all in "the family"

Here's my comment on a recent Jesus Manifesto article on "The Family":


Jeff Shalet wrote an article for Harper's in 2003 (available here), in which he claimed:

The Family's only publicized gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressional sponsorship, it continues to organize every February in Washington, D.C. Each year 3,000 dignitaries, representing scores of nations, pay $425 each to attend. Steadfastly ecumenical, too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can "meet Jesus man to man."

As is traditional for presidents now, Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast this year. I think his comments there demonstrate a pragmatic understanding of faith and politics that is much milder but in some respects fundamentally the same as that of the Family: God works his purposes through the Power of the People.

For example, from Obama's NPB address [italics are mine]:

I didn't become a Christian until many years later, when I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college. It happened not because of indoctrination or a sudden revelation, but because I spent month after month working with church folks who simply wanted to help neighbors who were down on their luck – no matter what they looked like, or where they came from, or who they prayed to. It was on those streets, in those neighborhoods, that I first heard God's spirit beckon me. It was there that I felt called to a higher purpose – His purpose.

In different ways and different forms, it is that spirit and sense of purpose that drew friends and neighbors to that first prayer breakfast in Seattle all those years ago, during another trying time for our nation. It is what led friends and neighbors from so many faiths and nations here today. We come to break bread and give thanks and seek guidance, but also to rededicate ourselves to the mission of love and service that lies at the heart of all humanity. As St. Augustine once said, "Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you."

So let us pray together on this February morning, but let us also work together in all the days and months ahead. For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God.

This view is also shared by many, many people (where the Family's view is a bit too extreme for most people). And that Augustine quote is a hugely popular one, always used with the emphasis on "work as though everything depended on you." Which is quite useful for those who want to harness the Power of the People.

(I think we should also work as if everything depended on God...)