Michigan Legislators Form Prayer Caucus
A whole bunch of Michigan state legislators will follow in the footsteps of their brethren in the U.S. Congress to form a legislative prayer caucus — all the better to pander to ignorant voters, my dear. You can read their declaration of establishment here.
Therefore, let it be known that the undersigned members of the Michigan Legislature, who are duly elected and serving in the State Senate or the State House of Representatives, desire to express our thankfulness to Almighty God for these blessings and to unite as the Michigan Legislative Prayer Caucus (MiLPC); a bipartisan body of believers of Scriptural Truth, adhering to established Judeo-Christian principles and Religious Liberties that were widely practiced by the Founders of these United States of America and the state of Michigan.
The purpose of the MiLPC will be to promote prayer for one another, our communities, state, and nation; to pray for wisdom, courage, civility, understanding, in addition to other concerns as the Lord leads us. We will encourage one another in fellowship and to live lives worthy of the Holy Scriptures and the heritage we have been entrusted.
Using the MiLPC as a platform to connect with the Congressional Prayer Caucus and other state Legislative Prayer Caucuses, we will encourage believers in elected office to serve their constituents in a Godly manner and be a source of support in matters of importance everywhere for needs and opportunities for the advancement of Judeo-Christian principles.
This is little more than religio-babble, a way of laying down a tribal marker — “we’re good Christian people, unlike those people who aren’t part of our group.” But it’s nice to see that even wingnut legislators use randomly capitalized words in their screeds.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven:
May 3rd, 2012 at 11:13 am
I read it as “circus” the first time around.
I like my reading better.
slc1:
May 3rd, 2012 at 11:24 am
What the fuck does this have to do with the economic problems facing the citizens of Michigan? What fraction of this “caucus” are Rethuglicans?
Area Man:
May 3rd, 2012 at 11:28 am
It’s a good thing they put this down in writing and publicized it. The almighty wouldn’t have know their intentions otherwise.
Alverant:
May 3rd, 2012 at 11:41 am
Do they actually say what these “Judeo-Christian principles” are or is it just an excuse to pretend to be superior to everyone else and ignore the first ammendment?
yoav:
May 3rd, 2012 at 11:55 am
It sound like they are making point not just about thankfulness to god but to the correct god. Clearly muslims with their dirty foreign god, not to mention them hindus with their funny gods with too many arms, need not apply.
richardelguru:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:07 pm
“encourage believers in elected office to serve their constituents in a Godly manner”
You mean like lie to their constituents, encourage said constituents to commit genocide and then slaughter any constituents who oppose them??
Chiroptera:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:14 pm
How boring. If legislators are going to start caucuses for their favorite fictional works, you’da thunk they’d choose something more fun to cosplay.
iknklast:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:15 pm
I initially read “declaration of establishment” as “declaration of embarrassment”. I think that’s much more apt – it embarrassed me.
Michael Heath:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:18 pm
I think the misplaced capital letters are evidence that they’re not smart enough to disbelieve this BS.
If those grammatical errors were purposeful, perhaps they serve a similar function to earning one’s way into the Liars for Jesus club. By submitting to this group in spite of its inability to even use proper grammar, your signaling you’re a faithful member of the tribe whose willing to promote its agenda regardless of the cost to one’s integrity. This would be consistent with the political capital gained by the Liars for Jesus when their lies are exposed, such as David Barton and Michelle Bachmann.
d cwilson:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:26 pm
In fairness, this will probably be as effective as anything else the Michigan legislature has done recently to address their economic problems.
Ellie:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:40 pm
“The purpose of the MiLPC will be to promote prayer for one another, our communities, state, and nation; to pray for wisdom, courage, civility, understanding, in addition to other concerns as the Lord leads us. ”
Oh? Really? Will you loose the bonds of injustice? Will you let the oppressed go free? Will you share your bread with the hungry? Will you bring the homeless under your roof? Will you provide clothing to the naked? Or will you just use this as a good excuse to show how “Christian” and pious you are?
slc1:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Re d cwilson @ #10
And what is Heath’s good buddy, Governor Snyder, doing to encourage his fellow Rethuglicans in the legislature to get off their duffies and do something constructive.
busterggi:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:46 pm
I’ve never understood why an omniscient god would need to be asked to help people it supposedly loves.
If they really had faith in that god they wouldn’t need to pray, they’d trust in it to help them w/o being solicited.
Michael Heath:
May 3rd, 2012 at 12:58 pm
slc1 writes:
You seem to have now descended into completely relying on logical fallacies; here with an argument from ignorance. In the comment post I quote from here, your total reliance on this particular fallacy is especially ironic since we’ve experienced an enormous amount of impactful bills passed in an attempt repair our economy since Mr. Synder became governor. So you have ample amounts of information available to either laud or condemn Gov. Snyder’s actions; so why don’t you? Rather than repeatedly demonstrating failures in character by relying on obvious fallacies.
slc1:
May 3rd, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Re Michael Heath @ #14
I suggest that Heath take it up with Mr. d cwilson who, in comment #10, suggested the contrary.
