Elected Leaders In 5 States Declare Day Of Prayer To Stem Tide Of Oil - NYT

[hatrack]

EDIT

The wall between church and state came a-tumbling down on Sunday, as elected leaders from the five states on the Gulf of Mexico issued proclamations declaring it to be a day of prayer. Although days of prayer are not uncommon here — Governor Riley declared one asking for rain to relieve a drought a few years ago — these proclamations conveyed the sense that at this late date, salvation from the spill all but requires divine intervention.

In the two months since the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion began a ceaseless leak of oil into the gulf, damaging the ecosystem and disrupting the economy, the efforts by mortals to stem the flow have failed. Robots and golf balls and even the massive capping dome all seem small in retrospect.

So, then, a supplementary method was attempted: coordinated prayer.

In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry encouraged Texans to ask God “for his merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis.” In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour declared that prayer “allows us an opportunity to reflect and to seek guidance, strength, comfort and inspiration from Almighty God.” In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal invoked the word “whereas” a dozen times — as well as the state bird, the brown pelican — but made no direct mention of God. In Florida, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp asked people to pray that God “would guide and direct our civil leaders and provide them with wisdom and divinely inspired solutions.”

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/us/28land.html

[sakabatou]

1. *facepalm*

[Ken Burch]

2. Not just ANY facepalm...

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. divinely insipid solutions.

Just when things look their darkest, everything goes totally black.

[phantom power]

4. We truly are a nation in decline.

:(

[Nihil]

7. How long before we get an "Edendon" down there ...

Although God often strikes us, to test our patience and justly punish our sins,
it is not in the power of man to understand the divine will. But is to be feared
that the most likely explanation is that human sensuality - that fire which blazed
up as a result of Adam's sin - has now plumbed greater depths of evil, producing
a multitude of sins which have provoked the divine anger, by a just judgement,
to this revenge.

Bishop Edendon of Winchester
24th October 1348

Surprise, surprise ... all of the prayers & masses had no effect. The plague
struck all along the Hampshire coast and his diocese was one of the most severely
affected due to its coastal nature. Half of its population died.

Hey governors? Think there might be a lesson to learn from the past?

[frebrd]

5. This country is terminally superstitious!

:banghead:

[damntexdem]

6. Well, they may be more effective and less damaging than BP has been.

At least as long as they don't use toxic dispersants to disseminate their prayers.

;-)