Hear our cry ... my goodness, the undertones

Bloggers who fell for and did not issue flat-footed corrections regarding the blasphemously doctored "hear our prayer" video are squirming now, and Mollie Wilson O'Reilly is for the best of reasons disinclined to turn down the heat.

She writes [and we do agree]:

No one, especially not anyone who values religion and dislikes seeing it dragged through the muck of partisan politics, should have believed in and disseminated a video of health-care-reform activists “praying to Obama.” The video didn’t supposedly show “secular messianic devotion” — it showed a minister, in vestments, leading a prayer service. To believe those people were saying “Hear our cry, Obama!” was to believe that they literally regard Obama as some sort of deity. And that’s silly ... .(A lot of people said some creepy things about Sarah Palin, but if anyone ever claims to produce a video of right-wingers actually praying to her — “Hear our cry, O Palin!” — sensible people should regard it with enormous skepticism.).

Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics looks at why some religious conservatives, among them perhaps some journalists of whom we might have expected more, could have fallen for such a bizarre contrivance. He writes:

Within conservative evangelicalism, George W. Bush came to be seen as a hieratic figure--"Our Christian President," an anointed leader. The most notorious image of this conceptualization comes from the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, where youngsters are shown praying ecstatically around a cardboard cutout of Bush.
You can, then, be a religious conservative in America today who doesn't believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist but who nevertheless thinks that his more strenuous followers look at him as your own strenuous folks looked at George W. Bush. There is no evidence that religious liberals are worshiping Obama, but religious conservatives have reasons to imagine them to be doing so.

Add to Silk's observation the possibility that O'Reilly perhaps unintentionally calls to mind for us by mentioning Sarah Palin, who is not a black woman.

The congregation defamed by the video doctoring is predominately black.

There is no "card" to be played here. The circumstances say there is something more poisonous involved than straightforward gullibility of conservatives who should know better than to think so reflexively ill of liberals in general.

Blake Prize video silently explores religious experience

Angelica Mesiti's 11-minute, "silent video work entitled [Rapture (silent anthem)]" of "sea of ecstatic young faces" at a hard rock and metal rock concert won Australia's $20,000 Blake Prize for Religious Art and Spirituality for 2009.

The judges, whose decision was unanimous, said:

Filmed from a concealed position beneath the stage at a rock concert, Mesiti’s camera looks out at a sea of ecstatic young faces. In a unanimous decision, the judges praised it for its beauty, emotional intensity and technical virtuosity. An enigmatic work that operates on many levels, Rapture depicts the joy of being alive while also hinting at the darker aspects of religious emotion.

In an interview with Ashleigh Wilson of The Australian, Mesiti said:

I was just interested in these notions of worship and ecstasy and transcendence and where they're actually found in a contemporary setting.

One of the most prestigious Australian art competitions, the Blake has for 55 years been awarded a prize for works which, according to the Blake Society about page, "explore the subject of religious awareness and spirituality." The Blake invites an "open, personal and idiosyncratic response, so much so that it has earned the criticism, ire and sometimes applause of critics and the public alike. After all, what is religious art?"

John Watson won the Blake Poetry Prize for Four Ways to Approach the Numinous {.pdf].

Diane Coulter's sculpture "Cousin Elizabeth NT" won Blake Prize for Human Justice.

Grant Stevens' video "In the Beyond" won the Award for Emerging Artists.

The awards are controversial.

Christopher Allen, The Australian's national art critic, said of the winner: “Ecstasy is cheap," and termed the show as a whole "fairly lacklustre.”

While Blake Society chairman the Rev. Rod Pattenden, undeterred, said, “Each creative work makes a response to a sense of the spirit within the complex and sometimes conflicting nature of contemporary culture.”

We've seen a sample of Mesiti's video [which we hope to be able to share], and side with Pattenden.

Does Satan exist?

The ABC News video of last night's debate at Mars Hill Church is online.