“THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS”: San Bernardino and The Politics of Prayer

by Austin Roberts

Yesterday, there was another mass shooting in the US, this time in San Bernardino, California. As I write, 14 persons have been killed and 17 injured. My heart breaks for the community and families who have been affected. I spent two years studying theology in Claremont, only 30 miles from where this tragedy occurred. While every shooting saddens and angers me, sometimes having a geographical connection to an event heightens certain feelings. Such is the case today as I reflect on this incident, which pushes the total number of mass shootings in the US this year to over 350. This should not be. I agree with the growing majority of Americans who believe that it is time to stand up to the NRA and to enact stricter gun safety laws to help prevent such violence. That being said, I want to focus on a related set of issues: the politics of prayer, and how our theologies can prevent or enable meaningful political action.

I refuse the popular image of an omnipotent “fixer deity” who could have intervened to stop the shooters but failed to do so. Process theology maintains an alternative understanding of divinity as one who persuades or lures, but cannot control or determine outcomes. As such, not everything happens for a reason and there is no ‘Big Other’ to guarantee progress. Consequently, I do not think of today’s shooting as part of a divine plan, nor as an instance of an all-powerful deity respecting our freedom. The relationally limited God of process suffers with history’s victims and is unable to unilaterally stop evil from occurring. It follows that prayer takes on a different shape: as a practice of aligning and cooperating with God’s dynamic vision for the world’s common good(s). Thus, prayer does not involve expecting supernatural interventions or passively waiting for God to unilaterally act. To borrow John Cobb’s words, prayer requires “working with God for the salvation of the world.” Apart from the cooperative actions of both God and creatures, prayer has little meaning. With this in mind, the New York Daily News’ protest today that “God Isn’t Fixing This” has more than a grain of truth.

In tragic times, many religious persons naturally offer “thoughts and prayers.” But prayer can easily function as an ideological cover for inaction, especially when tied to belief in an all-controlling deity. Consider the rhetoric of prayer in a current news headline: “Democrats Call for Action While Republicans Tweet Prayers After San Bernardino Shooting.” Indeed, the contrast between the two groups on Twitter yesterday was striking: while Democrats avoided religious language and spoke of concrete political action to strengthen gun laws, Republicans offered “thoughts and prayers” without suggesting political actions to address gun violence. Thus to many of us, the Republicans’ prayerful responses seem trite – or worse, they appear as cloaks for their unquestioning (and financially rewarding) allegiance to the NRA. On the other side, some Americans will see the Democrats’ responses as a sign of “godless secularism” while the Republicans appear piously religious. Reflecting such divisions, Twitter has erupted with competing hashtags: #PrayForSanBernardino vs. #DoSomething.

But we need not accept such simplistic binaries, and religious persons should never separate prayer from social justice, or spirituality from materiality: as everything, they are “entangled”, as my teacher Catherine Keller might say. In fact, the Hebrew prophet Amos voiced God’s protest against the dis-entangling of spiritual practice from material justice: “I hate, I despise your religious festivals…But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:21-24). So for those of us inclined to offer sincere “thoughts and prayers” for victims and their families, may these prayers never function as covers for inaction or as empty symbols of piety, but rather as lures toward material justice and of resistance to the gun-fueled spiral of violence plaguing American society today.

 P.S.  After writing this post, it has become increasingly clear that this shooting is not only a national tragedy, but also one with global implications. The FBI has now confirmed that one of the shooters “pledged allegiance” to ISIS on social media before the shooting occurred. And yes, both of the shooters identified as Muslims, which has already tragically led to an Islamophobic backlash against the U.S. Muslim community. My theo-political convictions that I expressed in the initial post remain, but my concern for religious persons to prayerfully resist this spiral of violence has deepened. May we not allow ourselves to give in to such fears, but to stand in solidarity with our Muslim sisters and brothers who equally condemn such violence.