CBN News
July 12, 2007

CBNNews.com - For the first time ever, a Hindu clergyman opened the U.S. Senate in prayer, Thursday.

Rajan Zed, director of Interfaith Relations at a Hindu temple in Reno, Nev., was invited by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to give the day's opening prayer. Please view video

Zed said, "Let us pray. We meditate on the transcendental glory of the diety supreme, who is inside the heart of the earth, inside the life of the sky and inside the soul of the heaven."

The prayer was briefly interrupted by protestors in the Senate gallery, who shouted, "This is an abomination!"

The male protester told an AP reporter, "We are Christians and patriots" before police handcuffed them and led them away.

They were charged with disrupting Congress.

Americans United for Separation of Church and Stat's Executive Director Barry W. Lynn said that the protest "shows the intolerance of many religious right activists. They say they want more religion in the public square, but it's clear they mean only their religion."

The Mississippi-based American Family Association has been urging its members for several days to object to the prayer because Zed would be "seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god."

Source: The Associated Press