Web sites blur line between church and state
Religious groups call for members to pray for political purposes
(Knight Ridder News Service)
Nancy O'Brien said she'd never seen anything like it in her 60 years as a Roman Catholic. There in the church bulletin at St. Philip Neri in Lafayette Hill, Pa., was an item urging parishioners to pray the Election Novena, available at www.electionnovena.org.
The notice cited Pope John Paul II's exhortation to Americans to "guarantee the right to life" and sought daily recitation of the rosary until the election, "to overcome the culture of death." To O'Brien, those were buzzwords for "pray for pro-life candidates," an impression the Web site confirmed.
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With religion playing a high-profile role this election season, tax-exempt prayer sites such as Pray the Vote, Prayer for America and Nineveh Journey are popping up on the Internet. Unlike conventional interest groups, they believe people can influence the outcome by giving up television, by eating bread and water for dinner, and, of course, by praying fervently.
The prayer site 40 Days U.S.A. seeks, in language familiar to evangelicals, a nationwide "crying out to God" for the election of "God-fearing men and women" and the country's "deliverance and safe passage into future days."
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for organizations such as Pray the Vote, the whole idea is to incorporate spiritual beliefs into civic life. Pray the Vote was launched in June by a Phoenix-based organization that also, soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, founded the Presidential Prayer Team to pray for the Bush administration.
Nineveh Journey isn't shy about its goal: a national conversion, "shown by the election of a pro-life president and super-majority in the House and Senate."
The article doesn't mention the fact that there are some 110,000 evangelical churchs that are being used right now to organize political action for Bush. That's an army of the faithful poised to deliver our democracy to the theocrats on a platter. And the IRS can't be bothered, since no one dares speak out publicly against organized religion, even when it abuses our tax dollars.
While they're praying, we're paying--for the destruction of our own democratic system.