LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This article from Americans United has a conservative Christian as a religious minority listening to the public prayers of the majority faith.

And he doesn't care for it:

In a letter to the editor, Gary Christenot recalled his time in the Air Force stationed at a base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The area was somewhat isolated and dominated by Buddhists and followers of the Shinto faith.

Christenot wrote about attending a high school football game there. The Baptist family was dismayed when a Buddhist priest was called upon to offer the invocation “to god-head figures that our tradition held to be pagan.”

Wrote Chistenot, “We were frozen in shock and incredulity! What to do? To continue to stand and observe this prayer would represent a betrayal of our own faith and imply the honoring of a pagan deity that was anathema to our beliefs. To sit would be an act of extreme rudeness and disrespect in the eyes of our Japanese hosts and neighbors, who value above all other things deference and respect in their social interactions.”

Christenot reports that he made some inquiries to find out if other clergy were ever invited. He learned that because the area was dominated by people of Japanese and Chinese descent, the prayers were always either Buddhist or Shinto.

The incident apparently caused Christenot no small amount of discomfort, as he felt he had betrayed his faith. But it was also a learning experience. Christenot came to understand how non-Christians might feel when they are compelled to sit through Christian rituals.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY morchades)

Earlier today I found a charity evaluation service online, which I thought was a beautiful idea, until I looked around and saw they'd given the Alliance Defense Fund five stars.

Is there a more reliable charity evaluation service out there?