Totally secular?
September 12, 2011 (Monday)
The mayor of New York City declared the Tenth Anniversary Memorial Service for the victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks to be a “secular ceremony,” and therefore there were no clergy persons on the program.
In 1775, before the revolutionaries went into battle at Bunker Hill, they gathered for prayer, led by the president of Harvard College. Years later, when George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States of America, in New York City, he insisted on laying his hand on a Bible, kissing it after taking the oath of office, and adding the words, “so help me God,” to the oath.
If I remember correctly, in the days immediately following “9/11,” people spoke freely of their faith, and the faith of those who had died.
I believe in the separation of church and state. It has served us well. “A free church in a free state,” is a proposition well stated. I want no entanglement of church and state. Expressions of faith by individuals, however, do not violate this covenant of separation.
To conduct a ceremony commemorating the deaths of people in a disaster, emphasizing only the secular nature of the event, seems to me to be unrealistic. Politicians frequently end their speeches these days with the words, “God bless you and God bless the United States of America.” If appropriate at a political event, similar references should be considered quite normal at a memorial service.