Out of respect for our state’s diverse population and to not misuse a public forum, most pastors who pray during the legislative session in Topeka try to be nonsectarian and avoid political subjects. Not the Rev. Richard Edds, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in El Dorado. Edds, who was the guest of Rep. John Grange, R-El Dorado, opened Friday’s House session by praying that God would give lawmakers “courage not to sacrifice the budget at the altar of education, not fund the budget from gambling or other vices.” He also prayed that lawmakers would protect traditional marriage, the family and the unborn and that God would “turn America back to her biblical heritage as a God-fearing nation.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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29 Comments
Someone in Topeka blurring the line between church and state? Another christian spouting their doctrine as part of the lawmaking process?
Yaaaawwwwwwnnnnn.
Must be a slow news day. Doesnt this happen every day in ks govt?
Rev. Richard Edds is just like any Kansan. If he is a guest of a legislator, he can say anything he wants. He is not a paid government offical.
Although he does have a vaild point about school funding. It’s going to be political no matter what. The Post Audit says that rural schools have too much money and urban schools need more. The rural schools will not give up their money and urban schools will be left short.
A Baptist talking religion? What did they expect?
Joe, I admit that I haven’t researched the amount of funding to schools, but I did see an article in the Eagle a few weeks ago about a rural school district not far from Wichita that will be cutting the number of teachers in their schools because of funding cuts. Some teachers will be let go, while others will be asked to take early retirement. Because I went to school and graduated from that school, as did three of my daughters, and I know how many teachers there are in comparison to the amount of students, this is really, really sad, and I’m not sure I can agree with you completely. I’m not surprised though.
Got a link to support your statement? I’d be interested in seeing it so I can be better educated on the subject.
“Sacrifice the budget at the altar of education” is a real head-turner of a phrase. Especially coming from the church, given the historical fact that public education has always been led by the church.
Makes me think that maybe the RR has now opened up a full-fledged campaign (in the culture wars) on public education in Kansas.
The Taliban would be proud.
I don’t think school funding should come from gambling either.
I’d much rather see gambling (or prostitution or whatever) support school funding than see property owners hit again. Since we seem to love sin taxes, why is no one suggesting higher taxes on alcohol?
For RD
http://www.kslegislature.org/postaudit/audits_latest.shtml
I’ll I’m doing is going by what the Post Audit study is saying.
When the State Legislature lets an iman do the call to prayer from in front of the august body, then the Baptists can say anything they want.
Not holding my breath . . .
Hehehe . . . The Baptist preacher was one of those whiny kids that’s always running to the teacher–CHECK IT OUT:
How to spot a baby conservativeWhiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and traditional. Future liberals, on the other hand …
Mar. 19, 2006KURT KLEINERSPECIAL TO THE STAR
Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative. At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.
The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn’t going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.
But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids’ personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There’s no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it’s unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.
A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.
Toronto Star
Here’s the link.
That sure does explain Cal Thomas and Rush Limbaugh, doesn’t it.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1142722231554
Oh . . . Bill O’Reilley too, absolutely.
Public education was created under the instructions of 19th century industrial capitalists. They wanted obedient workers whose individual productivity would be low, but for those capitalists who extracted a little bit of workers’ production value en masse, vast riches were obtainable.
Most educators today, including those in Kansas, want to do their best under this mandate. Unfortunately the 21st century economy requires something entirely different: It demand that American workers think, rather than simply dutifully carry out orders. Capitalists casn obtain the latter type of workers far more cheaply in the developing nations.
The education system must be rebuilt according to the 21st century economy. Children must be trained to think for themselves. If this means going to two-hour classes in math and science for techno-inclined students, and two hour classes in humanities and social science interested students, this must be done A false doctrine that kids have only 45-minute attention spans, which was fraudulently promoted to REDUCE students’ learning to create a low individual-productivity level, must be discarded.
Originally, public education was designed to prevent “the children of dirty immigrants” from aspiring to go to college. This is no longer an approprite precept. It worked fine a century ago. It does not work now.
