I can see one valid reason for mentioning Prager's religion. Absent that information, a reader of his remarks would likely assume (as I initially did) that Prager was a Christian extremist trying to enforce his religious preferences on others. The idea that he was trying to enforce the trappings of a religion to which he doesn't even belong would never even have occured to me.

In any case I don't think it's entirely fair to say "Dragging his religion into the issue where it has no relevance strikes me as decidedly inappropriate." Since the issue under discussion is the relationship of religion to politics, I'm not sure that his religion has no relevance. In essence, Prager is attacking Ellison's religious choices, so his own religion shouldn't be off-limits.

In any case, the whole issue is bogus. The swearing in ceremony for the House of Representatives does not include any religious book and never has. Link

I'm afraid I'm still not buying that. I fail to see how Prager's religion makes him any more or less wrong to complain about Ellison's choice of religious prop. If Prager were insisting on the use of a Torah in the ceremony/photo op, perhaps his religion might be relevant, but I'm afraid I still don't see how it's relevant in this case. If I were to complain that President Bush is bringing too much religion into his governance, would that make my religious choices fair game?

Of course, you are correct that Prager's religion does not make him more or less wrong in his complaints. It is relevant, however if we are speculating about his motivations for making those complaints. As I mentioned, I originally assumed he was a Christian wanting to enforce his religious preferences on others. Since he's not, it's sort of interesting in a "what on earth is his motivation?" sense. It's not so interesting or important that he's a Jew, specifically. It's that he's a non-Christian trying to enforce Christian trappings on other non-Christians. If he was a Buddhist trying to enforce Islamic ceremony on a Hindu, I would find it just as worthy of comment, just for oddity's sake.

Speaking as a Jew, I find the fact that Prager, a Jew, is insisting that everyone, including Jews, has to swear on the Christian Bible, to be entirely relevant. It's far more nonsensical than if a fervent Christian were insisting that, where at least the point might simply be one of consistency in a certain type of Christian evangelical universalism. From a Jew it's a lot more inexplicable, and makes Prager far more loony than someone who simply believes that their own religion is The One True Religion.

I'd find leaving out this point to be missing an absolutely key element of the story, and an absolutely key part of who Dennis Prager is (and how wacky/idiotic he is).

Of course, the point that Prager is simply making the whole thing up out of whole cloth, and no one is sworn into Congress on a Bible, or any book at all, also can't be over-emphasized. I mean he's making the whole thing up.

"If I were to complain that President Bush is bringing too much religion into his governance, would that make my religious choices fair game?"

Also, while being Jewish is a religious choice for some, it's an ethnicity for others, and not a matter of choice, or religious belief (it's a dessert topping and a floor wax). Similarly, some defenders of George Allen took up his claim that asking about his mother's religion was "irrelevant" whereas almost any Jew was likely to tell you that his reaction to being asked about his Jewish roots or not was entirely relevant to them (acting as if you're ashamed of having Jewish roots may mean nothing to many or most Christians/non-Jews, but it's damn relevant to most Jews in judging someone; similarly, I suspect relatively few Jews would find Prager's being Jewish irrelevant to his beliefs about how Americans should act in regard to religion; to be honest, I don't understand your reasoning at all as to how that could possibly be other than relevant).

Gary,

I'll take your word for it. I still have as much trouble seeing the relevance, so it would seem we come at this at almost irreconcilable perspectives. I suppose that's no surprise, however, and there are worse things in the world.

Welcome back, btw. Hope this appearance means you're feeling better.

I happen to mostly agree with Gary, but there is inarguably something wrong with the snippet above according to my ear. In phrases of the form "Mr X, foo and bar" we expect "foo" and "bar" to be roughly equivalent in some way. It's "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich". The sentence as written suggests (no doubt unintentionally, given the rest of the article) that there's something wrong with being Jewish. The right way would have been to put the "Jewish" in close proximity to "Christian bible" to show the contrast.

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