Friday, August 26, 2011

No Clergy For 9-11 Memorial Service

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New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says no clergy will participate in the ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Rudy Washington, former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliana, still recovering from health issues related to his time at Ground Zero said, "I feel like America has lost its way."

He said, "This is America, and to have a memorial service where there's no prayer, this appears to be insanity to me."

"This is crazy." He told the press.

Indeed it is. He is not the only one who believes America has lost its way.

A poll taken by Reuters/ipsos between August 4 and August 8 found 73% of Americans feel the country is on the wrong track.

People, of course, came to that belief for a variety of reasons. But one thing is certain, if we are on the wrong track it is certain we will end up somewhere other then where we wanted to go.

Bob Herbert, in his last op-ed column for the New York Times on MARCH 25, 2011, lamented that while America sends boatloads of cash to Libya, we are simultaneously demolishing our way of life at home by our economic policies.

He wrote that America "has lost it's way entirely."

We have not only lost our way fiscally, but spiritually as well.

I am certain Bloomberg doesn't want to offend anyone, doesn't know how to include everyone from all faiths, so he goes with the popular mantra of the secular progressive elites and decides to have no clergy. No religion.

How do you do secular prayer? Or whatever?

Multiculturalism has miserably failed in Europe and will do so here as well. Renouncing our identity will neither save us nor those who have found refuge and opportunity here, no matter how politically correct it appears.

A look back may help us find our way forward.

Patrick Henry thundered to his colleagues as America was defining her identity, "It is when people forget God that tyrants forge their chains."

But what about the Muslims, and Buddhists and Hindu and all the other religions represented in America and New York City?

Henry continued, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; 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."

Years later, President John Quincy Adams wrote, "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."

But, you say, America has changed. That was then, this is now.

To the 73%: The way to discover the "right" track is to discover what made America great in the first place.

Rather than to "remake" the greatest country in the history of the world, let us, with God's help, restore her to her greatness by returning to the founding principles.

If we cannot or will not, "tyrants will forge our chains."

God help us and God help the Mayor to do the right thing.

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