The Orange County, Calif., chapter of the American Red Cross has canceled the planned performance of a music group at an upcoming event honoring the organization's volunteers who helped at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks because the group planned to sing songs that mention "prayer" and "God."
"Somebody has gone a little overboard" at the Red Cross, said Cherilyn Bacon, director of First Act, a choral group made up of middle school-aged students from a local performing arts school.
The group was invited to perform "Heroes' Triology" and to dedicate it to the 9-11 volunteers at tomorrow's event. The arrangement includes three songs: "America the Beautiful," "Prayer of the Children" and Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A."
First Act's rendition of "Declaration," a song that includes the opening lines from the Declaration of Independence, was also deemed inappropriate....
This reminds me that I need to make more donations to The Salvation Army and to organizations such as The Rev. Larry Rice's New Life Evangelistic Center (NLEC)(with its huge, year-round, food-shelter-clothing programs - not only at St. Louis, but at several cities in Missouri and in Southern Illinois plus 24-hours per day Christian TV stations: all operated by contributions and no state or federal funds. (And! Recipients of their charitable activities don't have to pay for anything received from them, whether the above-mentiond or heaters, cooling devices, assistance on utilities bills, et al.) Some agencies could stand some basic training for all paid and/or volunteer "leaders" for every level of management and service to asssure that we don't get this "West Coast" thing called neutrality. It reminds me of the "...neither hot nor cold..."
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3/10/02 9:49 PM
mr b: "me too chris. me too. god bless ."
