by Sandy Fitzgerald

Created on: November 17, 2008

There are two things our parents told us to never discuss in public - politics and religion. So, when you ask me what I worship, I have to say I worship the freedom to choose. There's a reason for this. We all have our own opinions, and what makes it difficult is this: Nobody is really right on the matter. We don't know, for sure if there is a God, or if Christ exists, or if any religious belief, in fact, is right. We may have faith that God exists, in whichever form the believer chooses to believe. The faith in some is so strong that it becomes fact in their minds, but is that faith fact? We have a federal Constitution that guarantees us the right to freedom of religion. That should guarantee us the right to not believe in a God as well, or to not believe in a specific form of organized religion. That should give Muslims the right to worship as they see fit; to the Jewish among us to practice their faith. Hare Krishnas, in a perfect United States, would not be ridiculed for their saffron robes and chants. And President-Elect Barack Obama should not have had to defend himself from claims about being a Muslim. In a perfect country with perfect freedom of religious beliefs, that question should not have come up or mattered. But it did. Well, it's a cold, snowy night here where I live in Eastern Ohio, and when it's cold, I get online and play around, visiting that grandaddy of social networks, facebook.com. I saw that a photograph of my high school alma mater's football team, praying, was posted. I should have known better - but I didn't. I asked "when did they become a religious school." WELL. The father of one of the boys proceeded to tell me how it was a religious group formed by students who choose to pray before the games. Well, that's fine. Then he told me how the church on the corner invites all the boys up for a meeting/dinner before the games. Woah...treading on dangerous ground here. Then he proceeded to go on to say how there are two ministers on the sidelines of the football games, and how they have prayer meetings in the field house before practices and the games. Now, to me, that's treading dangerously on creating an organized religious service on taxpayer property. Even worse, it's creating a sense of peer pressure that would lead the football players to participate, whether they believe or not. But then it got even worse. Seems there is a young exchange student, of the Muslim faith attending the school and playing football this year. According

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