Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
While the folks in San Francisco are praying for lower gas prices, the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama just held a "sackcloth and ashes" prayer meeting to try and solve crime and other problems facing the city.
More than 1,000 people gathered at Boutwell Auditorium Friday night, wearing burlap sacks, their foreheads dabbed with ashes, to observe what was proclaimed by Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford as "a day of prayer in sackcloth and ashes."The night featured collective prayers for forgiveness and fiery sermons calling for the city to repent in order to stop the violence plaguing the city.
"Let there be so misunderstanding: Satan is at work in this town," Langford said. "And It is time to pray."
I doubt Satan is really at work in that town. But I'm pretty damn sure that an utterly irrational mayor is at work in that town, wasting town resources to host a religious service. He ordered 2000 burlap bags, apparently at government expense, to hold the event. If you want to fix the crime problem, then adopt policies that address the causes of crime. Dancing around in burlap bags isn't going to fix a damn thing.
And here is the part that always baffles me about such prayers: what about free will? If praying is going to help reduce crime, it could only do so if God intervenes to prevent some people from committing crimes. But what about free will? Isn't that the argument we always hear for why God allows things like violent crime to take place? If people have free will to do bad things, and this excuses God from responsibility for their actions, then God can't intervene to prevent people from exercising their free will or he no longer has that excuse. There's just no coherent thinking behind all of this.
Comments
At first I thought "Here's another mayor pandering to his religious base. But, if he spent taxpayer money for the burlap bags, isn't that a violation of the Establishment clause? IANAL, but if he used any government resources to put on this sham, it seems to me to be a pretty clear Establishment of a particularly banal flavor of religion. I expected Ed to mention that in his article. Am I way off base here?
Posted by: Shygetz | April 30, 2008 10:13 AM
For more fun, check out the actual proclamation of Sackcloth and Ashes Day. Larry should be praying to end illiteracy - starting with his own.
You'll also be happy to know that Larry's burlap sacks went well with his Rolex.
Posted by: ShavenYak | April 30, 2008 10:17 AM
Yeah, these self-righteous morons wore the sacks over their expensive suits. If I understand the voodoo they were doing, they poured the ashes onto a table to symbolize pouring away the evil in the city.
Jeez, they can't even get their own superstitions right! You're supposed to be showing humility and debasing yourself by being dirty and wearing uncomfortable clothing.
I guess they are debasing themselves by looking like idiots.
But then, tradition is firmly on the side of appropriating biblical concepts to nonsensical, but easier application. LIke how those tongues of flame over the heads of the faithful became the funky hats that bishops and such wear. Or how 'Speaking in tongues' which is 'being understood by the listener in their own language' became 'babbling nonsense that "only God" can understand.'
Steve "Eternal Salvation gets easier every day." James
Posted by: longstreet63 | April 30, 2008 10:34 AM
Good lord, the mayor a major city sent out that proclamation? I'll have a post up just about that in the next day or two. That's absolutely hilarious. Does he not even have a secretary?
Posted by: Ed Brayton | April 30, 2008 11:11 AM
Wow, so he actually put the seal of the City of Birmingham on this proclamation, and made it in his official capacity of mayor ("like the King of Ninevah"...first time I've ever heard of the Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama being equated with a king)? In addition to lampooning its hillarity, I really hope Ed will comment on its Constitutionality. Something like this really seems beyond the pale to me, and against both the Separationist and the Accomidationist interpretations of the Establishment clause.
Posted by: Shygetz | April 30, 2008 11:32 AM
"Jeez, they can't even get their own superstitions right! You're supposed to be showing humility and debasing yourself by being dirty and wearing uncomfortable clothing."
Not only that, their parallel is totally off. It's like they didn't read the story to figure out how it went, they based the whole thing on half-remembered passages and over-simplified children's books.
Posted by: kodiak | April 30, 2008 11:54 AM
Seriously, when can we start taking the sharp objects away from the stupid, reality denying crowd? Maybe they'll get it when we start taking away the fruits of science: medicine, their cars, televisions and "The Inner-nets" ?
Posted by: Brando | April 30, 2008 12:02 PM
Oh shit, I just read that proclamation! Is he really trying to compare Birmingham, AL with Mosul, Iraq? Hahhaahahahaha
Posted by: Brando | April 30, 2008 12:07 PM
Is it me or does this whiff just a teensy-weensy bit of racism.
It reads a little like "We should all pray for deliverance from the crime that them thar niggers is purputratin on Good White Christian Americans"
If anything, the pomposity of the language is actually worse than the syntax.
Posted by: Matthew | April 30, 2008 12:40 PM
"...pails in comparison..."
We gots buckets and BUCKETS of stupid where this came from, folks!!
Posted by: Coragyps | April 30, 2008 12:45 PM
Matthew:
The mayor of Birmingham is African-American. So, I doubt a Black mayor would inject anti-Black racism into his proclamation.
Ed:
The illiterate goofs in the proclamation might be due to the mayor's secretary or aide. The mayor may have failed to proof-read his underlings rather than the underlings failing to proof-read the mayor. Not that this reduces the embarrassment all that much.
Posted by: EK | April 30, 2008 12:58 PM
And now we know the consequences of spending less than anyone else in the country on education and voting down a constitutional amendment making education a right.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | April 30, 2008 1:19 PM
EK - Christ you're right. He looks whiter than me in that picture though!
Posted by: Matthew | April 30, 2008 1:44 PM
And, of course, the "National Day of Prayer" is coming up tomorrow, the supposedly non-sectarian event having been effectively hijacked by James Dobson and his wife.
For the nth year in a row, a large number of state governors have issued proclamations declaring a NDoP while directly incorporating themes and bible verses as defined by Dobson's fundamentalist organization and nowhere else.
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