Despite the prayers offered by Focus on the Family and the Reverend Wiley Drake, there was no huge rainstorm during Barack Obama's speech tonight. In fact, the weather seemed fairly perfect. Hopefully, FotF and Drake will now focus on offering more appropriate prayer requests, as I urged in a Religion Dispatches piece.
No Rain
Brian Kaylor is an award-winning author and journalist with four books on religion, politics, and communication.
Weather looks great!
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It would seem the imprecatory incantations promoted by Shepard and Drake have failed to produce the desired effect.
But what if there had been a downpour? Wouldn't they have expected us to take that as a sign of answered prayer and affirmation of their political viewpoint? So, conversely, what are we to make of the ideal weather that blessed the event? If heavy rain just so happens to fall in Minnesota next week, should we take that as a sign from above?
This is the trap we set for ourselves when we engage in this sort of rhetoric. It's probably not such a good idea to publicly call for the faithful to pray for a curse on some future event. Better to leave the voodoo and rainmaking to the heathens -- evangelists should have more important things to do.
Well, but look what it started:
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Let's hope the Republicans don't get hit with that! :)
Thanks for the comments!
ReplyDeleteStan: Well said!