Word: prayerful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
With some skill, Mondale has used the family issue to turn around attacks on him as an avatar of Big Government. He says that the more sinister threat of Big Brother comes from the Republicans' moral agenda−legislation to ban abortion and permit prayer in schools. "I want a future where Government watches out for you, not over you," he said...
...intensity that neither side had anticipated, and it worried both candidates, since neither could predict its ultimate political impact. Having boiled up during and immediately after the Republican Convention, particularly in remarks in which Reagan asserted that religion and politics are "necessarily related" and characterized opponents of his school-prayer amendment as "intolerant of religion," the issue did not subside last week. Indeed, it intensified and widened, involving politicians and pundits across the nation, including a full range of religious spokesmen. But most of all, it provided a theme that for once found Reagan backpedaling to preserve his credibility with...
...that his father-in-law is also a minister, Mondale said: "I have never thought it proper for political leaders to use religion to partisan advantage by advertising their own faith and questioning their opponent's. But the issue must be joined. Religion, Mr. Reagan told a prayer breakfast in Dallas, needs defenders against those who care only for the interests of the state. His clear implication was that he welcomed such a role for himself. The Queen of England, where state religion is established, is called the Defender of the Faith. But the President of the United States...
...supporters.) Nevertheless, the force and eloquence of the language prompted his obviously sympathetic audience to interrupt him with 24 ovations. The speech struck hard and often at Reagan's remark about intolerance. "B'nai B'rith is opposed to Mr. Reagan's [school-prayer] amendment; I would not call you intolerant of religion," said Mondale. "Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and other church groups also oppose his amendment. And they are also not intolerant of religion ... Instead of construing dissent from him in good faith, Mr. Reagan has insulted the motives of those who disagree with...
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...