A Church-State Mashup on the Steps of the Capitol

Now, put your hand up, as if you're raising it to ask the teacher to go to the restroom, and say with me, "Let it rain, Lord! Let it rain!" Because if you were on the steps of the State Capitol of Georgia in downtown Atlanta yesterday for Governor Sonny Perdue's prayer service for rain, that's what you would have been saying.

You would have been joining a crowd, almost a third of which was made up of media, despite the news reports I read that said there were half a dozen cameras and reporters--I was there, and I counted five times that many mega-cameras that look like you could see Mercury through them, in a sea of them across the back and in the front and on the side. And I can't even count how many people had little pads and pens, like me, and were jotting notes for a story to run somewhere. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Associated Press. CNN. (FoodShed Planet).

And if you were one of those members of the media, you might have caught a photo of the only true optimist in the crowd, apparently--the person in the back with the bright pink umbrella.

Or you might have thought it was interesting that this "interdenominational" church-state mashup on the steps of a government building, paid for with taxpayer dollars, consisted of just three religious leaders, all Protestant, two of them brothers.

Or you may have been intrigued that the head of Governor Perdue's Agriculture Advisory Commission owns a company that provides turf to golf courses, athletic fields and home lawns and that he asked us to pray specifically for the recreational watersports industry.

Or perhaps you were caught off guard that Perdue did actually tell the Lord, for most of the talking was aimed upward (beyond the brilliant, clear, 70-degree blue sky) that "We have not been good stewards of our land. We have not been good stewards of our water . . . We acknowledge our wastefulness."

Or frankly, you may have just scratched your head when you spotted Ms. Georgia in the midst of all this, with her sash and tiara.

Or you might have just done what I did. Enjoyed the sweet voices of the requisite children's choir and muttered to yourself, "Whatever it takes. Just fill those lakes."

A Church-State Mashup on the Steps of the Capitol