{"id":31323,"date":"2016-12-29T09:43:14","date_gmt":"2016-12-29T13:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=31323"},"modified":"2016-12-29T09:43:14","modified_gmt":"2016-12-29T13:43:14","slug":"praying-for-electoral-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2016\/12\/praying-for-electoral-victory.html","title":{"rendered":"Praying for Electoral Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Franklin Graham said the following<\/a> at a Donald Trump rally just over a week ago, explaining why he believes Trump won the presidency:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any scientific information. I don\u2019t have a stack of emails to read to you. But I have an opinion: I believe it was God. God showed up. He answered the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people across this land who had been praying for this country,\u201d Graham told the crowd in Mobile, Ala.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To many reporters, this sounded strange. It sounded, perhaps, like Graham was suggesting God stuffed ballot boxes. But I grew up in an evangelical home. From this perspective, Graham\u2019s language\u00a0isn\u2019t strange\u2014it\u2019s typical.<\/p>\n

I grew up praying that God would influence elections. Oh, and also weather, and traffic, and I\u2019m sure if we\u2019d been a sports family (we weren\u2019t) we would have been praying for God to help our teams win too. It occurs to me, though, that praying for God to change the weather is a bit different from praying for God to influence elections. After all, an all-powerful God could easily change the winds or dissipate clouds\u2014but don\u2019t the people who vote\u00a0have free will?<\/p>\n

We believed that people have free will, yes, but we also believed that God could influence people\u2014that he could harden people\u2019s hearts, or that he could make people more receptive. After all, the Bible says God \u201chardened pharaoh\u2019s heart<\/a>\u201d so that he would not listen to Moses when Moses pleaded for the freedom of the Israelites. In the same way, God could soften people\u2019s hearts.<\/p>\n

There are other prayers, too. At one point a decade or more ago my mother told me she had stopped praying for God to save or protect our country and had started praying for God to pour out his judgement on our country. Our moral decline was too steep, she said, our lack of belief had gone too far. It is here that the story of Lot comes to mind\u2014Lot lived in Sodom, which God had decided\u00a0to destroy for its wickedness. His uncle, Abraham, begged God to spare Sodom for Lot\u2019s sake, and God agreed to stay his wrath if he found ten righteous men<\/a> in the city\u2014but he did not.<\/p>\n

We never prayed for specific election results with divine ballot-stuffing in mind. We prayed instead that God would soften people\u2019s hearts and help them listen; that God would strengthen politicians and help them find the right words; that God would raise up volunteers willing to give of their energy and time. I\u00a0suspect\u00a0that that is what Graham\u00a0was\u00a0referring to when he said that \u201cGod showed up\u201d and \u201canswered the prayers of hundreds of thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have a concern, though. After Graham\u2019s words, I watched many in media react\u00a0in consternation. What was Graham suggesting? That God rigged the election? That God changed the results? I worry that this sort of reaction only serves to alienate those who believe in the power of prayer\u2014including many that would typically be part of the Democratic coalition.\u00a0Making fun of comments like Graham\u2019s\u00a0may feel good,\u00a0but trying to understand what Graham meant by his statement and what his followers believe about the role of prayer would be more productive if the goal is to build a coalition to create lasting progressive change.<\/p>\n

Oh, I\u2019m not saying we should let comments like Graham\u2019s go by. Graham should be held to the fact that he stated God favored the candidate who was anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and so forth. Evangelical Christians do not own the Bible. More than ever, we need to elevate progressive Christian voices. We must\u00a0refuse to let evangelical Christians argue that God is anti-transgender while at the same time espousing positions vis a vis the poor that run directly against the plain text of the Bible.<\/p>\n

I believe we have an opportunity here. Progressive Christians have an opportunity to make inroads among those evangelicals disquieted by Trump, an opportunity to paint a different vision of our future based on what the Bible says about the poor, or about refugees, or about the way people\u00a0treat those around us. Such inroads could have significant effects on a future Democratic coalition.\u00a0But\u00a0as long as evangelical Christians and others like them are faced with what looks like a greater conflict between those who believe in the power of prayer and those who laugh at prayer, we are in trouble.<\/p>\n

I have a <\/b>Patreon<\/b><\/a>! Please support my writing!<\/b><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up praying that God would influence elections. Oh, and also weather, and traffic, and I’m sure if we’d been a sports family (we weren’t) we would have been praying for God to help our teams win too. Praying for God to change the weather is a bit different from praying for God to influence elections. After all, don’t people have free will? <\/p>\n

Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":31410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-31323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","tag-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\nPraying for Electoral Victory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We never prayed for specific election results with divine ballot-stuffing in mind. 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