Warned Kentuckians Avoid Treacherous Prayer

Correction to the following post:  Even though AP reported before Friday that administrators would NOT allow student-led prayer during Friday's Lincoln County commencement (   http://bit.ly/15a1EUV   ), I'm glad to make a correction. Student prayer was allowed and stated after all. My apologies for not catching the story over the weekend from Lincoln County's nearest newspaper, the Advocate-Messenger. The updated details are here: http://bit.ly/Za3Sz5

Instead of what I assumed had happened when I wrote the post below, the administration did not "capitulate" to secular pressure after all.  However, this quote from a leading atheist involved with complaints supports my main point in my blog:  "Every student should feel safe at their graduation and should not have to worry about religious bullying."

Consider whether public prayer really comes close to bullying while reading my original article below:
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I once laughed when I heard a Christian comedian shout through the mic, "If it offends you when I publicly state my Christian beliefs, where a helmet!" The audience then erupted in laughs and cheers.

I know what it's like to be a minority among, not just a crowd, but a whole national culture, when it comes to publicly expressed religious belief and worship. Yes, I admit without hesitation that the call to prayer, broadcast at various times throughout every day over loud speakers during my visit in predominately Muslim Malaysia, sounded eerie and unsettling. That and much more that saturates Malay culture constantly aroused strange feelings of loneliness throughout my stay. But it never crossed my mind that someone should stop the call.

Even if, hypothetically, I were to stay in that or a similar country long term or, again, hypothetically, to change my citizenship with such a people, I would never conceive of asking the imams even to turn down the volume on their speakers. I can't conceive of confusing my discomfort as a minority with some contrived "right" not to be made uncomfortable by the surrounding majority, regardless of the majority's intentions.

Do the young and the old in America--now, surprisingly, in Kentucky, more specifically--no longer have the inner stamina to survive and thrive through feelings of cultural and civic discomfort? Does some weakly conceived idea of a thorough "separation" of church and state give some of us the only pitiful strength we can muster to push away what hurts our feelings? This is what civic integrity has come to, even in the small community of Lincoln County, Kentucky, where school administrators capitulated to a very small minority of self-proclaimed atheists. They complained that they would be overwrought if student-led prayer were forced upon them during last Friday's commencement. It's being reported that most Lincoln Countians have had to work hard to understand and accommodate the decision.

Perhaps it would have been much easier on all those citizens if the shaken atheist minority had just aroused a morsel of intellectual strength to defend their worldview through the lost art of public discourse. They also should have done what any frightened soul should do when ravaged by the onslaught of terrifying public prayers that slap "human rights" in the head. Wear a helmet.