Having a Hindu chaplain recite the opening prayer in the U.S. Senate does not violate the principle of the Pledge, since Hindus share belief in God, expressed through the multiple gods and goddesses they believe to represent Brahman, the ultimate transcendent. Over one million Hindus live in America. As American citizens, they enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as Catholics, Presbyterians, Orthodox Jews, Sunni Muslims, and Mormons, to name but a few religious groups.

Those who object that such prayers violate the separation of church and state likely would also object when any other chaplain offers prayers at the Senate. For them, offering prayers in the chambers of our secular government is a category mistake.

Granted that the vast majority of Americans believe in God, we have only officially been “One Nation under God” since June 14, 1954, when President Eisenhower signed the law adding these words to the Pledge of Allegiance (which itself was written in 1892), so the notion of a nation of believers is relatively recent in our history. If we are going to give religion a place in public life, then it should not just be one religion. We are a nation of many religions. Just as the military employs chaplains from a variety of religions, so, too, representatives of these religions should have equal opportunities to offer public prayer.

Those Americans who say “give me that old time religion” simply need to recall that Hinduism—truly an old time religion—predates Judaism and Christianity.

When I got to the cashier after standing in the line at the grocery store on Wednesday, November 21, the clerk wished me a “happy holiday.” I was buying a turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, peas, cheese and crackers, and deserts—pretty obviously a Thanksgiving meal. So I wondered, “Why not just wish me a “happy Thanksgiving”? Did she think she might offend me? What generic holiday did she think I was celebrating?

In recent years, greetings on New Year’s, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas have all been covered by the generic phrase “happy holiday.” Does that imply simply a day off from work or a commemoration of an event or a tradition?

The grocery store employee and I might both be working, but the day would still be a holiday—and, presumably that means something. The woman behind the register in the grocery store may not have known that I am an American citizen, but she surely knew that I live in America. The only national celebration that week was Thanksgiving. Perhaps not all Americans celebrate the traditional turkey dinner and with family (though judging by the lines at the grocery store, it seems everyone does). But all Americans know that it is Thanksgiving, and most know something of its origins with Pilgrims and Indians. So why not say “Happy Thanksgiving?” Who would she offend?

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How do we arrive at God’s standards? By relying upon the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament, the Qur’an, the Upanishads, the Dhammapada? Candidate Huckabee seems to have some implicit standard in mind, likely the Christian scriptures. However, all Americans do not subscribe to Christianity, and even for those who do, differences of interpretation complicate attempts to know “Gods standards.”

If one relies upon a deductive method of determining God’s standards for moral behavior, a static view of human nature emerges. All one has to do is know what God wants and apply it to the human situation. However, competing theories, derived mostly from the social sciences and social philosophy, do not view humans as static. Thus, [moral] standards evolve with the development of society and the individual, that is, “some contemporary view” in Huckabee’s words.

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