I saw this being mentioned in the latest issue of Time. I don't really know that much about it, but it doesn't really settle well with me.
Presidential Prayer Team
Presidential Prayer Kids
Presidential Prayer Team CD
______________________________________________________
CNN Article
Inside the Presidential Prayer Team
By NATHAN THORNBURGH
Monday, May 24, 2004 Posted: 2:07 PM EDT (1807 GMT)
The radio ad's announcer reads a list of famous Americans who gave their lives to Christ -- from founding father John Jay to former Harlem Globetrotter Meadowlark Lemon -- as fifes trill and drums roll in the background. "You too can be an American inspiration," the narrator concludes, "by joining the Presidential Prayer Team!"
The ad, running on 1,165 radio stations around the country, doesn't mention President Bush. But it comes from a group that could play a major role in rallying the President's Christian conservative base to vote in this year's election.
Founded in the wake of 9/11 with backing from Arizona Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo, among others, the Presidential Prayer Team draws inspiration from the biblical injunction to "pray for Kings, and all those that are in authority."
Its website, PresidentialPrayerTeam .org, claims to have 3 million Americans on bended knee for the President who famously named Jesus as his favorite philosopher. The nonprofit group doesn't support candidates and thus isn't subject to campaign-spending limits. But it is about to launch Pray the Vote, a national initiative that will feature half-hour radio ads, Dean-style meet-ups (called prayer parties) and a nationwide prayer rally on the eve of the election.
"We're really just calling for God's will to be done in this election," says spokeswoman Meagan Gillan. "We want people to vote their values."
With an annual budget of $1.5 million, the Prayer Team says it will continue past November, even if God's plan includes a President John Kerry. "If that's the case," says Gillan, "we'll just have to pray even harder."
______________________________________________________
Common Dreams Newscenter article
Published on Monday, February 23, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Presidential Prayer Team isn't Praying for You
by Rosa Maria Pegueros
I’ve been praying a lot since George W. Bush became president. I pray that he doesn’t screw up too badly; I pray that he stays safe from harm because the prospect of a Dick Cheney presidency is terrifying. I pray that we still have some civil liberties left after he leaves office. I pray for the environment; will Yosemite be there for my grandchildren? I pray that he stop calling on God publicly because people might get the idea that we’re a theocracy instead of democracy. Then again, maybe we’re just an idiotcracy--is there such a word? We should ask Bush; heaven knows he’s made up enough words.
I was praying in private until someone got the bright idea of starting a Presidential Prayer Team. If you sign up on the Internet--no fee required--you get a sticker that shows George Washington genuflecting, his head bowed, his hat in hand. Each week members receive an e-mail detailing the difficulties the President must deal with that week so that they can pray for heavenly guidance. After all, scientific studies have shown that prayer helps those who are ill to heal even when they don’t know that people are praying for them! (What kind of a control group did they use for this study, I wonder?)
So I signed up and the e-mails started coming. They asked for God’s blessings on Bush and various members of Congress. (Heaven knows they need our prayers: 435 people who can’t agree on what to put on a pizza are making decisions for our whole country!) They prayed for the debut of Mel Gibson’s controversial film on Jesus Christ, and for the end of "unlawful unions" taking place between same-sex couples in San Francisco, though I can’t imagine what either of those issues have to do with the presidency. They offer weekly prayers for the members of the president’s cabinet and the Supreme Court. So I looked again: All of the names mentioned are _Republican_ members of the government. How odd. If I were a conservative, I think I’d be praying to change some liberal minds.
What America do the founders of the Presidential Prayer Team live in? It doesn’t look like my America. Where I live, there are people living on the streets. In winter, they are forced by the cold into emergency shelters. There are more food banks than ever and greater contributions than in the past but they still run short. Seniors buy their drugs from Canada; they used to buy them from Mexico before the U.S. government forbade us to buy them there. So much for NAFTA. Women on welfare have no childcare and few choices. I’ve never seen them mentioned as recipients of the Presidential Prayer Team rogations.
