Editor, Gazette-Journal:

What a pleasant surprise! I was invited to the Commonwealth Prayer Breakfast by my friend Harvey Morgan who is a former State Delegate.This has been an annual event for 58 years now which precedes hours before the opening of the General Assembly. Here lately I have not been happy with the way the government conducts business in various ways. Stopping prayer in schools, telling federal employees they can’t say Merry Christmas, but can say Happy Holidays.

Several years ago, I called the VA Hospital in Hampton to go play music there. The lady I talked with came up with a time and date and then asked me, “Mr. Emerson, you don’t play religious music, do you?” It seems that has been outlawed in that hospital. These men and women who gave to their country, body, mind and soul and fought for freedom of religion could not be exposed to religious music.

I was starting to believe that God (yes, the same God on our money we claim to trust) has been kicked to the ...