In the wake of Wednesday’s horrific mass shooting in San Bernardino, California that left at least 14 people dead and 17 others wounded, it was hardly surprising that the carnage triggered yet another national debate over whether to pass stricter gun laws.
But yesterday, the ongoing discussion over how to stop further gun violence morphed into a passionate dispute over a rather unexpected topic: the power of prayer.
As disturbing news of this year’s 352nd gun rampage trickled in throughout the afternoon, several progressive thinkers and pundits, led in part by ThinkProgress’ own Igor Volsky, began venting their frustration by calling out politicians who offered prayers for the shooting victims but have historically resisted efforts to pass comprehensive gun violence prevention legislation. The criticism — targeted primarily at politicians who take money from the NRA — reached a fever pitch by day’s end, culminating with a controversial New York Daily News cover that blasted politicians who offered prayers after the shooting, declaring “God isn’t fixing this.”
New York Daily News: "God Isn’t Fixing This."https://t.co/Zh50AN5T7r pic.twitter.com/1cy1XbnQtT
— Poynter (@Poynter) December 3, 2015
Though the intensity of the message was unusual, the idea isn’t new. The same criticism was voiced earlier this year by President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the tragic mass murder in Roseburg, Oregon.
“As I said just a few months ago, and I said a few months before that, and I said each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough,” he said.
…Any invocation of faith is taken as implicit advocacy of right-wing political beliefs.
But as Twitter and other social media platforms exploded with anger over the invocations, some people of faith worried aloud that the outrage was drifting away from a point about gun violence prevention and toward a mockery of religion itself — especially the practice of prayer. Writing for the Atlantic, Emma Green called the trend “prayer shaming,” and pointed to several tweets and articles penned by progressive reporters as proof (including my fellow ThinkProgress writers). She argued that the overall effect felt discernibly anti-religious, an unsettling reality given that many of the shooting victims had both asked for prayers and offered some of their own.
“That people who care about gun control can’t be religious, and if they are, they should keep quiet in the aftermath of yet another heart-wrenching act of violence,” she wrote. “At one time in American history, liberals and conservatives shared a language of God, but that’s clearly no longer the case; any invocation of faith is taken as implicit advocacy of right-wing political beliefs.”
The debate continued into Thursday, with some conservative writers pushing back on what they saw as a misguided attack on religion when people should stay focused on how to fix gun violence. But lost within the back-and-forth was the ironic reality that the debate — posited on both sides as religion vs. action — is actually a modern expression of an old religious conversation that dates back several millennia.
The definition of prayer, like most things about religion, is a bit complicated. Different religious traditions harbor a multiplicity of beliefs surrounding the performance and function of prayer, and controversies over the subject have raged for centuries within faith groups. Christians, for instance, often disagree on the very nature of prayer, feuding over the tangible impact of orisons shouted to the Almighty. The conflict sometimes overlaps with a centuries-old tension over “faith vs. works,” a divide that began in the 16th century when Protestant Reformers insisted that faith alone can guarantee a believer salvation and (what we now call) Catholics arguing that physical acts must be a key component of faith.
The prayer-shaming debate actually mirrors an ancient religious criticism of people who offer prayers for a problem but do little to fix it.
Yet for all the wars fought over this disagreement (and there were many), the two sides always generally agreed that a Christian’s day-to-day faith requires action. One need only look to the modern-day example of Pope Francis to see that Catholics maintain that good works are a key component of faith, and Protestants still insist that good works are effectively evidence of faith — or, as famous Protestant Reformer John Calvin put it, “the faith by which alone, through the mercy of God, we obtain free justification, is not destitute of good works.”
Thus, the prayer-shaming debate actually mirrors an ancient religious criticism of people who offer prayers for a problem but do little to fix it — something that even the biblical Jesus addressed. Speaking before a crowd of disciples and devotees in Matthew 23, Christ denounced local faith leaders — people that functionally doubled as political leaders for the community — as hypocrites for failing to practice what they preach.
“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach,” reads the Bible. “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.”
As religion writers such as Jonathan Merritt were quick to note, similar concepts of faith paired with action can be found in other parts of the Bible, as well as within Islam and Judaism, among many other faiths.
Text asks if study or action is more important. Study if it leads to action. Same with prayer. #SanBernadinoShooting https://t.co/dGlzmw7WfT
— Rabbi Sari Laufer (@rabbilaufer) December 3, 2015
This is partly why the faith community is one of the oldest — and largest — coalitions pushing for an end to gun violence in the United States. It was bishops, priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, and other religious leaders who marched on Washington, D.C. to call for an end to firearm deaths in 2013, partnering with secular groups to demand that Congress pass comprehensive gun violence prevention legislation. It was Rev. Gary R. Hall, then head of the National Cathedral, who directly challenged the National Rifle Association in 2012, declaring “The gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby.” And it was everyday religious heads who spent the past few decades positioned as key organizers of local campaigns to end gun violence, working tirelessly to end the flood of gun-related funerals they tearfully officiate every year.
With this in mind, it’s hardly surprising that Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, diocesan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, said the following after the Newtown massacre of 2012, when a shooter murdered 20 children and 6 adults: “If we only pray and offer comfort now, and do not act, we are complicit in perpetuating the conditions that allow such crimes to occur.”
Indeed, faith writers such as the New Republic’s Elizabeth Bruenig were among the first on Wednesday to decry Republican presidential candidates for voicing prayers instead of articulating action plans to prevent gun deaths, saying, “If you’re keeping score, that’s prayers, luck, and blessings from Republicans, and gun policy prescriptions from Democrats. One hundred and forty characters isn’t much, to be fair, but I can think of at least one way to split the difference: praying for the strength and wisdom to fix our heinously broken gun policy, for starters.”
This makes sense, because as former NY Daily News reporter Jim Naught noted, the kerfuffle over “prayer shaming” inadvertently obscured the fact that politicians who misuse prayer in the face of senseless death are equally — if not more — offensive to religious people than to atheists and agnostics:
DC pundits seem unable to grasp that many people upset by pols' "thoughts and prayers" rhetoric are not mocking prayer but defending it.
— Jim Naughton (@JimNaught) December 3, 2015
In other words, millions of people of faith not only share the frustration that Congress still refuses to act on gun violence prevention, they’re also actively working to change things through programs, activism, and campaigns they call prayerful. For them, the burning question isn’t whether or not God will hear them — it’s whether Congress will.