The White House has a plan to mobilize prayer vigils in front of the Supreme Court in defense of Obamacare. It was reported that the administration met with leaders at non-profit organizations and religious officials who support the new health care law. The court takes up the constitutional test of the health care mandate in a couple of weeks. The mandate has now been challenged in 26 states.
Cue the same stale big government religious prophets who confuse statism and centralization of power with real Gospel redemption. This will of course include agency heads of mainline denominations, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, and of course a liberal imam and rabbi for religious diversity. Liberal Catholics will no doubt be clamoring for camera time too. Unsurprisingly, the United Methodist lobbying building is hosting “radio row,” where advocates can take to the airwaves to gush over the new unpopular law. Fitting symbolism, given that the United Methodist General Board of Church & Society is woefully out of touch with the beliefs of so many of their own members in the pew.
Let me point you to a few excellent posts that have already addressed the irony of this prayer vigil given the religious conscience violation by the administration. Over at National Review Online, Yuval Levin gets right to crux of the issue with “Pray for the Mandate.” Fr. John Zuhlsdorf pretty much goes off, and appropriately so with his post, “The Obama Administration is organizing…. WHAT?!?”
In popular culture we hear lots of commentary and jokes about fundamentalists or “religious rubes.” They often reside in “flyover country” or the bible belt and are subject to sneers by the “elite.” These rubes, we’re told, frequently pray for greater morality and for a spiritual revival to sweep the country. Who can forget the snickering at the prayer rally organized by Texas Governor Rick Perry for the nation in 2011? Or the giggling by the enlightened when Southern governors or governors of farm states issue prayer calls for rain during droughts? But increasingly, it seems like the real religious rubes are the stale big government apostles whose power and partisanship is baptized by a bureaucracy that to them is omnipotent.
Partisanship and different worldviews are understandable and should be encouraged in our society. But when spiritual leaders are at the bidding of the bureaucracy, and embody an unwillingness to think critically about religious conscience and mandates, inevitably they become more of a religious rube than the ones they find so unenlightening.
