For Thine is the Kingdom

Houston, we have a problem.

As serial adulterer Attorney General Ken Paxton introduces legislation to ensure every Texas school child invokes God’s blessing by reciting the Lord’s Prayer, there’s this one small difficulty. And of course, the same problem shows up anywhere religion is officially mandated. Actually, there are several problems, but first the main one.

The key difficulty with making every kid recite the Lord’s Prayer is that there are at least two distinct versions of the prayer, depending on your particular Christian leaning. If you’re Protestant, as you know, you don’t stop and say “Amen” after “lead us not into temptation”, but continue with “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever.” If you’re Catholic, you might say those words if you happen to be at a Presbyterian funeral or wedding, just out of courtesy, but it’s not your Lord’s Prayer.

The entire Lord’s Prayer, Catholic or Protestant, could actually be fervently and sincerely recited by anyone of a monotheistic faith. Some of its lines sound rather like the Kaddish. It certainly offends no significant Muslim teaching. But the Lord’s Prayer is not the prayer of Jewish or Muslim kids in Texas.

If you happen to be agnostic, however, reciting the Lord’s prayer under compulsion actually compels you to lie as well as take the Lord’s name in vain, offending in a single act two of the Ten Commandments. You can’t have it both ways.

If the Paxtons of the world really want to push this out, they first need to decide on a version, King James, Douay, or a modern translation. And then somebody needs to explain to Catholics why their version, which more accurately tracks the oldest manuscripts, didn’t make the cut.

Which of course leads us into the greater problem created with pushing your luck in legislating matters of faith: on what authority? Jesus Christ himself said in unqualifed terms, “My kingdom is not of this world.” That kind of leaves a logical gap, doesn’t it?

The salacious allegations in Mrs. Paxton’s uncontested divorce petition suggest that the Texas Attorney General is not the ideal person to be leading this move to legislate holiness. And that’s really the larger problem, isn’t it? If a person of deep, quiet, consistent, and humble piety were to lead the movement, perhaps I’d have some sympathy for it. But the Ken Paxtons of the world? Seriously? How come it’s always these guys?

This is snake oil. Don’t we all have better things to do?