The PPT mailings ask for divine protection for our troops but what about our veterans? In addition to the services needed for veterans of past wars, there are newly-minted veterans with major problems. Jessica Lynch, the young supply clerk who was taken as a prisoner of war, suffers memory loss, a fractured disk in her back, three breaks in her left leg, multiple breaks in her right foot, a broken right arm, and lacerations on her head. She just wants to be able to walk again. Had it not been for the help and cooperation of the Iraqi doctors who were the first to treat her, she might not have survived. In earlier conflicts, it is doubtful that someone with her injuries would have made it back. In this day of medical miracles, she will walk again but it won’t be cheap. At today’s prices, the medical bills for Ms. Lynch will be astronomical. The treatment and rehabilitation that she must undergo in order to return to a semblance of normal activity will take months if not years. The Army has given her an 80% disability rating and she will receive a pension based on that rating. She is 19 years old. She could live to be 90 years old. We, our children, and grandchildren will pay for her for over the next seventy years. Multiply Jessica Lynch by hundreds, perhaps thousands of seriously injured American soldiers; do not forget the pensions for the widowed spouses who relied on their loved ones’ incomes, and their children’s eventual need for college scholarships. Then there are the psychological effects of troop’s suicides: 21 have committed suicide in Iraq and Kuwait, The Pentagon has not reported how many have committed suicide after returning home. Presidential Prayer Team: Our veterans and their families need more than just prayers.
I would rather that my tax dollars go to the families of servicemen and -women than to the maintenance of Mr. Bush’s adventurism. Apparently, he never considered the long-range costs of the war or just didn’t care that American soldiers would pay the bill in blood and in grudging recognition of their service, and the rest of the American people would pay in taxes for the next three generations. Perhaps the PPT could pray for a divine forgiveness of the terrible debt that is falling on our children and grandchildren.
It has been well-documented that most of the members of the armed services are working-class people. Mobilizing the working-class, including the members of the military who are surviving on food stamps because even combat pay doesn’t make up for the loss of income from the reservists’ jobs, could depose George Bush once and for all. They live in our America, not Bush’s. The real mystery is why 51% of Americans still approve of his performance in office. Can the panic generated by 9-11, by the ever-increasing security measures such as the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security administration with its multicolored warnings, conspire to make us so fearful of outside attack that we fail to tend to the decay of our society?
Perhaps if Bush had been more attentive to the lessons of history than to the statistics of baseball, he would have learned that the founders of our republic believed in a strict separation between church and state. Bush’s public piety and pronouncements about sin would have appalled George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. While the Presidential Prayer Team is not a governmental agency, and it does not violate the separation of church and state, it seems determined to bridge that gap.
I say we should pray to protect the separation of church and state as well as all of our precious civil liberties, and pray for a new administration in November. It can’t hurt.
______________________________________________________
Does anybody out there actually know anything about this?
Presidential Prayer Team
PPT said:
Presidential Prayer Kids
Presidential Prayer Team CD
______________________________________________________
CNN Article
Inside the Presidential Prayer Team
By NATHAN THORNBURGH
Monday, May 24, 2004 Posted: 2:07 PM EDT (1807 GMT)
The radio ad's announcer reads a list of famous Americans who gave their lives to Christ -- from founding father John Jay to former Harlem Globetrotter Meadowlark Lemon -- as fifes trill and drums roll in the background. "You too can be an American inspiration," the narrator concludes, "by joining the Presidential Prayer Team!"
The ad, running on 1,165 radio stations around the country, doesn't mention President Bush. But it comes from a group that could play a major role in rallying the President's Christian conservative base to vote in this year's election.
Founded in the wake of 9/11 with backing from Arizona Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo, among others, the Presidential Prayer Team draws inspiration from the biblical injunction to "pray for Kings, and all those that are in authority."
Its website, PresidentialPrayerTeam .org, claims to have 3 million Americans on bended knee for the President who famously named Jesus as his favorite philosopher. The nonprofit group doesn't support candidates and thus isn't subject to campaign-spending limits. But it is about to launch Pray the Vote, a national initiative that will feature half-hour radio ads, Dean-style meet-ups (called prayer parties) and a nationwide prayer rally on the eve of the election.
"We're really just calling for God's will to be done in this election," says spokeswoman Meagan Gillan. "We want people to vote their values."
With an annual budget of $1.5 million, the Prayer Team says it will continue past November, even if God's plan includes a President John Kerry. "If that's the case," says Gillan, "we'll just have to pray even harder."
______________________________________________________
Common Dreams Newscenter article
Published on Monday, February 23, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
The Presidential Prayer Team isn't Praying for You
by Rosa Maria Pegueros
I’ve been praying a lot since George W. Bush became president. I pray that he doesn’t screw up too badly; I pray that he stays safe from harm because the prospect of a Dick Cheney presidency is terrifying. I pray that we still have some civil liberties left after he leaves office. I pray for the environment; will Yosemite be there for my grandchildren? I pray that he stop calling on God publicly because people might get the idea that we’re a theocracy instead of democracy. Then again, maybe we’re just an idiotcracy--is there such a word? We should ask Bush; heaven knows he’s made up enough words.
