During Thursday's broadcast of "Priority Talk" on Birmingham radio's Truth 101.1 WXJC, host Greg Davis, a pastor and the president and CEO of Alabama Citizens Action Program, weighed in on the Alabama House of Representatives electing to kick off National Day of Prayer with a Hindu prayer rather than a traditional Christian prayer.
The prayer was followed up by offerings from state representatives of various Christian denominations.
Davis noted every day of session opens with a prayer and said there was "displeasure" among lawmakers that the National Day of Prayer opened with a Hindu prayer, likely the first of such in the State House. He went on to call the decision to have a Hindu prayer "odd" and "disturbing."
Partial transcript as follows:
Today, in the Alabama State House, I was there, and the session was opened with a Hindu prayer. And that was planned. I think members found out about it yesterday. I think there was some displeasure with it. And I had heard as early as last year that there was a push by some.
Now, it was Representative Mike Shaw. These were the guests of Representative Mike Shaw and Representative Jeremy Gray. Now, Jeremy Gray is the person that was responsible a few years ago for passing the legalization, authorization to teach yoga in our public schools. Which is, it's a religion, OK? It's a practice, it's an exercise of the Hindu religion. So no surprise there that Jeremy Gray would sort of be behind this or pushing this or want this to happen, let me say.
So the day opened, there was a, and I'm not gonna get into all the details, but it was definitely a Hindu-led prayer, OK?
I mean, and there were a lot of Hindus in the building today, there to celebrate that. As to my knowledge and knowledge of others I've talked to, I don't know that this has ever happened before. I think there was a lot of displeasure with it.
I'm just guessing, that's my feel. And I think that Speaker Ledbetter decided, since it was National Day of Prayer, to also, and he may have done it last minute, I don't know, to couch that Hindu prayer, and he called it with prayers from all religions, is what he said, or other religions, maybe. It's what I heard after the Hindus prayed.
And then he called upon a couple of other people to pray, which, one was a Catholic and then one was a, then you had two different types of Baptists, including Patrick Sellers, who's a pastor, a Missionary Baptist pastor. I think he also tried to call on one member of the House who is Jewish, but they didn't seem to be in the room.
I will say this, there were a lot less people in there for the prayer than normal.
I do think a lot of members just didn't go in because of not agreeing with the fact that they were having a Hindu prayer to open up the Alabama State House today. And then after the prayer, Patrick Sellers, who's a pastor in the Birmingham area, he gave a little bit of an interfaith, I would call it, speech after, and said something to the effect of we may all be surprised at who's in heaven one day or something like that, and how we're going to pray or something when we get to heaven.
So it was odd, it was disturbing, and I think it ... set a bad precedent, honestly.
I think now you're going to have every type of religious organization, credible and non-credible, all be applying pressure to lead prayer at the Alabama State House.
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email trent.baker@1819news.com.
Don't miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
