Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Proof that prayer has no power to make concrete changes came from Episcopal priest Kurt Gerhard, who stood before the U.S. House of Representatives to hold an unconstitutional official government prayer worship ceremony. As part of this congressional worship, Gerhard called upon the powers of his deity to manipulate the minds of the members of Congress.

His mystical incantation:

“O Lord our God, creator and sustainer of all nations and people,

On this day, bless the Members of this House with anger at the injustice, oppression and exploitation of people so that they can work for justice, freedom and peace.

Bless them with enough foolishness to believe that they can make a difference in the world so that they can do what others claim is impossible.

Bless them with the humility to know that they can be wrong so that they can respect the perspectives of others.

Bless them with frustration with the way things are so that they will be motivated to create new solutions.

Send Your Spirit of courage and understanding upon each Member of this 111th Congress so that they will hold fast that which is true and serve these United States of America with glory and honor.

We ask this all in Your Holy Name.

Amen.”

So, what happened? Were the members of Congress infused with new supernatural dedication toward doing their jobs?

No. After Kurt Gerhard’s prayer ceremony, members of Congress worked for about three minutes, and then went home. Gerhard’s prayer proved to be profoundly impotent.

Bradford Braley, who apparently got the privilege of conducting an officially-sanctioned big government worship service in front of the House of Representatives last week just because he’s the brother of Congressman Bruce Braley, dropped the ball.

Braley had the chance to pray for an end to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but what did he do? He prayed for a little emotional manipulation instead.

He prayed, “Inspire a sense of awe and wonder at the bountiful resources of this land, and in light of the environmental tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, may we humbly dedicate ourselves to preserving and protecting those resources.”

Braley had the chance to stand before the most powerful legislature on Earth, and to pray to his supernatural, all powerful deity, but all he asked for was for his deity to inspire a sense of awe, and to encourage people humbly dedicate themselves? If his God is truly as all-powerful, why didn’t Bradford Braley just ask his God to make the oil spill go away?

Does Braley not really believe in the power of prayer, or was he just being stingy?

Day after day, year after year, preacher Barry C. Black keeps on using his pulpit in the Senate, as its official, government-paid chaplain, to agitate in favor of mass conversion to Christianity. Yesterday, Chaplain Black gave a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate in which he called upon his deity to transform United States Senators so that they would do the bidding of Christian religion: “Cause them to be men and women of integrity, so that our citizens can lead quiet and peaceful lives in all godliness and honesty.”

You know, Mr. Black, here in the United States of America we have a little old thing called the First Amendment to the Constitution. It guarantees us freedom of religion, which includes the right to lead lives that don’t fit with your definition of being godly and quiet. I don’t want to live a life in quiet godliness. It may not fit your religious ideals, which call upon everyone but preachers like you to be silent, but I’ll talk back to your continuing violation of the separation of church and state.

It’s an abuse of your power, Barry, to take a public salary and use it to keep pushing your religion. If you must pray using taxpayer money to do it, why don’t you do something useful, and pray for rain in the desert?

Yesterday, the official government-paid Chaplain of the United States Senate made special time in the legislative day for a government-established ritual of Christian prayer. The prayer was given by Timothy Keller of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, who begged his Christian God to “empower us, as a nation, to love all that You do command.”

You know, where I come from empowerment refers to a state in which people are able to create the means to act according to their own consciences. Empowerment as I understand it does not refer to the ability to learn to love the things that one is commanded to do. Where I come from, we call learning to love the things we are commanded to do as surrender or acquiescence or submission.

I don’t particularly appreciate some preacher being given a designated government-funded pulpit in order to preach that I should become the happy slave of his deity. In an empowered nation, there’s a separation of church and state to prevent that sort of thing.

Christians love to hear stories about how prayer affects people’s lives. Let me indulge them with this article, about an eleven year-old girl in Wisconsin, and her parents, and the power that prayer had in their lives.

It killed the girl.

Madeline Neumann grew increasingly ill over the space of a month, but her parents refused to take her to see a medical doctor, even after other family members begged them to do so.

To the end, even when Madeline Neumann had entered a coma, her parents insisted that the best thing to do was just to pray that God would intercede with his supernatural magical powers, and cure the girl. An ambulance was only sent to the house when the Madeline Neumann’s aunt made a telephone call without the parents’ permission. By the time the ambulance arrived, however, it was too late. Madeline Neumann was dead.

The death of their daughter was a powerful, concrete demonstration that prayer has no power. Sadly, Madeline Neumann’s parents don’t seem to have learned the lesson of the loss. The mother declares that “Only our faith in God is giving us strength at this time.”

Strength? I don’t see any strength in these parents. I see criminal negligence. Their faith in the magical powers of God is not giving them strength. That faith sent their daughter to her death.

The parents also say that “We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do.” Really? These people didn’t know how to drive their daughter to a doctor’s office when she was feeling sick for weeks on end? They didn’t know how to call an ambulance when their daughter went into a coma? Nonsense. Madeline Neumann’s parents knew how to better for their daughter, but they chose to follow weird supernatural beliefs instead.

Apparently, this couple has other children beside Madeline. Let’s hope that those children don’t become sick until they are able to leave home and learn some more sense than what they’ve been taught at home.