I have to say that Heath is getting somewhat prickly of late, taking after his sparring partner, John Kwok, whose cage I greatly enjoy rattling over at Panda’s Thumb.
D. C. Sessions:
May 3rd, 2012 at 1:33 pm
I love the ritual use of “Judeo,” since the chances of any remotely observant Jew wanting the State back into the prayer business falls somewhere in the “infernal snowball” range.
syskill:
May 3rd, 2012 at 3:59 pm
There is indeed a lot of capitalization here, but it looks decidedly non-random to me. Most of it is in accordance with accepted conventions of capitalizing proper names or direct references to a deity.
The exceptions are notable though. For example: “Scriptural Truth” and “Holy Scriptures.” Capitalizing these terms likely indicates that the MiLPC members think of these as proper nouns with exclusive referents, implicitly rejecting the truth and holiness of all other scriptures. Which is fine with me, as far as it goes — I don’t think anyone should be required to accept the truth or holiness of any scripture.
Once you’ve grokked that, it should also be clear what they mean by capitalizing “Religious Liberties.”
Marcus Ranum:
May 3rd, 2012 at 6:26 pm
I’ve never understood why an omniscient god would need to be asked to help people it supposedly loves.
Ever see what he did to job and the jews? The guy’s a frickin’ crack-up. You can even cut your foreskin off and he’ll sick the nazis on you. Guys have have spent thousands of years trying to discern his hand from the random cruelty of capricious fate but eventually they’ll figure out how to tell.
Uncle Glenny:
May 3rd, 2012 at 7:28 pm
I really hate doing this but the irony is too great: Mr. Heath, two grammar errors in the same sentence where you criticize their grammar?
Michael Heath:
May 4th, 2012 at 7:41 am
slc1 writes:
I have no association with John Kwok, that’s just another type of fallacy by you to avoid confronting the absurdity of your own arguments.
Your observation of my being ‘prickly of late’ is only in response to you and a few other relatively new posters who depend on YEC-like arguments to defend a tribalistic view of liberalism. So my reaction is a causal effect of your increasing reliance on posts dependent on fallacious premises – to the point the ones directed at me are now entirely dependent on such.
So your conceding your yanking a chain is only the beginning point of recent events and not all that interesting. Instead what follows both is and should be concerning to you if you actually care about your own competency and character. Certainly your yanking my chain, that’s obvious. What doesn’t appear obvious to you is how you’re doing it, even after I repeatedly point it out.
A better metaphor is your criticizing me to get my attention, but you do so my cutting yourself and wiping your own feces into your cuts. When I point this out and suggest you stop doing it, you either:
a) Ignore it.
b) Weasel out by falsely insinuating our disagreement is on conclusions and we should “agree to disagree, hopefully not disagreeably” when in fact we’ve yet to reach that stage; I’m pointing out the fallaciousness of your premises which invalidates any conclusions you might promote. It’s increasingly rare for us to agree on the set of relevant factual premises where we could legitimately agree to disagree on conclusions based on those premises. Now I may be wrong on my asserted set of premises, but you’ve yet to demonstrate I am where we do obviously observe your near-entire dependence on fallacies.
c) Move the goalposts.
So yeah, you yank my chain, I’m fully aware of that when it happens. But I respond in order to help you and because I’d like the forum I hang out into be fallacy-free. Except when we’re pointing to the bad behavior of people all reasonable people should criticize. That fact you’re instead increasingly emulating that bad behavior of those we ridicule is not something I’d want associated with me. I thought you’d also want to strive and meet that standard; it appears you either don’t or aren’t capable of even recognizing your demonstrated behavior for what it is.
slc1:
May 4th, 2012 at 8:07 am
Re Michael Heath @ #20
I have no association with John Kwok, that’s just another type of fallacy by you to avoid confronting the absurdity of your own arguments.
That’s not what Mr. Kwok says. He claims that he and Heath are, indeed, sparring partners over at another unidentified blog. Of course, Mr. Kwok is known to exaggerate his associations with people like Ken Miller.
However, let me address the issue with Anderson Cooper. Perhaps Heath is unaware of the circumstances that led to Mr. Cooper’s accession to his current status over at CNN, where he replaced Aaron Brown, based on that network’s going after a younger demographic. Because of his being the presumptive heir to a large fortune, his pretty boy looks, and his being gay, he was considered a lightweight by the critics. I don’t like playing amateur psychologist here but it appears to me that his performance as one of the few true newscasters these days in the tradition of Edward R. Murrow, is due to his psychological need to overcome the lightweight accusation, which he has succeeded in doing. The fact that he doesn’t need the job and thus doesn’t care what the brass at CNN thinks about him is, IMHO, a great assist in this matter.
Michael Heath:
May 4th, 2012 at 11:34 pm
Me earlier:
slc1 writes:
And you fail to provide link validating this why? I don’t recall ever engaging in any dialogue with Mr. Kwok, in fact this thread here is the first time in a long while, perhaps years, that I’ve encountered anyone even referring to him.