Call to Prayer

David Zanotti, President of the Ohio Roundtable

Has it been just a week?

It feels more like a month, perhaps a year, since the election of November 7^th. Many of us did not sleep a wink on election night. Many, many more have been glued to the TV and radio since.

We want a President. We want to know. We want to know NOW.

And as a nation we are deeply, deeply divided, frustrated and beginning to lean toward anger, disgust and cynicism.

How has it come to this?

It is more than a close election. It is the continual erosion of our cultural history and consensus that has brought us to this place of polarization and chaos. We have lost our historical understandings of why the Constitution matters, why the transition of power is so critical, why states must maintain the right to conduct fair elections, why we do not permit partisans to control vote counts.

But most importantly, we have lost our cultural commitment to principle over power. There is more to life than controlling the Oval Office and Supreme Court appointments. Truth still matters and to a free people truth should matter most.

But it doesn’t anymore – at least to a growing number of very vocal partisans. And both sides could quickly collapse into irreconcilable positions, in fact they are nearly there today.

So what are we to do?

We should pray. Why pray? Is it because we are out of answers and shrewd political moves? Do we pray because we don’t know what else to do?

We need to pray because the Florida crisis uncovers what we have been unwilling to acknowledge and deal with for a long, long time. Many in our nation respect laws only when they agree with them. As a people we are often committed more to power than principle. We are lost and need redemption personally, and as a body politic.

“This solves nothing in the vote count”, some would counter. “We don’t need prayer, we need a smarter lawyer, or better ballot counters, or fewer chads.”

What is happening in Florida is a tragedy. The polarization is beyond the capacity of human will to resolve. The genie is not only out of the bottle, but infecting normally reasonable people. They can no longer see straight. They are making up their strategy as they go along. And each day, each news conference, each legal maneuver creates more anger, pressure and fear.

We need to pray because the only way America works is when we are willing to accept the rule of law as the better alternative to political power. America is not a democracy. America is a republic based upon a conventional constitution. We agree to play by the rules, even when it hurts. And the rules count until we agree to change them, not in a court of law but via the legislative or electoral process.

If the quest for power, no matter how great the cause or valiant the intention, blinds us to the higher good of the rule of law, we as a nation have perished.

Therefore, we humbly ask you to join us today in prayer for America. We cannot deny the obvious. Let us pray that God will grant us all, including those in Florida, a wisdom greater than personal agenda. Let us pray that somehow this incredibly painful national travail will awaken us to the deeper issues that divide us and become a starting point for true reconciliation and restoration.

This would be a miracle indeed. This is why we pray.

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