Word: prayers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Mondale and white students from a segregated Baptist academy got into angry shoving matches. Mondale got a helpful introduction from Tupelo Mayor James Caldwell, who said of him, "He doesn't have to talk about his beliefs. He practices them. He doesn't have to talk about prayer in school. He prays at home." But when a questioner described the Democratic platform as "antireligion," Mondale replied, "I have my faith, and it's my whole being. What makes America great is that our faith is between ourselves, our conscience and our God. We don't have...
Still, the most probing analysis last week of the dilemma facing public officials on religious issues came from Kennedy and Cuomo. Speaking at a New York City meeting of Coalition of Conscience, a Democratic political action group, the Senator argued that on issues such as abortion, school prayer and homosexuality "the proper role of religion is to appeal to the free conscience of each person, not the coercive rule of secular law." He warned that "we cannot be a tolerant country if churches bless some candidates as God's candidates-and brand others as ungodly or immoral." The logical...
...Democrat who hopes to wrest away his seat, met in the second of four scheduled television debates. It was a battle of the Old South vs. the New. Hunt is North Carolina's popular, two-term Governor, an earnest, mild-mannered and moderate Democrat. He favors voluntary school prayer and a sustained military buildup, but supports civil rights and a woman's right to abortion. As Governor he has attracted $13 billion in new business investment, added 207,000 new jobs and raised educational standards through a series of reforms. In that evening's debate, Helms claimed...
Throughout the week, the debate reverberated widely. In New York City an interfaith group of national religious leaders called a news conference to decry the "serious erosion" they detected in the principle of church-state separation. Disturbed for months by the school-prayer discussion and then alarmed by Reagan's Dallas speech, members of the group nevertheless phrased their joint statement in nonpartisan terms: "The state should not behave as if it were a church or synagogue. It should not do for citizens what, in their rightful free exercise of religion, they are perfectly capable of doing for themselves...
After listening to both candidates, B'nai B'rith delegates voted unanimously to oppose all forms of organized prayer in high schools, and called on Government to be "neutral" in religious matters. In an obvious swipe at Laxalt's letter, the resolution also voiced "opposition to attempts to claim 'God's authority' in campaigns for political office." Many of the delegates contended that Reagan had stirred new fears at least among Jews, who, as members of a religious minority, are extremely sensitive to the possibility of Government interference in religion...