WHITE HOUSE, Tennessee (LifeSiteNews) — Hindu prayers scheduled for a Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting of the City of White House, Tennessee, have been canceled following a prayer campaign.
Rajan Zed, a Hindu cleric who led the first official offering of Hindu prayers in the U.S. Senate, announced on his website that the City of White House canceled his plans to pray before a December 18 meeting due to a scheduling conflict.
Derek Watson, Administrative Services Director of White House, confirmed to LifeSiteNews that the city had accidentally double-booked the day. A Christian pastor was previously scheduled to offer the opening prayer for the Board of Mayor and Alderman meeting.
The city attempted to reschedule Zed for another Board of Mayor and Alderman meeting in January, but the Hindu cleric was unable to fit that into his schedule, Watson told LifeSiteNews.
Zed shared that he “had planned to recite from Rig-Veda” as well as from Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita, “both ancient Hindu scriptures.”
A reader informed LifeSiteNews that she launched “advocacy at high levels” as well as a prayer campaign to stop the Hindu prayers from taking place, adding that “the fruit came quickly.”
Zed offers Hindu prayers at city councils across the United States, as his website shows. He has recently recited Hindu mantras at the Memphis City Council, the Corpus Christi City Council, the Pine Bluff City Council in Arkansas, and earlier at the legislature of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the City Councils of Meridian and Star City in Arkansas.
When Zed prepared to offer the first Hindu prayers in the U.S. Senate, on July 17, 2007, a Christian protester spoke out in the Senate chamber, “Lord Jesus, forgive us Father for allowing the prayer of the wicked which is an abomination in your sight.”
“We shall have no other gods before you,” the man can be heard saying in the video recording of the proceedings. Another woman cried out after Zed started his prayer.
While Hindus remain a small religious minority in the U.S. – only about 1 percent – its adherents are rapidly growing in the U.S., and Zed’s many prayers at city meetings, as well as the growing number of Hindu temples in the country, indicate the religion’s influence is growing in the U.S.
Both the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures affirm that the “gods” of pagans are in fact demons.
“For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils: but the Lord made the heavens.” (Psalm 95:5)
“They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known.” (Deut. 32:16-17)
“What then? Do I say, that what is offered in sacrifice to idols, is any thing? Or, that the idol is any thing? But the things which the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God. And I would not that you should be made partakers with devils.” (1 Cor. 10:19-20)
