Praying for rain
Sonny Perdue, the Governor of drought-stricken Georgia, caused a bit of a stir a couple of weeks ago by holding a public prayer meeting to intercede with God for rain. His prayers on the Capitol steps in Atlanta, along with those of Christian clergy, were heard by hundreds of Georgians, including many state legislators. (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rain14nov14,1,57982...)
One Methodist minister prayed "We've been so busy industrializing that we've forgotten how to spiritualize. We've been so busy with our economy and what we can have and what we can possess that we've forgotten that you possess it all. Great God, this is your land. We till it for you. We are entrepreneurs for you, dear God." As if in response, an entrepeneur who had traveled from New York for the event distributed leaflets promoting his company's Wataire Atmospheric Water Generator, a device to make pure filtered water from the air. (http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=4186)
Amidst the amens, many secularists complained about the mingling of church and state: "the government needs to take action, not call prayer meetings. Let the churches call prayer meetings." But Dave Ross, a liberal CBS radio commentator, had a different and interesting take on this prayer, and on prayer in general. (http://www.daveross.com/otherfeatures/cbs_20071114_RAINPRAYER.mp3)
I couldn't find a transcript, but what I was able to make out was this:
The governor prayed ""Father, we come before you today to acknowledge that we are needy. We acknowledge our wastefulness. We acknowledge that we haven't done the things we need to do." Another of the ministers prayed "We acknowledge that we have not been good stewards of our land."
Dave Ross, who, according to what I've read, is usually quite cynical, then commented: "Wow, that's some serious truth-telling, because people who believe in God know that He wants us to acknowledge the truth before He acts." He went on to suggest that if the prayers weren't answered, maybe God was waiting for a little more truth.
So Dave suggested that the next prayer could go like this: "Lord, we acknowledge that we your children have mocked the idea of climate change and ridiculed the idea that our desire for wealth and comfort could affect your delicate balance."
"You may disagree", he said, "but try it, and if that doesn't work then try something like "Lord, we realize our selfish development practices have threatened the very water supplies we are praying for --and just keep going, keep telling God the truth until the drought finally ends. Because that's the real power of prayer, that it gets you to proclaim the truth loudly enough that even the people who are doing the praying can hear it."
Something to think about there: truth-telling prayer is like the prophets' words of truth. Without truth, prayer becomes a con job, conning the self, conning the people. Only if we face the truth do we have a chance of coming to our senses and dealing reasonably with our messes.
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Bill is right that data and analysis is better than epithets
I agree with Bill that data and analysis is better than epithets. I don't agree with his opinion of Chavez, but Bill's given a respectful and intelligent response that I respect and I've learned a lot about Castro that I didn't know before. I'm still ambivalent of Chavez, but I'm willing to see if time proves me wrong.
Donny, I've read some thoughtful posts from you on health care and global warming. If you have something against Chavez, try pointing out something specific rather than stating some generality, like "Chavez is a typical power mongering tyrant". I may be guilty of generalizing as well in this debate on Chavez, so this is something I'll have to watch out for too.
Chavez
I too, am watching Chavez with interest. I don't think he is an angel but he is not a villain either. He is being vilified because the day may come when the U. S. may want to kill him and take his oil, as they did with Sadaam in Iraq. Latin American democracy and sovereignty seems to scare the Big Money/Big Government interests and Chavez is fueling both democracy and independence in Latin America. Our government tends to like rich white dictators who do as they are told by us, keep the poor beaten down, and look out for our multi-nationals. The dictators are then financially rewarded.
This election today in Venezuela should be interesting. If the electorate approves the proposed constitutional amendment this will feed the "Chavez is a dictator" propaganda. We have nothing to say though when Australian and U.K. Prime Ministers like Howard and Blair are elected term after term.
This should have been posted after Bill's last comment.
Mixed feelings about Chavez
I don't have as high an opinion about Chavez. I do support his attempts to redistribute wealth and land to the poor, and I see nothing wrong with some of his other reforms, like shortening the workday from eight hours to six, creating a social security fund for millions of informal laborers and promoting communal councils where residents decide how to spend government funds. But I do see a lot of wrong in abolishing term limits for the Presidency and having Chavez be able to run indefinitely for President, in giving him control over the Central Bank, in allowing the Chavez government to detain citizens without charge during a state of emergency, and empowering Chavez to redraw the country's political map and handpick provincial and municipal leaders. He is trying to erode the checks and balances that all true democracies need to insure that one person or group doesn't have too much power. A lot of the things that he's attempting are things we're complaining that the Bush administration is doing.
The good that he's doing in trying to redistribute the wealth to the poor shouldn't obscure the bad that he's doing in consolidating too much power in one person. Let's not make the same mistake that leftists made in the 1920s and 1930s, who admired Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union and saw it as a worker's paradise, ignoring the suppression of dissent, the totalitarian rule, and the death of millions in death camps in Siberia.
re: Chavez, "Bolivarian Revolution"
My comments about liking the Bolivarian Revolution (especially its community councils) so far are somewhat separable from assessments of Chavez himself -- although I also have a favorable opinion of him...so far.
Considering that the US collaborated with a coup against him and is currently engaged in destabilization efforts within Venezuela, Chavez has reacted quite mildly. He hasn't suppressed dissent or controlled the media, most of which is privately owned and opposed to him. The one TV station he cracked down on only lost its live broadcast rights, not its cable and other media operations. Considering that the station was promoting the coup that temporarily overthrew him, they got off remarkably lightly. Imagine what the Bush administration would do in even mildly comparable circumstances.
