About 30,000 people poured into Reliant Stadium on Saturday for the Response, a prayer gathering that Gov. Rick Perry promoted and that looked a lot like charismatic, evangelical churches across the country will look this morning. A band complete with guitars and keyboards and drums led the crowd in hours’ worth of contemporary, sometimes raucous, Christian praise music. Members of the audience swayed and danced around euphorically, their arms lifted upward as they sang along with the youthful musicians on stage. Leaders frequently asked the audience to break into small groups and offer prayers for each other and the country.
More than 100 members of the media were on hand as well, largely to see how Perry would interact with an evangelical community that will play a key role in the 2012 Republican presidential race that Perry is likely to enter later this month.
Billed before the Response as its initiator, Perry spoke for about 10 minutes, reading passages from the books of Joel, Isaiah and Ephesians.
“Father, our heart breaks for America” Perry prayed. “We see discord at home. We see fear in the marketplace. We see angers in the halls of government. And as a nation we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us, and for that we cry out for your forgiveness.”
Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have criticized Perry for announcing the event - targeted specifically at Christians and not members of other religions — through his state office. Perhaps in response, Perry downplayed the mix of religion and politics in his remarks.
“He’s a wise, wise God,” Perry said. “He’s wise enough to not be affiliated with any political party, or for that matter, he’s wise enough to not be affiliated with any man-made institutions. He’s calling all Americans, of all walks of life, to seek him, to return to him, to experience his love and his grace and his acceptance.”
Wide media coverage of the Response is likely to introduce Perry to voters around the country. And that could help and hurt him. Perry received a healthy ovation when he took the stage Saturday from those in the arena, and the Response was simulcast at more than 1,000 churches from around the country, potentially putting Perry in front of tens of thousands of voters around the country.
At the same time, some have criticized Perry for teaming with the event’s host organization, the American Family Association, which regularly organizes protests of companies that it considers too gay-friendly. An association spokesman has also been highly critical of Islam and suggested that the Nazi party was founded “in a gay bar in Munich.”
“Governor Perry called for prayer to confront the crisis faced by our nation,” said Jay Morris, an organizer with the gay-rights group GetEqual Texas, one of several groups that protested outside Reliant Stadium on Saturday. “Sadly, those sponsoring the event are the cause of the crisis that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans and their families are facing.”
But other than abortion, the parade of pastors who led the seven-hour Response gave few direct mentions of political wedge issues or some of the controversial topics that colored the weeks leading up to Saturday.
“Heal the financial crisis in this nation,” Mike Bickel of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City said as he led the crowd in prayers. “Heal the families in this nation, Jesus. Lord, forgive us for abortion.”
Critics had seized in recent weeks on Bickel’s suggestion, posted on YouTube, that Oprah Winfrey is a precursor to the antichrist.
Many in the audience said a belief that prayer would solve the country’s problems drew them to Saturday’s gathering. Some, included Perry, fasted, although others formed long lines at Reliant Stadium concession stands.
“All the trouble that’s going on right now - we don’t have water where I am, we can’t have cattle, we can’t have the grass growing, we hear about the stock market falling - we need to pray,” said Minnie Kaatz, a retired state employee from Conroe. “The nation needs to pray now.”
Isabella Chen, a Duke University student, said the Response inspired her work for educational and socio-economic equality.
“There are so many people in need, we can’t just keep ignoring it and being happy in our own lives,” Chen said. “In the time that I’ve been here today I’ve been feeling more and more of a desire to go back out and be part of that change.”
Many members of the audience said they appreciated Perry’s presence but that he wasn’t the main attraction. “I’m glad to see that he’s a spiritual man, but it had nothing to do with me coming,” said Hugh Sparkman, a retiree from the East Texas town of Kilgore.
Shanna Neel, a homemaker from Clear Lake who attended the Response with her husband and two children, said she admired Perry for sticking with the event in the face of criticism.
“I just feel strongly that if a government leader is willing to stand up and take the persecution and ask the church - the church of Jesus - to come together and seek out God, I’m going to do it,” Neel said. “If the president had asked, I would have done it.”
Back in Austin, nearly 800 people stood outside the Capitol to hear Democratic elected officials and religious leaders assail Perry’s record as governor.
“Rick Perry’s saying that we need to bring Texas to its knees,” said Rev. Jim Rigby of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. “I think he’s doing a good job of that.”
Full transcript of Perry’s remarks at the Response http://www.statesman.com/blogs/c...cript_of_perrys_rema.html
Rick Perry and the New Apostolic Reformation www.religiondispatches.or...ew_apostolic_reformation/
Click for Full Text!
Poster Comment:
I was reading about Rick Perry's prayer rally in Houston. A commenter suggested researching the New Apostolic Reformation. Which I have done, and am passing these links along FYI.