Do you want a lithograph of President George W. Bush at a podium, head bowed in prayer, while the spirits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln flank him, hats off and heads also bowed, their hands on Bush's shoulders, with a shining white cross over the Presidential seal, adorning the chief executive's head like a halo, all backdropped by the Statue of Liberty, Iwo Jima, and the American flag? For a suggested $35 donation, you got it:
Thanks, Presidential Prayer Team Store! GOD BLESS AMERICA! WOO!
Comments (4)
What really gets me is that George Washington may not have been a Christian. An American church history book I recently read said that Washington never mentioned Jesus in his prayers or journals.
I sometimes wish I was an American just so I could own such goods.
Now this is truly amusing. For the record:
George Washington was not an evangelical Christian. To denote him as such, no matter how well-meaning these people may be, is to play fast and loose with the facts of history. And this is one subject that I feel that I'm authorised to comment on ;-)
Washington was a Grand Master Mason and a Deist, which means that he did not believe in the orthodox Christian dogma of the Trinity. He also did not believe that God directly intervenes in history; the Deist god may "wind up" the universe like a clock and set it free to spin, but does not deign to prevail directly upon the course of human events.
Another notable thing about Washington is reading remarks by those in spiritual authority over him (the Episcopal priest in residence at Washington's home parish, Christ Church Philadelphia, is on record that General Washington habitually refused Holy Communion from his hands, and was not known to commune at all).
Conservative, Republican evangelicals may enjoy baptising Washington and Lincoln, but to do so is to avoid the facts of history.
That's just incredibly tacky.