Normally, if I came across a story like this one without attribution, I’d assume it was a satire written by the good folks at The Onion. But this report apparently is true as it’s published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It seems a Republican governor faced with a severe drought and a Republican President reluctant to provide any relief has decided to appeal to a President Bush’s Father for help. No not that father, his other Father:
With no rain in sight, Gov. Sonny Perdue is looking for a little spiritual help to get North Georgia out of its drought.
Perdue’s office has begun sending out invitations to a prayer service for rain at the Capitol next week.
The service is scheduled for Tuesday at 11:45 a.m. on the Washington Street side of the statehouse.
Heather Teilhet, his spokeswoman, said the governor began talking about wanting to host a service to pray for rain on his way back from Washington D.C. last week. He was in D.C. meeting with federal officials and the governors of Alabama and Florida to discuss the region’s water crisis.
Perdue, whose son is a Baptist preacher, has had similar prayer services in the past.
“Georgia needs rain. The issue at the heart of our drought problems is a lack of rain,” Teilhet said. “And there is nothing the government can do to make that happen.
“The governor recognizes that the request has got to be made to a higher power.”
I wonder if the Governor has thought about calling any members of the Hopi tribe to perform ritual rain dances on behalf of the good folks of Georgia. Just in case Jesus and his Dad are too busy talking to President Bush about his inane comments recently that he’d “try to try” diplomacy with Iran. After all, theyve been in this sacred rain making business far longer than Governor Perdue has been.
Frankly, I’d like to laugh about this, but the subject is too serious. Millions of people in the Kentucky, Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee are experiencing unprecedented drought conditions. Here’s a graphic from the US Drought Monitor which shows many regions in the South are suffering drought conditions ranging from severe to exceptional:
(cont.)
Of course, it would help if those praying for rain acknowledged that perhaps human activity had something to do with the dramatic climate change which is occurring before our very eyes. Yet, just recently we saw the spectacle of major Christian Conservative figure, James Dobson, denouncing the vice president of a national evangelical organization and calling for him to be removed from office because he believes in protecting the environment of the earth:
Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson and other conservative Christian leaders are calling for the National Association of Evangelicals to silence or fire an official who has urged evangelicals to take global warming seriously.
In a letter [in March, 2007] to the board of the NAE, which claims 30 million members, Dobson and his two dozen co-signers said the Rev. Richard Cizik, the NAE’s vice president for government relations, has waged a “relentless campaign” that is “dividing and demoralizing” evangelicals.
It seems to me that asking God for favors by praying for drought relief may be a bit of a dicey proposition at best. This is especially so when it is your own belligerence, deliberate ignorance and hypocrisy which has helped fuel the climate crisis, a crisis which is likely the primary reason that major droughts are occurring all over the globe as we speak. It’s like crashing your father’s car while spending a night out drinking with your friends and then demanding he get it fixed ASAP so you can take it out again this weekend for another night of drunken carousing. It might not be the smartest move to make, if you get my drift.
Then again, maybe God is more forgiving than I imagine him/her/it to be. Maybe God will end the drought if Governor Perdue and his invited spiritual leaders beseech him to send the rain they need. He/she/it does work in mysterious ways, after all. Still, if I were Governor Perdue, I’d put in a call to the Hopi Tribal Council, just in case.
Pray like everything depends on God. Work like everything depends on you.
At the rate that water is drying up, I think that there is going to be alot of praying going on. what is frightenning is that isnstead of working on the problem, the corporations are trying to buy up all the water rights that they can grab!
Corporations have only one ethical value: profit.
They are simply not designed to foster any other agenda.
We should never be surprised that corporations act only in their best interest and often at cross purposes to the interests of society as a whole, because they are structured legally in such a way as to inhibit any goal other than profit.
I’ve often said that the best way to change corporate behavior is to change their legal obligations to society at large. At present their legal obligations run solely to their shareholders, and that sole obligation is to make money.
Hmmmm…….Let’s review the recent history of some disasters and where the fundies have placed the blame.
Two days after 9/11, Jerry Falwell took to the airwaves and proclaimed that God had allowed the United States to be attacked because “the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians” had tried to transform America into a secular society.
On Pat Robertson’s wacky and wild fundraising show, The 700 Club, Falwell said, “I point the finger in their face and say, You helped this happen,” Falwell later made a feeble attempt to clarify his remarks, but he never withdrew them or apologized for making them.
