Rolling Stone: Evangelists Believe That When You Pray, You Temporarily Assume the Mantle of God Himself, And It's a Sin to Dispute You

I missed this from last week: Rolling Stone "journalists," who are experts in religion because, being "journalists," they are all-purpose experts in everything (this is called "The Tom Nichols Effect"), made a very interesting pronouncement about prayer.

The point of the "news story" was the same as a hundred other "news stories" -- not to print news, but to repackage propaganda points gotten from a political organization. This particular political hit piece argued that the conservative Supreme Court justices were conflicted on issues having anything to do with religion or morality and so must recuse themselves which would, conveniently enough, leave the liberal atheists as a three-judge unanimous court.

(Why atheists are not just as conflicted on matters of morality as the religious is never explained.)

So this non-news story -- this political argument -- claims that because some people prayed for the end of Roe v. Wade on Supreme Court grounds, the religious justices must abstain from ruling on the case.

And that's where Rolling Stone learns you religious nuts what prayer really is.

That's the case with the Rolling Stone piece, which purports to expose a profoundly serious conflict of interest problem among several of the conservative justices. In a word, the problem is they prayed, on the Supreme Court's grounds, and even in their private chambers, with somebody connected to an organization that often argues cases before the nation's most revered bench.

Let's deal first with the most glaring of the several inaccuracies about religion in the Rolling Stone piece, then address the utter irresponsibility involved in this dangerously inept apologue.

At the heart of the claimed cause of the problem is the authors' description of prayer: "Prayer is a powerful communication tool in the evangelical tradition: The speaker assumes the mantle of the divine, and to disagree with an offered prayer is akin to sin."

Now I've attended evangelical Baptist and Presbyterian churches all of my life and am even now slowly making my way online toward an MA in apologetics at one of the nation's most respected evangelical seminaries.

And yet in all those years and studies, I have never, not once, heard an evangelical preacher, professor, or apologist describe the act of praying as "the mantle of the divine" being assumed by the person praying.

Nor have I ever heard or read a claim by an evangelical that disagreeing with "an offered prayer is akin to sin." You can search all day through the 10 Commandments but you will never find one that says "Thou Shalt Not Disagree With an Offered Prayer."

Assuming this writer knows what words mean -- which is a dangerous assumption in this case, I will allow -- he is saying that when you pray, you assume the mantle of the divine, which means, in other words, You become invested, for the moment, with the responsibilities and powers of God Himself, and you speak with His voice and with His authority.

That's what "assume the mantle of the divine" means.

Mantle definition 2:

an important role or responsibility that passes from one person to another.

"the second son has now assumed his father's mantle"

So if one prays, one... becomes God? One is not asking favor of God, but one is... commanding the Universe into proper order as if one was God in the first seven days?

What?

And disagreeing with someone who has so assumed the mantle of God, even if his prayer directly contradicts the commandments of God, is a "sin"?

How could they possibly believe this?

Where do they even begin to get this bizarre but neatly self-validating confabulation from?

And remember -- they're the ones claiming the religious live in a world of fantasy!

How many religious people did they clear this made-up definition with? Zero, of course. They only ran it by the most anti-religious "Twitter religion experts," the ones who study religion as if it is a mental disorder (and transgenderism as if it is a holy calling).

Remember, everyone: The AP says that we're in a crisis because people are turning away from "journalists" and turning to "other sources" for information.

I pray for these retards. I really do. And when I say "I pray for them," I mean I temporarily gain the powers of God.

So don't screw with me. I can do things. Lightning. Stinging insects. Nettles. Pustules. You know, little GodMode secret for all y'all, the lightning gets all the attention, all the oohs and ahs, but it's the biting insects and the pustules the really cause the most grief and deaths.

posted by Ace at 03:32 PM

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