Firing Father: The Polarization of Prayer in America
Speaker Paul Ryan made headlines with his April 15th decision to fire House Chaplain Pat Conroy, a Roman Catholic priest. Speaker Ryan cited "pastoral" and "performance" issues in requesting the chaplain's resignation. But curiously, neither house Democrats nor Republicans could point to a single "pastoral" or "performance" issue in Father Conroy's seven years of service to the United States Congress.
Speculation began to mount that Conroy's dismissal was politically motivated. Though Ryan denies this, the internet was quick to point out that the chaplain struck a dissonant chord with Ryan's moment of triumph: the Republican tax bill.
Prior to the start of the tax cut debate, Father Conroy asked in prayer on the House floor: "May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans."
Amidst the controversy and speculation that the dismissal was politically motivated, Father Conroy rescinded his resignation. Paul Ryan, as Paul Ryan usually does, caved in, and agreed to allow the chaplain to stick around. Speaker Ryan continues to face intense, and appropriate, media scrutiny for his decision.
Two weeks after Conroy's firing for supposedly politicized prayer, some Christians in the United States observed "National Day of Prayer." And while the website titled "How to Pray for America" appears benign, perhaps even unifying, many of the public observances for such the occasion were far more slanted than the website appeared. Just watching the video footage of the White House event makes it clear that the prayers that rise up on National Day of Prayer exhort the divine to make the country far more Christian - and far less liberal. Perhaps this is evidenced best by the prime seats President Trump gave to fringe-right "Christian" theologian Eric Metaxas at the White House event.
Both the firing of Father Conroy and the fundamentalist vigor over the National Day of Prayer are troubling because they illustrate the political right's weaponization of prayer. Prayer is a "sacred cow" within the GOP, a party that will go to great lengths to demand Christian prayer in schools, while steadfastly aligning with those who would seek to prevent Muslim prayer at school or in the workplace.
Some liberal Christians might respond to the Republican weaponization of invocation by praying all the more vigorously for Democratic "sacred cows" like gun control, immigration, tax hikes and drone strikes. But this would only exacerbate a theologically perturbing misunderstanding of what prayer is all about.
In The Anchor Bible Dictionary, James H. Charlesworth observes that Christian prayer evolved from the prayers of early Judaism. Charlesworth suggests that early "Jewish prayers were not, like in many of the cultures contiguous with Palestine, pleas for material possessions or rewards, or magical manipulations of a deity who could be controlled by special deeds or words."
Instead, early Jewish prayers were used to give thanks, and to commemorate, the passage of time. Prayer was used to lift up the concerns of both the individual and the synagogue to God, and prayer was used to lament times of hardship. Many of the prayers we have in the Hebrew scriptures fall into the categories of praise, lament, petition, and thanksgiving , and one would get a sense for this in thumbing through a few pages of the Psalms.
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| The Wisconsin State Capitol, site of the Madison Day of Prayer |
The Christian Lord's Prayer weaves in each of these themes - professing that the name of God is "hallowed," confessing that there are those who would "trespass against us," asking God for "daily bread," and ultimately concluding that the "power and the glory" are God's alone.
Prayer is thus meaningful for Jews and Christians alike in that it teaches us the fundamental aspects of God's identity - as one who is worthy of praise, eager to listen to our struggles, willing to come to our side, and deserving of our gratitude. Prayer is in many ways the only way that we can come to know that God is always good - but more importantly, that God is always with us.
Prayer is often weaponized for political purposes, most frequently by the right - which is why it is ironic that Father Conroy may have been dismissed for a mildly leftist petition. But anytime prayer is politicized, whether by Republican or Democrat, an insidious heresy is committed, a heresy that claims that God sits squarely on one end of the political spectrum, leaving a divine vacuum on the other pole. If the love and presence of God is revealed to us through prayer, then politicized prayer states that God has neither love nor presence for the other side.
Psalm 139:7 asks "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?" The answer to this question, of course, is nowhere.
But when Americans weaponize prayer for political purposes, they respond to the Psalmist with a bold lie: that the Spirit of God has vacated the other side of the aisle.
Ryan Panzer, a theology blogger and raging liberal, thinks the Republicans get it wrong on nearly every issue - nevertheless, God is in their midst. He also think that Democrats have failed to shape any coherent platform for 2018 or 2020 - nevertheless, God is in their midst. He naively thinks that prayer, when no longer politicized, might be one of the few things that can unite us. @ryanpanzer on Twitter.
God with us, but perhaps not on our side?
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