On Wednesday, President-Elect Donald Trump chose former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue as his agriculture secretary. Perdue served two terms after becoming Georgia’s first Republican governor in well over a century, slashing the state’s budget and pursuing trade on behalf of the state. So, how did The Washington Post headline the appointment? “Trump picks former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue, who once led a prayer for rain, for agriculture secretary.”
Yes, that was their actual headline.
What prompted that headline? Well, back in 2007, while Georgia was in the midst of a drought, Perdue led a prayer session with a few hundred citizens for rain. “We’ve come together here simply for one reason and one reason only,” Perdue said. “To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm.” The vigil lasted for an hour, but the press went insane. They ripped into Perdue’s attempts to convince citizens to take shorter showers and stop watering lawns (note the California press’ celebration of Governor Jerry Brown for attempting the exact same policies). They ignored the fact that he wasn’t the first Georgia governor to publicly pray for rain.
It took another two weeks for it to rain, and the drought continued. Perdue stated, “God can make it rain tomorrow, he can make it rain next week or next month.”
The Washington Post and left-wing press simply can’t understand that perspective. They think that religious Americans believe God is a gumball machine: that if we insert our prayers, out comes the gumball of the correct color and size. Americans who pray don’t believe that prayer means God always says yes. Sometimes God says no. Prayer is a way of expressing our gratitude to our Creator, as well as acknowledging His mastery over the universe; it’s also our way of demonstrating our faith in His will, even when we don’t understand it. It’s a profound display of earthly humility, not an attempt to force God into doing our will.
But all that is mockable, according to the left.
Of course, every major religion has prayers for rain. Judaism switches a phrase in our thrice-daily prayer during the rainy season to praise “the One who makes the wind blow and the rain fall.” We also do a prayer for rain at the tail end of Sukkot, invoking the names of the Jewish forefathers:
Our God and God of our ancestors:
Remember Abraham who flowed to You like water.
You blessed him like a tree planted by streams of water.
You rescued him from fire and water.
He passed Your test by planting good deeds by every source of water.
For Abraham’s sake, do not keep back water.
Presumably, this also makes us barbarians.
If the press wonders why Donald Trump won, at last one major reason is the obvious scorn in which the press holds Americans who pray. They’re not alone – Barack Obama once labeled religious people those who “cling to guns or religion” because they’re too stupid and poor to understand globalism; Hillary Clinton said that religious people have to shift their views on social issues in order to make a better world.
Religious people have far less problem with Sonny Perdue praying for rain than our media mocking him for doing so.
