Keeping the Faith

The Presidential Prayer Team

Your Tour will Include a Complimentary Live-Ammo Sermon, An 18-Hole Faith-Based Money-Grab and a Million-Dollar Hole-in-One Contest with the Presidential Prayer Team

"O Lord, if it be Your will, Please Drop it in the Hole."

In the drizzle of a late spring afternoon I stood in a crowd of mostly older men, just beyond the rough on the 18th green of the Westfields Golf Club in Clifton, Virginia. For the moment we were all facing the fairway, where 170 yards away, a balding, bespectacled golfer with sloping shoulders took aim for a special million-dollar hole-in-one contest. If he holed his shot, the Presidential Prayer Team--sponsor of our tournament earlier that day--would award him the mil, raised from donors, minus a $300,000 donation to itself.

"Favor him, O Lord. Put it in," someone behind me intoned.

I turned around. A good half of my fellow golfers had their heads bowed in solemn prayer as they awaited the shot. One particular PPT golfer, whom I'd been watching all day, had his right hand raised like a faith healer. This man was not averse to full-throttle displays of piety, I observed, and he kept his eyes half-closed through the long wait for the hole-in-one shot.

In a pre-tournament gathering under a tent in the club's parking lot, we had all been led in a prayer for the health and bodily comfort of George W. Bush. I had been struck when the faith healer shouted "Amen!" to a request that the Almighty grant the president "better and more relaxing sleep."

This gathering--a "golf and prayer walk" that was designed to "honor our troops"--was also sponsored by PPT, an organization whose stated purpose is to "serve the prayer needs of all current and future leaders of this great nation." It claims it receives no support, official or unofficial, from the current administration. But in practice it exists to encourage members to pray for the health and political success of George W. Bush.

It calls a close Bush confidant, Franklin Graham, its honorary co-chair. Former Senate chaplain Lloyd Ogilvie, Arizona senator Jon Kyl and former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating are on its honorary committee (as are such luminaries as Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo and abstinence proponent and ex-NBA player A.C. Green). It would be hard to imagine it continuing a vigorous existence under, say, the administration of a President Al Sharpton or Joe Lieberman.

When the PPT was founded shortly after 9/11, its stated goal was to enlist 2.8 million people, or one percent of the American population, as members. Recently it claimed to have met that goal. I'd been part of that effort. And now I was golfing with them, for the troops.

I had prepared for this day, mentally and spiritually, for months. When you go out on the evangelical circuit, your soul needs to be dressed for the job. You need to work hard to make sure that when folks look into your eyes, they see "good people," someone morally reliable and in possession of all the right attitudes. It can't be apparent, for instance, that it has occurred to you to wonder how it is that one can "honor the troops abroad" by playing golf. Good Christian Americans do not trouble themselves over any lack of gravitas in these situations.

Likewise, when you're asked to bow your head and pray that God "give President Bush all the money he needs to buy food for the poor," you can't even blink, let alone blurt out what might seem like a reasonable question to most people: Why not just cut out the middleman and pray that God himself give food to the poor? If you have thoughts like that in this crowd, you don't belong. And belonging for me was the big challenge.

For a full year I'd been going to events like this. I had joined dozens of evangelical organizations and given my money to the cause, all in the name of exploring the new trinity of God, America and George Bush. There was no way I was going to blow it all by giving in to any urge--no matter how reasonable--to break into violent laughter as we prayed for the accountant to make his million-dollar shot.

"Bless us, Lord, bless us," someone behind me said.

The contestant lined up and struck the ball. It sliced wickedly, landing in a tree to the right of the green with a small explosion of leaves.

"Shanked it," I said, not resisting a smile.

It all began as a joke.

Two years ago, while living overseas, I was up late one night, unable to sleep, when I spotted an amazing article on the Internet. The piece cited a study by something called the Nehemiah Institute, which calculated that, if things continued on their present course, the youth of America would not only lose their faith in God but be fully converted to socialism by 2014.

