Adding to “Corrosive” “War on Religion” Rhetoric, Perry Pushes School Prayer Amendment

Jason Attermann — December 14, 2011 – 11:24 am | Election 2012 | GOP Presidential Candidates 2012 | Separation of Church & State | Stop the Smears Comments (1) Add a comment

Republican presidential candidate Texas Governor Rick Perry recently escalated his attacks on President Barack Obama by falsely claiming that the President is leading a supposed “war on religion.” Time Magazine’s Amy Sullivan exposed the dangers of Perry’s “corrosive” accusations:

The casualness with which Perry tosses off the charge about ‘Obama’s war on religion’ is at odds with how corrosive the accusation really is. It encourages citizens to turn against one another in a way that conservatives would denounce as class warfare if the subject were economics.

Sullivan disproved the myth that Obama has engaged in “liberal attacks on our religious heritage”:

Anyone who has paid attention to Obama’s speeches and language would have to concede that the charge is false. Obama’s remarks at the White House Easter prayer breakfast this year-in which he spoke of Jesus’ ‘unfathomable gift of grace and salvation through his death and resurrection’-are arguably the most explicitly Christian that any President has uttered at an official White House event. Similarly, before the lighting of the National Christmas Tree last week, Obama spoke about the Christmas story and the teaching ‘at the heart of my Christian faith.’...

But most flagrant is Perry’s reference to ‘Obama’s war on religion’ without evidence or explanation. He leaves the strong impression that it is Obama’s administration-instead of Supreme Court decisions from the 1960s-that took school-sanctioned prayer and Bible-reading out of public schools. It is telling that Perry can assume his intended audience in Iowa living rooms will need no elaboration or convincing that there is indeed a war on religion.

Social conservatives have had a hard time providing substance for that charge, however, because many of their most dire predictions about a Democratic presidency simply haven’t come true. Obama hasn’t taken away their guns, he hasn’t started a race war, and-despite mailings distributed by the RNC in the 2004 campaign-godless “liberals” have not banned the Bible.

In keeping with his religious rhetoric, Perry said he would support a constitutional amendment allowing prayer in public schools during an appearance on Fox News Sunday this past weekend. In order to avoid “activist judges” sitting on the Supreme Court, Perry would seek a nationwide vote to pass the amendment.

CNN reported:

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” the Republican presidential hopeful went a step further than his previous calls for the Supreme Court to reverse its 1962 decision that banned organized prayer in public schools.

Perry said he would support ‘a constitutional amendment that would allow our children to pray in school any time that they would like.’

Such a proposal would easily pass if put to a nationwide vote, Perry said. The step is necessary because of what Perry called ‘activist judges’ appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court like Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. 

The issue of prayer in school should a local decision, rather than an issue foisted on the public by the Supreme Court, Perry said.

Click here to read CNN’s article.

Click here to read the article in Time Magazine.

 

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