I was praying in private until someone got the bright idea of starting a Presidential Prayer Team. If you sign up on the Internet--no fee required--you get a sticker that shows George Washington genuflecting, his head bowed, his hat in hand. Each week members receive an e-mail detailing the difficulties the President must deal with that week so that they can pray for heavenly guidance. After all, scientific studies have shown that prayer helps those who are ill to heal even when they don’t know that people are praying for them! (What kind of a control group did they use for this study, I wonder?)
So I signed up and the e-mails started coming. They asked for God’s blessings on Bush and various members of Congress. (Heaven knows they need our prayers: 435 people who can’t agree on what to put on a pizza are making decisions for our whole country!) They prayed for the debut of Mel Gibson’s controversial film on Jesus Christ, and for the end of "unlawful unions" taking place between same-sex couples in San Francisco, though I can’t imagine what either of those issues have to do with the presidency. They offer weekly prayers for the members of the president’s cabinet and the Supreme Court. So I looked again: All of the names mentioned are _Republican_ members of the government. How odd. If I were a conservative, I think I’d be praying to change some liberal minds.
What America do the founders of the Presidential Prayer Team live in? It doesn’t look like my America. Where I live, there are people living on the streets. In winter, they are forced by the cold into emergency shelters. There are more food banks than ever and greater contributions than in the past but they still run short. Seniors buy their drugs from Canada; they used to buy them from Mexico before the U.S. government forbade us to buy them there. So much for NAFTA. Women on welfare have no childcare and few choices. I’ve never seen them mentioned as recipients of the Presidential Prayer Team rogations.
The PPT mailings ask for divine protection for our troops but what about our veterans? In addition to the services needed for veterans of past wars, there are newly-minted veterans with major problems. Jessica Lynch, the young supply clerk who was taken as a prisoner of war, suffers memory loss, a fractured disk in her back, three breaks in her left leg, multiple breaks in her right foot, a broken right arm, and lacerations on her head. She just wants to be able to walk again. Had it not been for the help and cooperation of the Iraqi doctors who were the first to treat her, she might not have survived. In earlier conflicts, it is doubtful that someone with her injuries would have made it back. In this day of medical miracles, she will walk again but it won’t be cheap. At today’s prices, the medical bills for Ms. Lynch will be astronomical. The treatment and rehabilitation that she must undergo in order to return to a semblance of normal activity will take months if not years. The Army has given her an 80% disability rating and she will receive a pension based on that rating. She is 19 years old. She could live to be 90 years old. We, our children, and grandchildren will pay for her for over the next seventy years. Multiply Jessica Lynch by hundreds, perhaps thousands of seriously injured American soldiers; do not forget the pensions for the widowed spouses who relied on their loved ones’ incomes, and their children’s eventual need for college scholarships. Then there are the psychological effects of troop’s suicides: 21 have committed suicide in Iraq and Kuwait, The Pentagon has not reported how many have committed suicide after returning home. Presidential Prayer Team: Our veterans and their families need more than just prayers.
I would rather that my tax dollars go to the families of servicemen and -women than to the maintenance of Mr. Bush’s adventurism. Apparently, he never considered the long-range costs of the war or just didn’t care that American soldiers would pay the bill in blood and in grudging recognition of their service, and the rest of the American people would pay in taxes for the next three generations. Perhaps the PPT could pray for a divine forgiveness of the terrible debt that is falling on our children and grandchildren.
It has been well-documented that most of the members of the armed services are working-class people. Mobilizing the working-class, including the members of the military who are surviving on food stamps because even combat pay doesn’t make up for the loss of income from the reservists’ jobs, could depose George Bush once and for all. They live in our America, not Bush’s. The real mystery is why 51% of Americans still approve of his performance in office. Can the panic generated by 9-11, by the ever-increasing security measures such as the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security administration with its multicolored warnings, conspire to make us so fearful of outside attack that we fail to tend to the decay of our society?
Perhaps if Bush had been more attentive to the lessons of history than to the statistics of baseball, he would have learned that the founders of our republic believed in a strict separation between church and state. Bush’s public piety and pronouncements about sin would have appalled George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. While the Presidential Prayer Team is not a governmental agency, and it does not violate the separation of church and state, it seems determined to bridge that gap.
I say we should pray to protect the separation of church and state as well as all of our precious civil liberties, and pray for a new administration in November. It can’t hurt.
______________________________________________________
Does anybody out there actually know anything about this?
