LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Fans of writer Jeff Sharlet, who wrote some amazing articles like "Jesus Plus Nothing" and other articles for The Rolling Stone, has landed in a new newsletter in Colorado. His latest offering is Sex, Violence, and the National Day of Prayer.

Remember when the press thought Bush's subtle reference to "wonder-working power" in his 2003 State of the Union address was news? Or, even further back, when his announcement of Jesus as his favorite philosopher was considered by most media as an inappropriate admixture of faith into politics? Now, blatant equations of foreign policy with God's will, and an overtly Christian nationalist definition of prayer, orchestrated in the White House by the first lady of evangelicaldom's far right flank, is so passé that to find the president's words I had to turn to "Christian Newswire." It's a subscriber service, but you can get the whole text at that other great institution of news distribution, the White House' website.

The problem is in part Bush's steady drumbeat of providential politics, which by now has deafened the press to the nuances of his rhetoric. It's been so loud for so long that nobody notices when he cranks up the volume even further. Then again, the press is almost always blind to ritual. Since something like this happens every year, and there's always a priest, a rabbi, and a duck in attendance, the press assumes that nothing’s really happening — no policy initiatives, no political code. Less than nothing, even: Prayer, after all, is personal. Only, when it's enshrined by the word "national" and declared essential to American-ness, it's not.

The Christian Right historians cited by the National Day of Prayer's official website are correct in pointing out that national days of prayer are, indeed, a tradition dating back to the first days of the Republic; but they have also been forever contested. Thomas Jefferson, for one, feared that the practice would be used just as it was on May 4, 2006 — to strong arm a particular concept of God into endorsing a particular concept of American interests.

In this case, it was an evangelical Christian God, one who apparently looks down at the United States and sees not 300 million individuals bound together by law, on the foundation of the Constitution, but a “nation” as a theological unit, a corporate entity, beholden most of all to the Bible. He’s also an interventionist God, a deity who takes a direct interest in our affairs and expects us to spread His good news, “freedom,” across the globe.

There’s nothing conspiratorial in suggesting that by “freedom” Bush and those who believe as he does mean the gospel. Indeed, their beliefs would be shallow if they didn’t. The gospel, in their tradition, is not just true, it is the truth itself. And, as biblical literalists, they must accept Jesus’ promise in John 8:32 that “the truth will set you free” as a promise plain and simple; or, more ominously, as an imperative, a command. But to get to the state we’re in, our Christian nation beset by battles, “cultural” and actual, one must understand the mistake made by that subset of evangelicaldom that sees it as their duty to share, through the power of law, their particular prayers with the nation, and to project, through the power of arms, their concept of freedom around the world. They’ve conflated themselves and their actions with the “truth,” a rather idolatrous move. What Jesus said was not that prayer will set you free, nor war; not James Dobson, nor George W. Bush. What Jesus said was that “the truth will set you free.”

This is a new column by Jeff called "Jesus Nation". It should be good.