Have you heard about Bobby Jindal’s “The Response” Prayer Rally?

Here’s a Time Magazine article about it.  Here’s another one from the local New Orleans paper.  The basic story:  on Saturday, Bobby Jindal headlined a “prayer rally” at the LSU campus stadium, funded and sponsored by the American Family Association.  The theme of the rally was supposed to be one of prayer for the nation.

Now, the fact that the American Family Association has been labelled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center doesn’t trouble me, because, from what I understand, the SPLC is so liberal with its “hate group” designations as to have lost credibility here.  Nor do the protests by students complaining that the rally didn’t belong on campus, as it wasn’t sponsored by the university; they simply rented out the space.

But the statement by Time magazine that the last time the AFA staged such a rally, it was in Texas, and headlined by Rick Perry, and preceded the latter’s announcement of his candidacy by a small number of days — that troubles me.  The fact that Jindal used his office to plan and promote the event — even to the point of sending an invitation on official letterhead — troubles me.  He even invited all 49 other governors, and, look, I’m not going to do the research here, but I’m presuming that not every governor is of the Christian faith, and even if they were, it’s inappropriate.

You know I make a point of telling you, my readers, that when I post something in the middle of the day, I’m not doing this during work-hours.  And our ethics codes and ethics laws insist that politicians conduct their fundraising during their personal time, out of the office.  Of course, as much as we know that fundraising is full of corruption, but, nonetheless, this sort of activity should be treated in the same way — on his own time, separate from his position as governor.

And I’m really hoping against hope that he now resumes his “day job” and focuses on his obligation as governor, and lets a suitable amount of time elapse before declaring his candidacy.  Given that he has insisted that his rally had nothing to do with politics, I would be very disappointed in him (though I admit I already am disappointed) if he did a Rick Perry and announced that this prayer rally had given him the conviction that God is calling him to declare his candidacy.

At the same time:

I was also disappointed in the reporting that, according to the local article:

Saturday’s prayer rally, however, wasn’t embraced by local Catholic leaders. 

Catholic leaders participated in an anti-abortion march on LSU’s campus that featured a speech from Jindal. But when the marchers merged into the prayer rally, the Catholic organizations weren’t following them, said Robert Tasman, executive director of the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

“The event was viewed more as an evangelical event with a political tone to it, and the bishops don’t participate in such events,” he said.

In the first place, bishops participate in tons of political events, and preach and speak politically, when the politics are those that are near and dear to their own hearts:  amnesty for illegal immigrants, most recently and prominently, and, previously, government-provided healthcare and poverty-alleviation programs more generally, anti-war and nuclear weapons, and the like.  So don’t play this game that “we’re too pure to participate in politics.”

In the second place, the current head-in-the-sand approach (e.g., Cupich’s approach that all we need to do is invite disaffected Catholics to do a few service projects with us to revive the flagging membership) isn’t going to get the Catholic leadership anywhere.  Catholics — and Catholic leaders — need to be more evangelical.  Maybe they viewed the AFA as too toxic — but they should have said so, then.  Maybe they were concerned that some of the speakers would venture into theology that the bishops didn’t want to be seen as endorsing — but they could well have asked for a role in the rally, and in its planning, then.  But to say, “evangelicals are icky” is unfortunate.

 For that matter, Jindal himself describes himself as an “evangelical Catholic” — and this isn’t his personal label, but seems to be a label used by, well, Catholics who identify with evangelical ideas, though I can’t find a good link that really encapsulates this.

So back to my usual cop-out when I don’t have a firm concluding thought: what do you think?