Unlike some GOP leaders (if their words are to be believed – Ha!), I’d like Barack Obama’s presidency to succeed. Modestly. Mediocre enough that people don’t think his policy mix is the blueprint for the future. Good enough that the cracker contingent won’t grow on claims that “those people” aren’t up to real leadership.
It’s hard to imagine the nation succeeding as the presidency fails.
But if he drives the Sisters of Charity out of the United States, because their ministering to non-Christians leaves them insufficiently “religious” for an exemption to the Employer “Contraceptive” Mandate, I wish him personally catastrophic failure, leprosy, and worms devouring his carcass. More or less.
And if the crackers cackle, so be it.
I agree with Jordan Bloom that Prayer Breakfasts are “more civil religion spectacle than anything else,” and thus generally are beneath notice.
I recall attending a local prayer breakfast maybe 20 years ago, when I was still firmly Protestant. I sat with acquaintances who I knew to be Roman Catholic, and I was embarrassed at how provincially, reflexively, unconsciously Protestant the tone of the event was. (In retrospect, I may have underestimated both the confidence of believing Catholics and how Protestant the tone of post-Vatican II Catholicism had become, thus overestimating the offense I fancied was being given.)
But they held the National Prayer Breakfast this week, whoever they (“a financially opaque pseudo-ministry that thrives on cultivating relationships with Washington’s powerful”) are. And they got an embarrassment of a different sort than I got at our local when pediatric neurosurgery superstar Dr. Ben Carson resolutely committed what he saw as truth, which is quite contrary to what our President is trying to enshrine in the incredible shrinking PPACA. And he did it right there in front not only of God and everybody, but even, yes even, in front of Barack and Michelle Obama!
Oh, the shame! Oh, the infamy!
Or perhaps, given the short introduction in the video, that’s exactly what “they” wanted – and they carefully chose their messenger.
If you’re up for some surprises, if not offenses, yourself, you might want to calendar “Christian Themes in Harry Potter,” a talk sponsored by the Orthodox Christian Fellowship at Purdue University Friday, February 15th at 6pm in room B061 of Armstrong Hall.
Yup. Christian themes. Take that, you illiterates and literalists!
* * * * *
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 