It’s hard this morning not to think of the tsunami that killed so many people a year ago, so when I saw President Bush’s remembrance cross the wire today I gave it a read. It was, after all, a terrible event, one that still has more than a half-million people homeless, and I was struck by the closing line of President Bush’s statement:
May God comfort all those affected by the tsunami and give them strength in the years ahead.
I ask the following question completely without malice: Have U.S. statements around prior catastrophes always included an invocation of a Christian deity? I ask because it strikes me as a somewhat unusual thing in the context given the religious breakdown of the areas most affected (according to Google):
Thailand — Religion: 95% Buddhism, 4% Muslim
Indonesia — Religion: Muslim 88%, Protestant 5%, Roman Catholic 3%, Hindu 2%, Buddhist 1%, other 1% (1998)
Related posts:
perhaps he meant the individual people’s respective gods, should they have one…
yeah, sure.
A religious invocation is almost always for the benefit of the invoker, in case you missed it.
It’s not like he said “May Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior…” I agree with Kevin.
The real irony is this: if an omnipotent God exists — whatever religious group He may favor — then He is the one who a) caused the tsunami or b) allowed it to happen. If He is not omnipotent, on the other hand, then he likely can’t do much in the way of comfort.
Last time I checked, God is not a christian deity.
Point taken, especially with regard to Buddhism. Islam, however, considers its monotheistic deity to be the same one worshipped by Jews and Christians.
“Allah” is essentially the Arabic word for God: Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians refer to their diety as Allah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah#Usage
paul, paul, paul…if someone else had made that posting, you would have mocked their religious oversight, no? And your highest ranking government official (albeit foreign) the queen, invokes a clearly Christian deity all of the time…