A Campus Group’s Response to the International Day of Prayer

Yesterday was the International Day of Prayer. (Not to be confused with the National Day of Prayer, which is a yearly political stunt with ties to Focus on the Family.)

In honor of it, the Campus Crusade for Christ chapter at Indiana University – Bloomington prayed for 24 straight hours…

The Secular Alliance of IU had a response ready to go. They put up flyers advertising their upcoming meetings that countered the notion that the prayers would be helpful to others:

Beautiful. It’s not just talk, either. SAIU has service projects in the works:

SAIU plans on having multiple events throughout the semester which focus on the idea that “you can be good without God.” Service events in conjunction with Pages to Prisoners and Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard have been planned so that members can reach out to the Bloomington community.

It’s hard for me to talk about this without making snarky comments.

The choice seems clear: Students who want to help make the community a better place should join the SAIU. They take action. Students who want to ask a god to do the work for them can join Campus Crusade.

Next year, I’d love to see SAIU mount a real challenge. Do a 24-hour service project while the prayers are in session. Build something. Fix something. Raise money for a good cause. Anything like that. It would be a perfect, stark contrast to a day-long prayer session.

Mike

Campus Crusade will no doubt claim that their prayers spurred SAIU to perform the acts that improved the community…
Rieux

Do a 24-hour service project while the prayers are in session. Build something. Fix something. Raise money for a good cause. Anything like that. It would be a perfect, stark contrast to a day-long prayer session.

Great idea!

That should be propagated all over the SSA, I think.
gski

Careful, doing a good deed while the praying is going on will prove that the prayer works and god will get the credit.
Amyable Atheist

@ gski – good point – perhaps the service project could take place on October 5th as a counter balance to the inactivity (i.e. failure to help those in need) resulting from the Day of Wishing?
Epistaxis

I hope someone prayed that their printer wouldn’t run out of toner.
Katy

I find the poster a little snarky. When I was a Christian, I was involved with our campus’ equivalent of crusade and they did a lot of good in the campus and the community. To say join the secular group and do something or join the christian group and wish is a false dichotomy.
Mike

RE: false dichotomy

Perhaps in general, that may be true. But in this case that is exactly what is happening on this particular day.
JJR

Would’ve been nice if they would’ve quoted Robert Green Ingersoll on this point…raise more public awareness of him and his legacy, too.
muggle

Nice. Yes, I too thought of Robert Ingersoll and my favorite quote of his (hope they think to use it next year), which is very apt: “The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.”
Max Exter

I don’t personally feel that demeaning another groups event helps our cause. This perpetuates the feeling about atheists that we exist as a response to theists, rather than in our own right.

The message “You can be good without god” did a very nice job of getting the point across without being snarky. This just feels unnecessarily antagonistic.
Kelley

@Max: I think you’re exactly right. There’s no amount of “sinking to anyone’s level”, so to speak, that will help us.

Although snark is fun sometimes, it’s typically not helpful.