College Student Stands Up For Public Prayer Before Campus Senate Sessions
by Jim Brown
February 3, 2004
(AgapePress) - The student body president at one West Virginia university campus says despite complaints from Protestant groups on campus, prayers before Student Senate meetings will continue.Three months ago, Seth Murphy sent a letter to religious student groups on the Marshall University campus, inviting them to open Student Senate meetings with prayers that are heartfelt and directed to God. He wrote: "Don't come to me with some watered-down, non-committal prayer that is nearly devoid of religious reference and that speaks of a 'higher power.'"
"I don't want to tell people that because of the idea of political correctness that they cannot pray to Jesus Christ, for instance, because I want people to be able to pray in public exactly as they would pray in private," he says.
But United Methodist and Presbyterian student groups are demanding that the prayers be stopped. The opposition from other professing Christians is not something Murphy expected. "I am surprised, very surprised and honestly a little bit disheartened," he says. "I'm just trying to provide all religious faiths with the same opportunities."
Murphy says the prayers are appropriate because the U.S. Senate also starts its meetings with prayer. He says the very idea that prayer in public is somehow unconstitutional is the result of an epidemic of political correctness in America that is "just going against not only our constitution but the very foundations that our country was built upon."
But despite the demands from the Christian groups, as well as those from the Marshall University Civil Liberties Union, that the prayers be banned, Murphy says he will not cave in to those who would put political correctness above religious freedom.
