Christian communities accommodated the activist-offended over decades until the demands became obviously political, ridiculous, and phony.

    Intimidation is a tool as effective as actual laws or rules. Your party is filled with activist and groups who are expert at intimidation. Majority rule, a democratic principle, doesn’t figure into these leftist games! And the games are deadly serious. The mere threat of a lawsuit is enough to intimidate a district into acquiescence!

    District, state, or federal rules and laws don’t always stop individual teachers from playing the intimidation game and causing districts potential for a lawsuit and the associated costs:

    A news item of May 2014, FOX News:

    A Florida school teacher humiliated a 12-year-old boy in front of an entire class after she caught him reading the Bible during free reading time.

    The teacher, at Park Lakes Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale, ordered Giovanni Rubeo to pick up the telephone on her desk and call his parents.

    As the other students watched, the teacher left a terse message on the family’s answering machine.

    “I noticed that he has a book – a religious book – in the classroom,” she said on the recording. “He’s not permitted to read those books in my classroom.

    Very radical elements of your party, who display no tolerance whatsoever, are behind all kinds of efforts to tear apart those values that make for a more civil society and, I might add, a better atmosphere for children to learn and grow to be responsible adults.

    “sling insults at the person who pointed out…”

    Like you’ve never slung insults…or misrepresented the views of people you obviously hold great animosity toward on PS…as you did when you cited Jacks “theocratic” friends and called Jack a liar.

    Most Americans don’t expect the Bible to be a prominent part of our secular educational system. We understand the sound reasoning behind remaining religiously neutral in our schools. However, certain principles have been abandoned, principles that derive from the Bible, that were once part of every classroom experience. The expectation that students would have respect for their elders (teachers, principle, aides, cafeteria workers, janitor), respect for their fellow students, and respect for books, classroom materials, the walls, auditorium, etc. The personal obligation to do homework. Keeping your hands to yourself, throwing garbage in the trash cans, cooperating when asked to do something.

    Teachers are intimidated and threatened by students who have not learned from an early age to respect their elders. Students and teachers are dying because so many of the values that acted as barriers and guidelines have been broken down and removed. The cynicism in the poem is there because this is a very serious problem!

    Unfortunately it isn’t just the classroom where the values that held our nation together have been abandoned but at least in former times students could be exposed to them in the classroom when parents failed to teach them in the home.

    I would think as a teacher you would be able to understand the underlying message. I would think you would at least be open or curious about the sentiment being expressed. Your knee jerk attitude misses the mark completely.

    The thing that’s wanted is a more civilized atmosphere in the classroom, outside the classroom, and in society as well-trained (supported!) students thrive and then transition to a productive life. We want less crime, drug use, and gangs. We want class time that isn’t spent handling dysfunctional social issues. We want a better start for kids.

    Why all the hostility?

    • Chris says:

      Tina,

      Nothing you wrote justifies this chain e-mail’s false claims that “praying is against the rule” in schools, that the Bible is “outlawed,” or that students cannot speak God’s name aloud.

      Instead of diverting to other claims, you should simply admit that these claims are false.

    • Harold says:

      Why all the hostility ?, Tina you could liken it to the fable of the “frog and scorpion, it’s just in their nature”.

      I would wager most all your readers saw the relevance of the poem based on todays happenings, and didn’t equate solely, if at all to religion.

      Excellent chronical of a generation that has witnessed the decay of values we once held dear.

      • Tina says:

        Thanks Harold. The incredible thing about Chris’s anger is that it was my own generation that is responsible for the decay. Therefore the poem and our appreciation of it’s sentiment is criticism of our own mistakes. Chris could celebrate that if he were able to get over his personal, hall monitor style crusade.

        After reading Chris’s reply, it’s more clear than ever that Chris doesn’t get how we experienced this poem. Instead he dips into his bag of attitudes to project negative attributes from his warped, hateful perspective of Christians. Chris doesn’t tolerate differences of opinion on a couple of issues well and I believe that is the source of his ire.

  8. Tina says:

    CS Monitor, “School prayer: 50 years after the ban, God and faith more present than ever”

    School prayer was banned by the US Supreme Court 50 years ago, but there is probably more presence of religion in public school environments – through club ministries, classes, after-school and interfaith programs, and faith-based services – than ever.

    School sponsored prayer was banned so, technically, the lines, “Now I sit me down in school – Where praying is against the rule,” is accurate…a change in the law did occur.

    Chris, as I wrote before, the person who wrote this has a different experience than you, a different sense of history.

    What do your ape sh*t demands accomplish? Makes you look like a petty, closed minded adolescent. You are straining at a gnat!

    I will not address this again but you are, of course, free to continue to strain as if this poem were an official document rather than cynical observations about the state of morals and ethics teaching in our public schools from a Christian perspective. I believe it’s called free expression…free speech. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.

  9. Tina says:

    I recommend an excellent article in The American Spectator today, “Relativistic America: Neither Safe Nor Free,” by George Neumayr. A quote: “If a country’s culture is sick, it doesn’t matter what legislation passes. The people won’t follow the law and a corrupt and incompetent government won’t enforce it.”

    Even many of our leaders today do not observe and enforce the law!

    Excellent article and a must read.

  10. Chris says:

    School sponsored prayer was banned so, technically, the lines, “Now I sit me down in school – Where praying is against the rule,” is accurate…a change in the law did occur.

    So then the poem is complaining not that kids are banned from praying, but that teachers are banned from leading their class in prayer.

    Why is that better? You believe it’s a problem that teachers can’t instruct their students to pray?

    So you’d have no problem with a Muslim teacher instructing students to pray to Allah, right?

    • Libby says:

      Nicely done, Chris.

      But they will, irrationally, wriggle out of any sensible acknowledgement of the idiocy of their position.

      And it is not possible to “discuss” anything with anyone who will not acknowledge a common frame of reference, e.g., prayer for A = prayer for B … and also for C, D, E, and F … which is why a sensible society leaves prayer in the home.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.