Lord have mercy, Mark Shea has found 100 percent uncut Beck bait: video of a liberal church liturgy for health care in which the congregation chants a litany to Barack Obama (e.g., "Hear our prayer, Obama"). [UPDATE: Okay, I got that wrong; it's "Hear our cry, Obama" and "Deliver us, Obama" -- the exact language churches use for liturgical petition to God, e.g., "Hear our cry, O Lord," "Deliver us, O Lord"] It's not a fake; it's from the Gamaliel Foundation.
Ah, the Religious Left at prayer.
This is sacrilegious, yes, but it's also asinine. And it's the kind of thing guaranteed to drive far-right paranoia over Obama-as-messiah. In a way, it's like ACORN: with people like this, right-wing paranoids don't even have to break a sweat. Like Mark says, you have to see this to believe it. Poor Obama. With friends like this, who needs enemies?:
UPDATE: A commenter mentioned that he watched the same video on the Gamaliel website, and it sounds to him like they're saying "Hear our cry, O God" and "Deliver us, O God." I listened to it there as well, and I had to play it several times, because it sounds to me like they're saying "Obama" in the first few petitions. But if you listen on, it sounds like they're indeed saying "O God." I can't imagine that they'd say "Obama" for some but in some others "God." So perhaps I heard wrong. Or perhaps they're petitioning both God and Obama, in a misguided way. Anyway, I thank the reader for drawing my attention to the Gamaliel video, because the captions on the other video, as well as the garbled congregational response, really does sound like they're "praying" to Obama. I'm not exactly sure what they're saying here, but watch the Gamaliel version, and judge for yourself. If I've wrongly accused these folks, I do apologize. I think they're mixing both God and Obama up in their litany:
UPDATE.2: Last night, this post appeared in this thread:
I was the organizer for Gamaliel for this action - we were trying to get the attention of a large insurance comapny (UHC). I voted for Obama, and most us in Hawaii like him - but praying to him would be crazy, not to mention sacrilegious.Here's the liturgy we used for the record:
With the prophet Jeremiah, we cry out, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored?
Hear our cry, oh God!With the prophet Martin Luther King Jr., we cry out, Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
Hear our cry, oh God!From health care systems and industries that place profit over people,
Deliver us, oh God!
I still can't make out all of the soundtrack with clarity, even on the Gamaliel video, but I will take this commenter at his word, and say that I believe him, and am sorry I heard wrong and posted the initial video.
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"gee, this is something that we would expect the liberals to do...so isn't it terrible that they might do something like this?"
In that case, let me type up that Bush National Guard memo.
RJohnson: Rod took an incident that, at first glance (and with the help of some inaccurate subtitles) looks extreme, tied a headline to it that attempts to characterize all of the religious left as holding this position, and then seems surprised when folks react negatively.
Then, when he is shown to be completely wrong about the content of the video, he does NOTHING to change the lede on the story, compounding the false impression he had made in the first place.
Truth be damned...let's score those political points. Shall we now refer to you as Rod Beck?
Oh, get off your fainting couch already. I am awfully irritated with the way you turn into a screaming meemie over these things. A headline is of necessity imprecise. If you see a headline in a newspaper that reads "Americans bomb Afghan village," do you have a conniption over the fact that the headline impugned the integrity of every American? Please.
Secondly, while I expect RJohnson to go off like this, I'm peeved at some of you more responsible commentators who assumed, apparently, that I saw the Gamaliel organizer's comment here, and left the post unchanged anyway. The last time I looked at this blog was about 7 last night. I've been very busy since then, which is why there were no fresh posts this morning. You need to understand that this blog is not my day job, but a sideline gig. Many of the posts you see during the day are entries I put up in my off time, and scheduled to appear throughout the day. The last time I updated this post, I tried to do it as honestly as I could -- by posting the Gamaliel version, which still isn't clear to my ears. I was in a hurry to finish an essay I was working on for the paper, but I thought it important to get the competing video up, and to say that I'm not sure whether I was wrong or not on the first video. I literally wasn't last night.
I'm still not, listening to the Gamaliel version, but I'll take the Gamaliel adviser's word for it. I will make that correction in the original post. Sometimes I'll take a post down, other times I'll leave it up to show readers how it got corrected as further information came in. I think it's better to leave this one up as an example of how a story like this can evolve, and how a tendentious hearing of an unclear transcript can be turned into political propaganda. You may disagree with my decision here, but keep your snotty observations about my integrity to yourself, or e-mail me privately to vent your spleen. I am particularly cheesed given that my in-box has been filled up all week with right-wing nuts calling me a communist, a socialist, a liberal traitor, and so forth, for my criticism of Glenn Beck.
OK, I just listened to the one without subtitles. In my opinion, during the majority of the responses, people were saying "Deliver Us, Obama" except for the very last one when the majority clearly said, "Deliver Us, Oh God."
This was a health care rally. Unless the clergy who led the prayers handed out a printout upon which the response "Deliver Us, Obama" was spelled out (or "Hear Our Cry, etc.) it appears that this is a number of people attending a rally simply took matters into their own hands, in a way that shows their ignorance of theology, and certainly is idolatrous.
I belong to a very liberal church. We pray FOR our nation's leaders, never TO them. I find it appalling that these people mixed up God and Obama in their litany, which I think they did, but I would say these folks hardly represent the religious left.
I would really like to get religion out of politics, because I think religion introduces an unnecessarily moralistic and theatrical tone to issues that we should be discussing like adults. I don't like it when Sojourners does it ie. "Budgets are moral documents" (Yawn) nor do I like it when the religious right does it.
I'm for health care reform because I think it is something a good society should do for its people. That's it. In these political debates, can we please stop suggesting that God is on our side? And stop turning our President into a demigod?
Sorry, I'm going to have to shut this thread down. It's being trolled by a particular coward who is not man enough to identify himself, either on this blog or in e-mail.
"I would really like to get religion out of politics, because I think religion introduces an unnecessarily moralistic and theatrical tone to issues that we should be discussing like adults."
Like equal treatment before the law for gay American citizens, Alicia?
Why don't I believe you?