Although I'm opposed to too-easily invoked emergency decrees, Chavez has faced a worse emergency than Bush has - and Bush has issued an executive order giving himself the power to declare an emergency whenever he sees fit and to become the sole source of power in the government, the coordinator of all governmental functions during the emergency, which will last as long as he says it does.
From what I've read of the constitutional reforms, although they increase presidential powers, which is not something I'm fond of, they still appear to leave the president of Venezuela with less institutional power than presidents of the USA have. The Central Bank changes aren't much of a practical change, as they reflect current operating procedures. The lack of term limits is nothing unusual, as Jim points out, though the increase in the length of the term from 6 to 7 years seems unnecessary and not a great idea.
With so many proposed changes, however, some are sure to be unwise. And Chavez is likely to go too far, being without adequate formal checks and balances. But most of what he's doing seems to make sense in the context of Venezuelan realities.
If we really don't want to see power consolidated in one person in Venezuela, then our government needs to make the political decision to back off from our machinations against Chavez and Venezuela.
U.S. Wrong to try to engage in Coup
Well Bill, I agree that the U.S. was wrong in trying to stage a coup on Chavez, and that its efforts to destabilize his government is wrong. You write deeply insightful posts that I've learned a lot from, and I usually agree with you. On this matter, though, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.
I support Chavez efforts to redistribute land and wealth to the poor in his nation, but I think it's always wrong to center too much power in one person. I read where he was proposing 69 changes in the constitution, and coupled with the control that his supporters have of most of the government, it just seems like an unnecessary overreach. To me, this seems analogous to Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s. I think the New Deal was a great thing, but Roosevelt was still wrong to try that.
I just read that he lost the elections, and he's acting very gracious in defeat. One of the things about democracy is the acceptance of the fact that we can't always get what we want. Sometimes we have to compromise and get half of what we want. I guess I'm just steeped in Madison's checks and balances idea, and that the best changes are evolutionary changes, not revolutionary changes.
I may be wrong about Chavez. What you wrote puts Chavez actions in a more realistic context. As someone who doesn't like the Bush administration, I agree that he should back off of trying to undermine Chavez. I'm hoping he could still implement some of his programs to help the poor.
hmmm
I sympathize with secularists' worries about the separation of church and state, but I don't think that this instance necessarily crosses the line.
However, I'm sure that if there was a case in which a public official happened to be Wicken and decided to call his fellow practitioners in that faith together for a similar ceremony from a public platform, many Christians would be alarmed.
In my mind a lot depends on whether he used state resources to publicize and organize the event. If not, I think it would be fine. The governor has a life as a private and religious citizen and if we wants to express himself in that way as a private citizen, that seems within his rights.
However, if he did use state resources, that might be a bit out of bounds.
hmm, using state resources
I doubt if state resources were used, other than the governor's time -- which he surely has discretionary use of, as you pointed out. I checked the press releases from the governor's office and there were none shown for the prayer vigil. However, his office did send out invitations to "faith leaders". I couldn't tell what the source of funds was for that, but at worst it's miniscule and at best it's ordinary protocol stuff, as well as being PR in support of water conservation.
They have a site for 'conservewatergeorgia.com", but no press release showed up there, either.
Everybody lobbies on the Capitol steps -- we do it all the time in Albany NY. So the location should also be no problem.
So, in this case, the separation of church and state issue doesn't really seem to be pertinent. For whatever it's worth, none of those who protested cited the use of state resources -- it was just the use of the state name and the general aura of state-sanctioning that ticked them off.
Praying for Rain
This is a very interesting development. A Governor holding a prayer meeting in Georgia is pretty safe move politically.Others can debate whether or not the meeting violated church/state separation.
What is interesting is that a Republican conservative like Perdue would have ministers there praying that we haven't been good stewards of the land. Why does it always take a disaster to wake people up? Is there anyway we can collectively move up on the learning curve and start getting things done BEFORE we are in the disaster stage?
BEFORE disaster stage? Nope.
Jim, it just doesn't seem to be in our nature to change until we're forced to change. At least, that seems to be the case for those in authority in whatever status quo exists. The burden of proof is always on the prophet, the seer, or the Cassandras. And the only proof is when the bad stuff hits.
Joseph in Egypt, as the story goes, was an exception, who earned the confidence of the pharaoh. In that case, preparations were made before the disaster hit.
Nowadays, we do have a greater capacity to diagnose potential problems, but it's hard to get those power structure folks to do anything that doesn't conform to their short-term felt needs. Climate change is a great example -- it takes a long time for enough data to be collected and for it to sink in. And one always has to admit that the models and theories are never certain. Probabilities are not convincing to those whose interests are tied to the maintenance of the current order of things.
As Upton Sinclair wrote after running for Governor of California: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (1935)
And as Groucho Marx is supposed to have said: "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedy."
Maybe we need a different kind of social order, more decentralized and locally adaptive. I rather like Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" so far.
A duck is a duck
Chavez is a typical power mongering tyrant. Socialism seems to bring this out of those with the propensity. It's just that we get to see him "become" what he is. What I find so odd is that the Hollywood crowd is flocking to this guy. One movie critical of Chavez and he'd shut the door to these "Elite's" in one heart beat. This is not amuzing what he is trying to do.
Sometimes a duck is an amphibious vehicle or an Oregon athlete
Epithets are not an adequate substitute for data and analysis.