In 1998, televangelist and faux-politician Pat Robertson warned the city of Orlando, Florida, that a gay celebration the city hosted would bring the wrath of God, in the form of a hurricane or other disaster, upon the entire city. He opined that celebrating homosexuality “will bring about terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor,” he boldly proclaimed.
So when I look at the U.S. Drought Monitor, why do we find that the heart of the most drought stricken area is predominantly in a large portion of the fundamentalist Bible Belt?
Why does God hate the red-state south so much? Have they been having secret abortions? Has there been an unexpected blossoming of feminism among southern housewives? Have the lesbians been actively recruiting in the schools?
The only thing I can figure is that there must be a lot of closeted gays down there, huh? Cause in the upside down world of the fundies, where there are disasters, there has to be gayness.
I think it’s the proliferation of dildos in The South™….one to 4 dildos means you are a hobbyist, five or more means you are dealing in dildos and obviously God doesn’t like that, let alone Pat Robertson.
The thought of praying for someone is nice, but hollow IMO, and it actually angers me because it’s usually done in lieu of something productive.
I sort of look at the the Guv’s asking for prayer is more political than anything else. The old cover all bases answer. Obviously not everyone down here is a bible thumper, but for the ones that are, I’m sure they look at it to where prayer might help. The Oberammergau Passion Play in Germany is just an example.
..And if it does rain, take credit. I lived in Gwinnet County in the late 90’s and couldn’t believe the water supply for that entire area was held in Lakes Allatoona and Lanier, they looked like large ponds to me, and that was when they were at normal levels. Everyone had the sprinklered lawns, everyone’s car was shiny with a fresh wash, it looked untenable back then. Has there been anything done on a regional level since then to prepare for this?
I’ve read of different areas taking different steps, but nothing for the whole region. I agree that conservation should be pushed/enforced at this time, and IMHO prayer is just a way to keep the natives occupied. However, until the leaders take the initiative and lead, I don’t see a lot getting done.
I certainly don’t fault anyone for having a personal belief in the power of prayer. And in that region of the country it is a major part of the culture. So the Governor asking people to pray for rain is understandable. But as Second Nature pointed out, praying in lieu of actually taking any measurable and substantive action is pure folly.
The Water Resources Bill is a perfect example and is another indicator that this administration’s goal is to put virtually all of the responsibility for disaster prevention onto the states. It shines a very glaring spotlight on how they want government to function. People have blindly ignored this fact for years and gone along merrily supporting this administration’s slow dismantlement of the federal government’s role in projects which are deemed necessary for the common good and protection of the public. A lot of people didn’t seem to care when it happened to New Orleans. But the vast majority of the federal money there went to restoration of the commercial areas of New Orleans, while the middle class, lower middle class and the poor areas remain devastated to this day. Now, with the drought, a much larger area is affected and a significant percentage of the people are not lower middle class or poor. The type of people affected are those who represent the very core of the Republican Party in the south. And they are finally seeing the true face of their party.
They’d better pray damn hard, cause that is about all they will have to lean on if this administration gets their way.
Living near the epicenter of the worst drought in the country (I’m in Columbia, TN, fifty miles south of Nashville), I can tell you first hand that if this represents a consistent new weather pattern, much of this region will be desert in a few years. And for those of you who have never had the pleasure of traveling through the formerly verdant region marked in dark brown on that map, let me tell you that it is almost all agricultural land. That’s a hell of a lot of food that won’t be showing up in your local grocery store.
In Maury County, where I live, corn is a major crop. Except for one small plot that is actively irrigated because it’s part of a plantation museum, all of the cornfields were brown before the rains finally arrived. I didn’t have a chance to personally survey the counties to the east of me, but I hear that they’ve had it even worse than we did — in terms of rainfall, anyway; you couldn’t get worse than a 100% crop loss, at least not without ExxonMobil executives showing up to salt the fields in person.
For too many people, climate change is theoretical. Maybe this year, paying substantially higher prices for the food they eat will help bring the reality home to them. This year isn’t a disaster, mind you, but another couple of years like this will be a catastrophe.
Since this particular reader just got done taking in the family’s Mayan rain gods from their summer perch on the deck…our 1st rain this am in 3 months…I can attest that the gods are pissed and it’s time to look to ourselves for this resolution.