Yes, the recent calls for "prayer" and the public "prayer meetings" have been pathetic -- no mention of individual or collective repentance and humility before God; rather, social psychobabble sessions replacing that God whose many attributes include justness and righteousness with one who is merely an emotional comforter.
Over the last 50 years, the contemporaneous ascendancy of individual rights with the legal suppression of religious thought in public institutions and policy resulted in civil discord. (We may just now be realizing the dire effects internationally.) Would it perhaps have balanced these competing interests if racial integration, which had such strong religious support, had been implemented in churches rather than in the public schools where religion was silenced? Maybe.
In recognition of America's late-20th century's solipsism, God was pronounced "dead." Some denominations thinking they were being relevant, made humanistic psychology their message, supplanting teaching God's word with elementary psychology and sociology affirming the sanctity of the individual's right to choose. As the individual's right to have his/her choices satisfied was blessed, demands proliferated among those who believed that choices had been denied them. Americans splintered into sparring groups of rights-based identities. Lots of litigation--we were all paying damages to each other. Everyone was a hypenated American. Until about half of the population looked around and saw that our institutions and character were in decline. The pendulum started to swing back. But, while we were all swinging on the pendulum of our democracy ala Harry Lloyd, global telecommunication was directly marketing U.S. products and programs for the retail satisfaction of individual choice into pendulum-free theocracies where "individual rights" is an oxymoron.
So here we are, some 200 years after Page wrote that an angel rides in the whirlwind hoping that the Almighty will direct the storm.
Yes, the recent calls for "prayer" and the public "prayer meetings" have been pathetic -- no mention of individual or collective repentance and humility before God; rather, social psychobabble sessions replacing that God whose many attributes include justness and righteousness with one who is merely an emotional comforter.
Yes, you and Prodigal Daughter are right on. I will add that most Americans (even many so-called Christians) do not like to think that God may judge America. Why wouldn't He? Is this God a different God that judged Israel? Did Jesus Christ not judge Jerusalem in 70 AD? Yes He did. God does not cause "tragedies" (recipient's perspective), rather He judges righteously.
I am disgusted by all of this pagan "god bless america" effusion. Which god would that be in the pantheon of american gods? I don't know. The official god of the U.S. government is hard to discern - it is either "any ole god" (Islam is peace and is equal with Christianity) or it is naturalism (the religion taught in our schools). Take your pick. Either way, the U.S. is in big big trouble. I believe the blinders are on so it may already be too late. However, God may spare America simply because of the small percentage of righteous people (His imputed righteousness) in this country (less than 5% of the population). (God withheld His judgment in Genesis because there were a mere 10 righteous men in the city).
"God Please Spare America" is my slogan.