How Dare the Vice President Pray?
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As I argued yesterday on BreakPoint, the spread of the coronavirus is a brutal reminder of just how fragile humans are, a direct and uncomfortable challenge to our collective illusion of control. As it spreads, not only are individual lives threatened, but also the intricate and fragile web of global connections that fuel national and international economies. To ask God's help in all of this shouldn't be controversial at all.
That's exactly what Vice-President Mike Pence decided to do. An official White House photo from February 26 captured the Vice-President and the Coronavirus Task Force opening their meeting with heads bowed in prayer. The photo, as they say nowadays, blew up the Internet, unleashing a tidal wave of "prayer shaming," a term coined a couple of years ago to describe ridiculing people who dare offer their "thoughts and prayers" for the victims of tragedies like mass shootings.
One secular research website headlined the photo with this take: "Symbolic of the moral and intellectual decay at the White House, a photo shows Vice President Mike Pence and his team trying to pray away the coronavirus." Pence and his team were "wallowing in ignorant superstition and willful ignorance," the site continued, suggesting that Pence prays because he's a "religious extremist."
Another slant, this one from an out-and-proud atheist: "It's not a joke when people say these Republicans are trying to stop a virus with prayer. What else did anyone expect? Science? Reason? Something sensible?"
One of the most viral tweets of the photo had this caption: "Mike Pence and his coronavirus emergency team praying for a solution. We are so [blanked]."
Never mind that every session of Congress begins with a prayer, as do thousands of public meetings across the country every day. Prayer is, for many today, politically unacceptable, seen as an affront to science, an obstacle to governance, and worst of all, a shameful admission that we are not in control of our own destinies. |
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20 Psalms to Read When Life Is Miserable |
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Sue Schlesman |
Making the Psalms a consistent part of our time studying the Bible is enriching and important. The Psalms are meant to be sung and prayed, and there are specific psalms that were written to help us when life it bleak and we feel miserable.
The individual and communal laments are the largest category of psalms. These psalms lay a troubling situation before the Lord and ask him for help. They can be about broad community problems or individual struggles. There are also songs of confi |
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