{"id":1633,"date":"2013-01-10T08:04:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T08:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/the-failure-of-religion-based-public-grief.html"},"modified":"2013-01-10T08:04:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T08:04:00","slug":"the-failure-of-religion-based-public-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/the-failure-of-religion-based-public-grief.html","title":{"rendered":"The Failure of Religion-Based Public Grief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

When President Obama spoke at the memorial service<\/a> for the children, teachers, and administrators murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, I was overwhelmed by dissonance.\u00a0 His remarks assumed that a Christian perspective was applicable to everyone who mourned as he spoke about \u201ceternal glory\u201d and quoted bible verses:\u00a0 \u201cFor we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven not built by human hands.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
I empathize with Obama\u2019s reliance on scripture and belief in a supernatural world with a heaven above and prayers heard by a god who presumably cares.\u00a0 With such tragedy, it is difficult to know what to say without relying on that which is familiar and may comfort the speaker and at least some of the listeners.\u00a0 What to say confounds Christians and non-Christians alike.\u00a0 But my dissonance came from the very words Obama spoke and quoted because for me they are empty and inconsequential in the face of such tragedy.<\/span><\/div>\n
If there were a god who cared, who answered prayers, the deaths of these 26 people and the killer\u2019s mother would not have happened.\u00a0 We might disagree about the lives of the adults who were killed, but it is hard to ignore the essential innocence of the twenty children whose lives were snuffed out.\u00a0 Unless a person believes in the Old Testament practice of child sacrifice, there can be no justification for a culture that makes it easy to end so many young lives so quickly.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When President Obama spoke at the memorial service for the children, teachers, and administrators murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, I was overwhelmed by dissonance.\u00a0 His remarks assumed that a Christian perspective was applicable to everyone who mourned as he spoke about \u201ceternal glory\u201d and quoted bible verses:\u00a0 \u201cFor we know that if the earthly tent we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Failure of Religion-Based Public Grief<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When President Obama spoke at the memorial service for the children, teachers, and administrators murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, I was overwhelmed by\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/the-failure-of-religion-based-public-grief.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Failure of Religion-Based Public Grief\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When President Obama spoke at the memorial service for the children, teachers, and administrators murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, I was overwhelmed by\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/01\/the-failure-of-religion-based-public-grief.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-10T08:04:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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