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November 12, 2007
Georgia prays for rain
Georgia and much of the southeast have been in a serious drought for months now. One town in Tennessee ran out of water a couple of weeks ago, and the Dog River Reservoir in sububuran Atlanta (pictured above) is nearly dry. Bans have been instituted on "secretive late-night lawn watering" with violators getting their water supply shut off.
So tomorrow, Georgia governor Sonny Perdue is going to pray for rain, along with state legislators and religious leaders. Some residents think this makes total sense. As Rocky Twyman, the organizer of a recent rain-dedicated gospel concert, said:
Uh huh. I guess by "fussing and fighting" he means "conserving water". Given that greater Atlanta has become synonymous with "urban sprawl hell", and the fact that there are no lakes that aren't man-made in the entire state of Georgia, then yes, it's true: what they're doing isn't working.
Not everyone likes that the state government is turning to prayer to address the problem. The Atlanta Freethought Society is staging a protest. "The governor can pray when he wants to," said Ed Buckner, who is organizing the protest. "What he can't do is lead prayers in the name of the people of Georgia."
But the last time the governor prayed for rain, it worked! Kind of. In 1986, then-governor Joe Frank Harris sent out a proclamation asking Georgians to pray for rain. A few days later began "several weeks of almost daily rains," he claims, though the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that they actually started getting some rain a few days before the magical state-wide prayer intervention.
categories:
Culture, Religion, Science
posted by amy at 4:49 PM | #
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Comments
Frightening, but not surprising.
Posted by: Leigh at November 14, 2007 2:31 AM
Yeah, really. But I was encouraged to see that lots of Atlantans are being vocal about how dissatisfied they are with the assumption that once it starts raining, due to state-sponsored prayer or not, all Georgia's problems will be solved. The LA Times reports that the AJC blog was full of comments from residents who still want better water management practices after all this praying for rain nonsense is over.
Posted by: amy at November 15, 2007 10:22 AM
Hey, Moses and the Jews wandered in the desert for 40 years. I say let Sonny Perdue and the Georgians have a turn.
Posted by: T-Rock at November 13, 2007 2:49 PM