Lux Lucet

It’s how in the course of looking for one thing you find something else.

In my case, I was doing a little research tonight on the Democratic Socialists of America. Maybe you’ve hear of them, you know, the hipster lefty organization that boasts rock star socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) as a member?

At any rate, while looking for something on AOC, I found instead this piece titled “Prayer is Not a Weapon” by Colleen Shaddox, whose author bio-describes her as “a Roman Catholic writer and activist who concentrates on poverty, immigration and mass criminalization.” She has some journalistic clout too, for the bio goes on to say that her work’s appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

From her article, it appears that Shaddox was triggered by Vice President Mike Pence’s call to prayer at the start of a recent meeting with Congressional leaders. His insistence on prayer, says Shaddox, “is offensive for myriad reasons.” One such reason, Shaddox mistakenly notes, is that government’s founding document, by which she means the Constitution, “forbids the mingling of church and state.” Of course, the Constitution does no such thing, rather, the First Amendment merely prevents the federal government from establishing a state church funded by taxpayer dollars such as the Church of England in the UK.

Shaddox continues her diatribe, calling Pence’s instance on prayer “an obscenity.” This is remarkable, considering the New York Times article to which Shaddox links explains that the prayer given at the Vice President’s request was delivered by Mitch McConnell’s chief of staff, who “asked God ‘to bring us together’ when negotiators met” to resolve the ongoing government shutdown. O, the horror of it all! And here I thought all along that liberals were all about being uniters not dividers.

At any rate, back to the idea that prayer is not a weapon. This seems a bit strange to me. After all, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God.” In Ephesians, he was more pointed as to just what those weapons were and closes out his exhortation to the Christian soldier with a call to prayer. Further, the imprecatory Psalms of the Old Testament call God to take vengeance on the psalmists’ and on God’s enemies.

If Shaddox can’t handle Pence’s prayer for unity, what would she do with David’s words, “Pronounce them guilty, O God! Let them fall by their own counsels; cast them out in the multitude of their transgressions, for they have rebelled against you”? Such weaponized prayer surely would cause her an epic meltdown.

If Colleen Shaddox actually believed the Bible, which she doesn’t, she’d know very well that prayer is indeed an indispensable weapon for any Christian seeking to fight the good fight of faith, including Christians whose job it is to run the government.