Minister Joe Wright of the Central Christian Church in Kansas delivered the following opening invocation before the Kansas State Senate:
- 'Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done.
- We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.
- We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
- We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare
- We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
- We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
- We have neglected to discipline our children, and called it building self esteem..
- We have abused power and called it politics.
- We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.
- We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography, and called it freedom of expression.
- We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
- Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin, and set us free.
- Amen!'
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- The response was immediate. A number of legislators walked out during the prayer in protest. In 6 short weeks, Central Christian Church, where Rev. Wright is pastor, logged more than 5,000 phone calls with only 47 of those calls responding negatively. The church is now receiving international requests for copies of this prayer from India, Africa, and Korea
- Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, 'The Rest of the Story,' and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired.
3 comments:
Absolutely amazing - I want to reprint it as well!
It happened a while ago but it's still amazing.
I like how in an interview later, he said he wouldn't apologize for the truth. That's courage!
Laura
Yes, it happened in 1996 in Kansas and before that in KY in 1995. I wanted to do some research on the Church and saw a www.snopes.com item on it. They are great at determining if "stories to good to be true" are just that, stories.
But I didn't want to confuse everybody so I just posted it as I had received it from a friend.
Ray
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