Your opinion on "Prayer Shaming"?

[God of Mr. Hanky]

So after the shooting at a college in October here in Oregon, President Obama said “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough.”.  Of course I've seen that sentiment a thousand times on this forum or with other atheists on twitter or facebook, but the Christian President saying it seems to have loosed the tongues of more people.

I think many of you have seen the NY Daily News front page by now.



Of course this has angered a lot of people (who pray).  They are calling it "prayer shaming", latching onto the whole "Stop shaming us" movement that we see with "fat shaming", "victim shaming", "gay shaming", etc. 

Personally, I wold never tell an average, private citizen that their prayers are worthless. Not my mom or a friend, or even a stranger.  

However, I do think it IS a useless platitude used in a political and not meaningful way when offered nearly verbatim from a string of politicians who continue to do everything in their power to keep people stupid, dogmatic, fearful, poor, and utterly oppressed with their moronic ideals on women's health, social justice, the vast disparity between the 1% and the rest of us, etc.  They don't even MEAN it, so I think they should be called out and this little crappy newspaper deserves some applause for having the guts to say such an unpopular, but true, thing.

So what do you think?  Is it ok to tell people to get off their asses and do something instead of praying?  Or are we "shaming" people who are really just trying to offer their condolences?  Do you tell friends or family how you feel....and how do you feel about it?  Is "prayer shaming" even a thing, or are Christians again trying to play the "you are oppressing us by saying mean things!" card?

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to break up text blocks for quoting here in the intial "Reply" mode, so please forgive if reading this is a little tedious to follow.

On Obama's religion, I never was aware that he's been regarded by Christians as a "Christian President", despite his record of church attendance.

This thread broke the news to me of such statements as I read your post, and from the title I mistook the context of "prayer shaming" to be Christians using their mandatory prayer time in public, prayer imposed on children in schools, or when a family patriarch forces his atheist son into a prayer situation - therefore, the above observation would have actually mattered in that case, but it probably doesn't.

In answer to your question, yes - I think it's about time that we stop pussyfooting around the issue of precious time being wasted on prayer. If you want to make this world a better place for anyone, prayer won't change it, but with action at least there's a chance. Prayer is nothing but empty words which waste our time, and I'm sick of my time being wasted by talking heads who offer that and nothing better. It's a low-down, dirty shame alright, and you aren't oppressing anyone by saying so, you are correcting them.

On offering condolences - let's be honest about this! It's what you do when there are no actions you can take which would comfort one who has suffered a loss. Prayer is what some Christians offer as condolence in such a case, while more of them do so when they are unwilling to do more. When you can bullshit yourself into believing there's a powerful god who will take care of the situation and comfort the grieving just because you prayed, then they don't need you to do more. You probably shouldn't do more while god is a work, you don't want to interfere. Yup. Therefore, lack of the prayer option as condolence should result in less condolence, and more action.