Due today: coordinating conjunction exercise
In class: vocabulary handout- 10 words; practice sentences due this Thursday; test Friday copy below; some of you received this yesterday, because you finished the coordinating conjunction exercise. Anyone who turns this in before Thursday when it is due, will earn 20 extra points.
Beginning close reading of the Speech to Greater Houston Ministerial Association by
John F. Kennedy
1960 in class handout; copy below
We will be working with an accompanying graphic organizer over the next couple of days. The format is similar to what you completed previously with Justice Steven's opinion. In class handout / copy below.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkhoustonministers.html
TEXT #7
Speech to Greater Houston Ministerial Association
John F. Kennedy
1960
Reverend Meza, Reverend Reck, I’m grateful for your generous invitation to speak my
views.
While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here
tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in
the 1960 election: the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles of the
coast of Florida; the humiliating treatment of our president and vice president by those
who no longer respect our power; the hungry children I saw in West Virginia; the old
people who cannot pay their doctor bills; the families forced to give up their farms; an
America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer
space.
These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious
issues—for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.
But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real
issues in this campaign have been obscured—perhaps deliberately, in some quarters But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected president, the real
issues in this campaign have been obscured—perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less
responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what
kind of church I believe in—for that should be important only to me—but what kind of
America I believe in.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no
Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no
Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or
church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is
denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might
appoint him or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish; where
no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the
pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source; where no
religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or
the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act
against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is
pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker or
a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that
helped lead to Je)erson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but
tomorrow it may be you—until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a
time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all
men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend
or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic
vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, at both the
lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have
so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of
brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of presidency
in which I believe—a great o>ce that must neither be humbled by making it the
instrument of any one religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its
occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose
religious views are his own private a)air, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or
imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
I would not look with favor upon a president working to subvert the First
Amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and
balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would
work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test—even by
indirection—for it. If they disagree with that safeguard, they should be out openly working
to repeal it.
I want a chief executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and
obligated to none; who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his o>ce may
appropriately require of him; and whose fulfillment of his presidential oath is not limited
or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.
This is the kind of America I believe in, and this is the kind I fought for in the South
Pacifc, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we
may have a “divided loyalty,” that we did “not believe in liberty,” or that we belonged to a
disloyal group that threatened the “freedoms for which our forefathers died.”
And in fact, this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died, when they Red
here to escape religious test oaths that denied o>ce to members of less favored
churches; when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Statute
of Religious Freedom; and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For
side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCa)erty and Bailey and Carey. But no one
knows whether they were Catholic or not, for there was no religious test at the Alamo.
Name_______________________
Speech to
Greater Houston Ministerial Association by John F. Kennedy vocabulary
TEST
FRIDAY Keep the top sheet to
study. The practice sentences are DUE
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3
1. obscure –adjective- not clear, vague
2. prelate- noun- an important church
dignitary
3. parishioners- noun- a member of a
parish or local church community
4. ecclesiastical- adjective- having an
association with a church
5. indivisible- adjective- not able to
separate
6. disdain-noun- a feeling of contempt,
scorn or derision
7. to subvert- verb- to corrupt
8. arbitrary- adjective- Determined by
chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle
9. pastoral- adjective- relating to a
clergyman or priest in charge of a congregation or his duties as such
10.
lay-adjective-
a person who is not a member of the clergy, but participates in the service;
note that the noun form is laity.
Text 7 vocabulary practice sentences
Please fill in the correct word based upon the context of the
sentence.
1. The minister’s
___________________________ duties included blessings at the beginning and end
of life.
2. She expressed ____________________at
the adulation the industry gives to beauty over talent, blaming it on the
influence of the academy awards.
3. Most years, because of their brief
duration, moonlight or cloudy conditions _______________________the show.
4. With the assistance of the
__________________ churches, temples and mosques are able to provide many more
services for their congregations.
5. The pope also appoints the
___________________of the order from the three candidates proposed by the grand
master.
6. _______________________ architecture is that regarding the pattern and
structure of Christian Churches and other religious constructions.
7. This choice appears to be simply
inconsistent and _______________________.
8. What ______________________________means
is that we're all in this together.
9. The military leaders in the establishment
are trying to _______________________ the will of the people.
10.
Following the services, the
____________________________ would gather for a light meal.