If Kansans think it will work, they will revisit the 1890’s and 1930’s.
Hey Phillip,
don’t you think that the title to this little piece of yours is a bit misleading?
Would this be the same fine christian folks who slaughtered an entire nation of people just because we wanted their land, or perhaps the same fine folks that enslaved people from another land to work in their fields because they were to good to do the work themselves, or perhaps the same fine christian folks who killed the chinese by the wagonload to build our railroads?? Maybe even the same fine christian folks who would willingly blow up an abortion center, or pull the switch on “one of those people” who obviously deserve to die. You know, whenever a person has to tell me what a fine christian they are I get the wife and kids in the house, hide my wallet, and check to see where the dog is.
ProudLib, that’s priceless!
Nathan, wwhy do you think the title is mislesding?
I meant “misleading”
I meant “misleading”
Yeah Pl that explains most of talk radio, bush, cheney, De lay,…….and just about every conservative I can think of.
Some accuse the left of “religion bashing” This story out of our legislature should explain alot to such folks about why we on the left regard religion with a suspicious eye.
XXX,
Because non of the quotes say that the Pastor was “Praying to God not to fully fund public education.”
Well, these types are viscerally against public education, since that nasty liberal First Amendment keeps intefering with a steady programming of good Christian indocrination. That’s why they’re so big on vouchers (unfortunately, they have allies with the anti-tax zealots, and many so-called Libertarians).
“courage to not sacrifice the budget at the altar of education”
Seems Phil got the title correct to me.
“not to sacrifice the budget on the altar of education”
I’d say Phil got his title spot on Nathan.
I suppose if we were to ask the Pastor if what he meant was to not fully fund education you think he would say yes?
It seems to me that both you and Phillip extrapolate whatever meaning you want from this mans words contrary to what he actually said.
“not sacrifice the budget on the altar of education”
I think that summarizes the reverends position.
Public education is an abomination and the sooner the whole rotten thing collapses the better!
“As I traveled, I discovered a universal hunger, often unvoiced, to be free of managed debate. A desire to be given untainted information. Nobody seemed to have maps of where this thing had come from or why it acted as it did, but the ability to smell a rat was alive and well all over America.
Exactly what John Dewey heralded at the onset of the twentieth century has indeed happened. Our once highly individualized nation has evolved into a centrally managed village, an agora made up of huge special interests which regard individual voices as irrelevant. The masquerade is managed by having collective agencies speak through particular human beings. Dewey said this would mark a great advance in human affairs, but the net effect is to reduce men and women to the status of functions in whatever subsystem they are placed. Public opinion is turned on and off in laboratory fashion. All this in the name of social efficiency, one of the two main goals of forced schooling.
Dewey called this transformation “the new individualism.” When I stepped into the job of schoolteacher in 1961, the new individualism was sitting in the driver’s seat all over urban America, a far cry from my own school days on the Monongahela when the Lone Ranger, not Sesame Street, was our nation’s teacher, and school things weren’t nearly so oppressive. But gradually they became something else in the euphoric times following WWII. Easy money and easy travel provided welcome relief from wartime austerity, the advent of television, the new nonstop theater, offered easy laughs, effortless entertainment. Thus preoccupied, Americans failed to notice the deliberate conversion of formal education that was taking place, a transformation that would turn school into an instrument of the leviathan state. Who made that happen and why is part of the story I have to tell…”http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
V.L.R.B!!
Wow! all that just cuz one Baptist minister said a prayer? Now I know why some people here get pissed at me for being rude and uncouth when it comes to criticizing their perfect secularized ideological society! So my dear friends, all Baptists should not be allowed to pray the way they intend to pray? Yeah right! I bet none of you would have the balls to criticize a rabbi for making those remarks! You wouldn’t DARE, criticize a Muslim cleric if he made political remarks for fear of being labeled a bigot / religiously insensitive! It’s only ok to hate on the majority!
Gonna take more than 5 posts to shed the title you eared Blogfart.
I am rooting for you. But I aint betting on ya.