-Now “God Bless America” is a Controversial Statement?
by Dr. D ~ May 16th, 2014
Presidents have been saying it for years. It was on signs all over the place after 9/11/01. However as one 20 year army veteran has recently found out; it is now a controversial statement to some in America and using it may get you trouble and even put your job in jeopardy.
Here’s the story from the Blaze:
Boots Hawks served in the U.S. Army for 20 years, earning the rank of Sergeant First Class. …
Being a veteran with two decades of service — one who says, “I believe in America and I believe in God so strongly,” … it unsurprising that Hawks has used a familiar signature on his hospital emails: “God Bless America.” …
But last week, just before Veterans Day, hospital brass asked Hawks to remove his “God Bless America” signature from his hospital emails, …
While Hawks said he complied …he also told his supervisor that he wanted to consult with an attorney about his rights,
Then things heated way up. …he was placed on administrative leave for insubordination last Friday, …
Response: Increasingly there are those who are supersensitive to any reference of ‘God’ including traditional statements like “God Bless America.” Fortunately the Pacific Justice Institute is handling this case. PJI President Brad Dacus had this to say about the situation:
“Rarely do we see something as shocking as supervisors placing a hard-working military veteran on leave right before Veterans’ Day for saying something patriotic. The hospital’s actions were outrageous and illegal. We expect a swift apology and full restoration of Mr. Hawks’ rights.”
Are we really getting to the place in America that all vestiges of faith and patriotism must be eliminated in the public square to satisfy a very few who claim to be bothered by it. What about the rights of the many? Must their rights be squashed in order to satisfy the purposely heightened dictatorial sensibilities of a few? *Top
May 16th, 2014 at 6:59 am
Why can’t God bless everyone. That’s another spin on it that’s more offensive than just saying god. The audacity of casting the US as the favored child of god.
May 18th, 2014 at 7:55 am
Mark,
Actually the statement is not that exclusive. It is traditionally a petition to God that he might bless America with no expectation that it excludes him from blessing others.
Historically it is the American substitution and equivalent to England’s ‘God save the King.’
May 18th, 2014 at 8:06 am
God bless america is very specific in it’s meaning. It does exclude others because it is never said for god to bless any other group. Show us one example of god asked to bless any other peoples or nations, and as a general appeal to deity for general weal. If you want to convince based on the lack of a prescribed exclusionary statement, I guess you are correct, doesn’t convince me of the self serving nature of the statement.
May 19th, 2014 at 8:16 am
So, Mark, if you sneeze and I say “God bless you!” have I just wronged the rest of humanity?
Traditionally, when Christians ask God for a blessing, they are asking for a specific person/group/institution to be blessed, because this person/group/institution is the focus of the activity or attention of the moment. I recall just last Sunday, the teacher in my Sunday School class prayed for several sick people, and asked God to bless them, then she prayed for God’s blessings on the members of the class as they went through the upcoming week. Did she implore God to harm others? No. Did she mean any harm/ill will towards the people in the classroom next door? No. She simply asked God to bless the people and the group that were the focus of her attention at the time.
I gather from your postings in this blog, Mark, that you are at least an agnostic. I ask you to consider, however, that there is a God. And, in doing so, consider that (by definition) a God has to be all-powerful and all-knowing. Such a God would understand the human intellect and the human psyche, and understand that, when a human asks for blessings on “x” but fails to mention “y”, that the human is just – – – being human.
Further, Christians have scriptural grounds to pray for others — while the scripture does not preclude or prohibit Christians from praying generically for “everybody”, it does authorize prayer for specific people/groups For example, Paul wrote (Col. 1:9) that he was praying without ceasing for “you”, and by “you” he meant the church in Colossae. Paul asked the church in Thessalaniki to pray for “us”, and by us he meant himself and his fellow missionaries (Sivlanus and Timothy). See 1 Thess. 5:25 and 2 Thess. 3:1. In Acts, Chapter 12, Peter was arrested and imprisoned. The church offered “constant prayer” for his release – note that they were not necessarily praying for the release of all people imprisoned in the Roman Empire. There is, in short, no scriptural condemnation for focusing one’s prayer on a specific person, specific organization, etc.
Brian
May 19th, 2014 at 8:47 am
I am beyond agnostic, I am a secular humanist, hence my concern for people at large, not just my in-group. And I understand that concept is difficult for people steeped in traditional concepts of morality. I don’t mean to be offensive, a great deal of good is done by people of faith. But you can see, if you are open to the suggestion, that petitioning the lord tends to be specific to those persons in need and those people are within one’s sphere of friends, family, and other groups of identification. As a humanist, it’s all about everyone.