Jeffs said God would rain down retribution as a result of the child sexual assault conviction stemming from what he said are his religious convictions.
On the what-we-ask-of-God side of the ledger, Gov. Rick Perry back in April asked Texans to ask God to rain down rain on our parched state. "It seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous wildfires," Perry proclaimed as he set April 22-24 as "Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas."
So far, not much rain. But from April 25-28, it did get a bit stormy not far from Texas. More than 300 people died when tornadoes struck throughout the South, including in neighboring Arkansas. It was the most tornado deaths in a single day in the U.S. since 1932. What's that mean, vis-à-vis Perry's prayer proclamation? I don't know.
On Saturday, Gov. Rick Perry believed the believers (the ones who believe in Jesus Christ) should gather in a football stadium for "The Response: A call to prayer for a nation in crisis." An estimated 30,000 folks showed up. I was on the stadium floor among the believers for much of it, and I'm here to tell you they were deep into the event and its spirit.
(Time out for cheap one-liners I'm genetically unable to stifle: Some of the seats were saved. I thought all of these people were saved. A lot of the attendees showed up only because it gave them first shot at tickets for the prayoffs. It was a fast, but there was food for sale. Does that make it half-fast? Blame reader Andy Oberta of Austin for that last one.)
Are we a nation in crisis? I vote aye. Temperatures and unemployment are up, the Dow and our nation's bond rating are down, as is Americans' confidence in our major institutions. Two wars drag on. We awoke Saturday to the news that 31 American troops had died in a chopper crash in Afghanistan.
Overall, too many Americans think our nation is on the wrong course. And too few agree on how to put it on the right course.
"Our problems are God-sized problems," Richard Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention, said in kicking off the Response.
Crisis? Sure seems like it. For Perry, whom I expect to announce for president shortly after next weekend, crisis is opportunity. And that meant "The Response," for Perry, carried potential political peril as it aligned him with individuals and groups — including the American Family Association — that preach a brand of Christianity some people find intolerant. Some of the groups believe folks who don't share their religions beliefs are hell-bound.
But at the Reliant Stadium pulpit, the rhetoric was cranked down a notch or two, per instructions. We heard about traditional values, but none of the "It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" anti-gay stuff. Those sentiments, however, were communicated in words understood by the faithful.
"We are surrounded by evil and immorality," prayed Shirley Dobson, wife of James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family.
Perry's words and prayer on Saturday would have been unremarkable if offered in any church on any Sunday. He prayed for our nation, our president, our military and all of us, whether we wanted the prayer or not. He steered clear of politics, declaring God nonpartisan. And, as part of the effort to avoid church-state separation complaints, the stadium's big screen identified him as "Rick Perry, Austin, TX." There was no introduction, nothing that identified him as governor.
The proper response to "The Response"? If all you knew about it is what you saw in the stadium — and you were not aware of the background of the sponsoring organizations — you'd think it was a perfectly appropriate church service, albeit in a football stadium.
In fact, to me, it looked a lot more appropriate than the similar show that plays out at every Texas Republican Party state convention, a decidedly political event at which such displays of religion can be unsettling.
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