Christian minister opens Tennessee Senate with prayer to end Medicaid expansion

Daily Kos
Christian minister opens Tennessee Senate with prayer to end Medicaid expansion
by Jen Hayden

This is one of the strangest invocation and prayers you ever will see.

June Griffin, a "longtime crusader for Christian values," gave the opening prayer for the Tennessee Senate this morning. After taking special prayer requests, she went right into a downright bizarre prayer to end any effort to expand Medicaid in Tennessee (thanks to the Nashville Scene for the transcript):

I pray for the people of Tennessee who have been so downtrodden by the wicked courts from on high that they have been subject to tyrannical judiciary. And I pray that you would save Tennessee from the edicts of Washington DC that would go against the plain wishes of the people of Tennessee, particularly pertaining to the 9th and 10th Amendment.

I pray that you would sanctify this state, that it would be holy and would be a leader among the other states. That they would see that there is a God that lives, that you love the people of Tennessee. That you gave your life that we might be saved from our sins. I pray that you would forgive the many sins of carelessness or lethargy or desperation. The compromises.

Oh lord save Tennessee for Jesus sake, and I pray that your will would be done that you would be our coverage, that we would not be forced into these edicts from Washington DC or any other quarter, but let the people know that our coverage is the same as with Moses and the children of Israel when they went through the wilderness with only the divine providence of almighty God.

So I pray that everywhere there are meetings, and there is considerations and deliberations, that you would give these men and women who have been elected, give them the backbone and the remembrance of the Tennessee Declaration of Rights, Article 1, Section 2 — we are ordered to resist arbitrary power.

-snip- (Video in article at link)

This isn't the first time June Griffin's compassion has been on display:

A 67 year old Republican congressional candidate in Tennessee named June Griffin has been arrested for stealing a Mexican flag from a grocery store in an attempt to strike a blow for her twisted version of patriotism. This took place, by the way, in Dayton, Tennessee, where the Scopes trial took place.
She said on July 18 she had noticed a small Mexican flag at an Hispanic grocery in the former Rogers Drug Store.

She stated, “I went in and there was nothing English in the store. There was one man who could not speak a word of English.”

She said she was outraged about the Mexican flag, saying it was an “act of war” and it “insulted my citizenship.”

Vid & more:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/03/1362064/-Christian-minister-opens-Tennessee-Senate-with-prayer-to-end-Medicaid-expansion?detail=email