Amitai Givertz’s Blogversity Blog

Like most of the southeast, Georgia is suffering from one of the worst droughts in living memory.

In a state with such a large population of believers it should come as no surprise that one popular response to this disaster of near-biblical proportions is to take it to the Lord in prayer.

Atlanta, Georgia: ‘Gov Sonny Perdue stepped up to a podium outside the State Capitol on Tuesday and led a solemn crowd of several hundred people in a prayer for rain on his drought-stricken State’ [Greg Bluestein, AOL]. The Governor was joined by other State elected officials [James Salzer & Jim Galloway, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]. Here is man in trouble, forgetting that he himself has declared the separation of his Church from his State.

The age-old debate about God and State aside, as one who frequently stumbles in his own walk I found it disturbing to watch the Governor lead the gathering in prayer. I wondered, “Why don’t any of the faithful have umbrellas? You would think at least one of them would have turned out with a raincoat on, wouldn’t you?”

Flaunting your piety like this – in business as well as in politics — can be problematic on many levels. As a strategy it will backfire more often than not.

Secular audiences do not see beyond the handholding and muttering lips to examine the possibility that miracles do happen, on a daily basis. Nor do they consider that “No, not now…” is also a prayer answered. They just scoff and understandably so.

Signs and wonders rarely happen in the public square or on the scale of a Cecil B. DeMille production. They happen on neighborhood corners, in the back of ambulances and in checkout lines. The biggest of miracles are small scale affairs. They come in one to five hundred dollar increments; they are about being given “our daily bread” not about the image of Christ burned magically on a slice of toast. Miracles are everyday occurrences that go unnoticed except by those innocents who experience their wonder.

Because most miracles happen out of sight and behind closed doors neither the media nor masses is quite prepared to accept that Sonny Perdue’s public display of devotion could be anything but faith-based hype. Therein lies the problem.

For public consumption miracles equate with scientific marvels, everything from the separation of conjoined twins to the overnight healing of acne — not spiritual spin on the Capitol steps and Sonny Perdues’s state-sponsored shamanism.

Really, what was Sonny Perdue thinking? If the skies obligingly opened up did Sunshine-Sonny imagine for one moment that it would be enough rain to fill the empty drink? Daggit! It would have to rain for forty days and forty nights, then what?

I think Joe Schmoe — who wants to believe — can be forgiven for asking, “Where’s your brolly, Brother?” Similarly, some skeptics should be forgiven for thinking that the forecast of rain for the day being wrong was greater than the Governor’s communing with God resulting in anything to take cover for. So why hide those lovely summer outfits under something drab and water resistant? For the skeptics either way it looks like a cover-up, a sham.

On the flipside some of us who live in neighboring states — similarly desperate for a good soaking, also affected by Georgia’s plight — should be careful what we pray for. I live in Florida. Spared another season of destructive hurricanes that blessing has come at the expense of our not getting nearly enough rain. Like the good Governor, “damned if you do and damned if you don’t.“

Yep, praying for rain on the Capitol steps is a tricky business.

In the final analysis, doing things “faith-based” is no guarantee of anything other than the faithfuls’ faith will be tested. You can ask the good folk at Atlanta-based HomeBanc Mortgage Corporation that as it relates to business. And this week in politics, Goergia’s super-goober too.