Public Invocation or Private Meditation?

Yesterday's fiasco in the Senate was hardly a shining example of Christian love and charity toward an unbelieving neighbor. As I said yesterday, there are probably a dozen better ways to make the point that the Senate chamber is not an appropriate venue for giving such prominence to a religion practiced by a miniscule number of American citizens just to make a statement about religious tolerance. The protest certainly fell under the category of "Yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theater" and the protestors were, appropriately, ejected from the chamber and arrested. Quietly humming "Amazing Grace" would have been far more appropriate, more effective, and, in all likelihood, an acceptable breach of Senate decorum.

That being said, the decision to invite a Hindu spiritual leader to offer the opening prayer is not an illustration of religious tolerance on the part of the Senate leadership. It is, rather, a glaring illustration of religious indifferentism and ignorance. The prayer offered by Hinu religious leader Rajan Zed was nothing if not benign.

We meditate on the transcendental glory of the deity supreme, who is inside the heart of the Earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of the heaven. May he stimulate and illuminate our minds.

What should be immediately apparent is that the prayer is purely introspective, calling upon some vague "deity supreme" who is "inside" the earth, sky, and heaven. He has no name to honor, no face to seek; only a "transcendental glory" on which to "meditate." It is, in other words, not a public invocation but a private meditation. It is for this reason, moreso than the fact that it was offered by a non-Christian cleric, that this prayer was inappropriate for so public a setting.