Yep, this is a real thing.

And it’s fitting that it’s happening in my old hometown, the Protestant Mecca, Nashville, TN.

If you don’t believe me that Nashville is the Protestant Mecca, then make a pilgrimage sometime and try to walk 50 feet without seeing…..

a church (Nashville has one of the highest church densities in the country)…….

a Christian bookstore or publisher (home to publishing giant Thomas Nelson and Lifeway; also more Bibles are published there than anywhere in the world)…….

a denominational headquarters (Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church)…..

or a Christian music artist (Nashville isn’t just the home of country music, it’s the home of Christian music too).

If you can’t make the trip, then just make sure you face Nashville whenever you pray. Pretty sure that will get you partial credit for a religious pilgrimage.

Occupy Nashville has company as spinoff group preaches power of prayer

By Bob Smietana
The Tennessean 

John Stefanski doesn’t blame Wall Street for the nation’s economic woes.

Instead, he says the crisis is spiritual, not financial.

Rather than protest, he wants people to pray.

“Let’s pray to the Lord for our problems,” said Stefanksi, while standing near the steps to Legislative Plaza along Sixth Avenue South in downtown Nashville.

Stefanski, from Murfreesboro, wants to start a new movement, Occupy the Altar, to get churchgoers to come out to downtown Nashville to ask for divine intervention to solve the economic crisis.

“Society is in the bind that it is because we got away from ‘one nation under God,’ ” he said.

So far, the movement has two members: Stefanski and his friend Tyler Parcha, also from Murfreesboro.

For the past three days they’ve been holding up signs containing Bible verses and the words “Occupy the Altar.” They spend two to three hours a day near Legislative Plaza.

Stefanksi’s sign referenced Romans 12:1-2, which reads, in part, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy … do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

He got the idea for Occupy the Altar while watching coverage of Occupy Nashville.

“I’ve been watching the TV and seeing all the people talking about all occupy this and occupy that,” said Stefanski, who is a Baptist. “I had a strong conviction from the Lord that we need to come together as a country and occupy the altar.”

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