House votes down "specific prayers"

Not praying, if one can't invoke the name of Christ, is better than praying with a Christ-shaped hole in your prayers. What exactly can a chaplain pray for if not for His will to be done? I think it might be better for the chaplain to hum 'Kum bay ya' off-key than to try and excise religion from... religion. Let me quote one of my favorite Touchstone articles of all time:

To require a Christian priest to say little more at a benediction than “the Sustainer bids you to peacefully love your neighbor” or “May the Holy One be with you always” is effectively the same as asking a surgeon to say to a man dying on the operating table, “Don’t worry, everything is all right.” It is not a truthful word, and the dying man (and we are all dying men) needs the truthful word.

The message of Christ is not warm and cuddly. He bears no resemblance in form or function to a Teddy Bear or a Hot Toddy and should not be used towards that end. God is not mocked. He is not a once-a-day vitamin panacea. The Kingdom is taken by force with efficacious prayer, not watered down with a false palliative.

Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.

The Church is by its very nature evangelical and as a consequence divisive. The chaplain who stands before men in uniform is not an acupuncturist - he does not dole out remedies of questionable benefit, he declares the New Israel and does so only because Christ empowered His Church to do so. To redact that from prayer is to devalue prayer, making superstitious pap out of the one and only Way to eternal life.

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WASHINGTON (RNS) The House on Thursday (May 27) rejected a proposed amendment that would have allowed military chaplains to close public events with faith-specific prayers.

The amendment, offered by Tea Party favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., to the Military Construction Authorization Act, was deemed not relevant to the bill, Bachmann's office said.

The amendment would have specified that "a chaplain shall have the prerogative to close the prayer according to the dictates of the chaplain's own conscience.''

Bachmann's proposed amendment comes after church-state separationists have tussled with military chaplains over the appropriateness of praying "in Jesus' name.'' Secularists say it's insulting to nonbelievers; Christian clergy say they know no other way to pray.

The dispute has most recently played out in Virginia, where Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell repealed a ban on Virginia State Police chaplains praying in Jesus' name.

Former military chaplain Rabbi Israel Drazin said the chaplains' role is different than a civilian clergy like a rabbi or priest. "They are addressing everybody. They are there for everybody,'' he said. "They should not give a prayer that addresses a particular group.''

The Washington-based Secular Coalition for America had rallied against Bachmann's bill, saying it would harm minority rights.

"Closing a prayer in a sectarian manner, or in the name of Jesus, would exclude members of the military,'' said Paul Fidalgo, a spokesman for the group.