Pastor Lies About Being Fired From Capitol Over ‘Jesus’ Prayer
Yes, that’s the outrageous outrage being spread today by dishonest Tea Party blogs: Pastor Yanked From Capitol Over ‘Jesus’ Prayer (Fox News, of course):
A North Carolina pastor was relieved of his duties as an honorary chaplain of the state house of representatives after he closed a prayer by invoking the name of Jesus.
“I got fired,” said Ron Baity, pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem. He had been invited to lead prayer for an entire week but his tenure was cut short when he refused to remove the name Jesus from his invocation.
Baity’s troubles began during the week of May 31. He said a House clerk asked to see his prayer. The invocation including prayers for our military, state lawmakers and a petition to God asking him to bless North Carolina.”
“When I handed it to the lady, I watched her eyes and they immediately went right to the bottom of the page and the word Jesus,” he told FOX News Radio. “She said ‘We would prefer that you not use the name Jesus. We have some people here that can be offended.’”
A simple google search turn up the real facts….
There is no formal policy, which led the Rev. Ron Baity of Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem to publicly demand on Thursday an apology from House Speaker Joe Hackney after Baity’s planned weeklong visit to the House to give the opening prayer was cut to one day when he invoked the name of Jesus.
Baity’s press conference and the issue of public prayer before the legislature was carried in several state media outlets this week, and he was interviewed by Fox News Radio.
Baity is the president of Return America, a group that opposes “any governmental control over churches and pastors,” and opposes the theory of evolution, according to its website. He also has been active in the tea-party movement. He said yesterday that he was specifically asked not to mention Jesus in his prayer, a government intrusion that he said threatens his First Amendment rights.
“They’re telling me how I need to pray,” he said. “That is the establishment of a religion.”
The House speaker’s office notes that Baity was allowed to give his prayer, complete with its mention of Jesus; he just wasn’t invited back.
“We have at least two Jewish members in the chamber and, on any given day, there’s no telling who’s visiting,” Bill Holmes, a spokesman for Hackney, said yesterday. “So we try to respect that.”