The exactness of that date, 2014, leaped off the screen. For a long time I sat staring at it, fascinated. Finally, half-drunk and woozy from sleeping pills, I leaned forward and composed a letter to the study's author, Dan Smithwick:

Dear Mr. Smithwick,

I just want to say that as a high school student I was appalled to read on Christianity.com that the Entire Country will fall to socialism by 2014! That's So Soon!

As a Christian of the Presbyterian (sp?) faith, I find my comfort in the Lord Jesus Christ and not in secular humanism. I think secular humanism is Really Lame!

Please keep up the good work and help protect young people like me from Socialism and Secular Humanism!

Sincerely,

Matt Taibbi

I was surprised the next day to see Smithwick had responded. "Dear Matt," he wrote. "Thanks for your note--I am always glad to hear from someone (especially youth) who understands the seriousness of this problem in our nation. God bless you. Dan Smithwick, President, Nehemiah Institute."

From that point on I was hooked. I joined every quirky fundamentalist biblical organization imaginable, solicited advice from preachers and pastors all over America, joined the Promise Keepers, the Christian Coalition. I even invented a sordid personal life that made me a more natural fit for Christian support hot lines and web forums, of which there are an astonishing number. I had, for instance, the opportunity to join the BPD Sanctuary, which is a forum for Christians with borderline personality disorder.

I found that a sex addiction made me a popular correspondent, though communications in one group dried up when I hinted at a gay affair with the Republican governor of a Southern state. More recently, visitors to the online Jesus Café approved of my decision to become a nautical archaeologist as a means to cope with my sex problem.

For a while, it was just a hobby, though an unusually obsessive and unhealthy one. But then I began to notice that the circles I was traveling in pulled me closer to Republican politics in general, and to the president of the United States in particular.

It all started with the Presidential Prayer Team. I was one of the first members. I was totally seduced by the frankly theocratic tone of this group, which issued specific daily prayer instructions on its website, presidential prayerteam.org. Common themes included prayer for the confirmation of current and future Bush appointees ("Pray for newly appointed cabinet member John Snow as he prepares for his new position, and for the confirmation hearings in the Senate after they resume on January 7") and petitions to God to grant the president and/or Congress restful vacations ("Pray for all members of the House and Senate to be refreshed and renewed by their holiday"). And I nearly gagged on my Cheerios this past January when the Team asked me to pray for Henry Kissinger and his ill-fated 9/11 commission.

But it was thrilling to be part of something so completely certain. This was quite different from the automated letters-to-the-editor campaigns organized by the Republican National Committee, in which, incidentally, I'd also participated. All that entailed was signing my name to predrafted e-letters and sending them to newspapers--ordinary political activity, though somehow on the duplicitous side. But the Prayer Team was politics on a different plane. It was an effort to move the entire playing field off the planet. It was exhilarating to have a seat on that ambitious undertaking.

All the same, I felt sure that any organization that made a habit of asking, without irony, for members to pray for Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson, or Secret Service director Ralph Basham, would always remain on the fringes.

It took me a while to realize how wrong I was. After some time I understood that I, the East Coast wiseass, was the one on the fringes.

Sure, you can read about this stuff--you might spot Garry Wills in The New York Times Magazine talking about how the White House is "honeycombed with prayer groups and study cells," or chuckle when you hear that the Promise Keepers can outdraw the Orioles in Baltimore (as a member and a ticket buyer, I was part of a Baltimore PK sellout, though I was late for the actual show).

But it isn't until you've stood on the side of the religious crowd that you can truly understand that this is where the action is, not with the scattered malcontents snickering on the sidelines.

For me that fact was illustrated most starkly in May 2002, when I joined in the celebration of the National Day of Prayer outside city hall in Buffalo, where I was living at the time. I bowed my head with local Christians and prayed along with them as we followed Senate Chaplain Ogilvie's request that God "Bless our president, Congress and all our leaders with supernatural power." Meanwhile I had arranged to-have a friend show up at the event wearing a gorilla suit, carrying a placard that read I am your Forefather. Sort of an experiment.

My friend did a great job and nearly ruined the event, but the other side had the numbers. That's when it hit me. We're laughing, but they're winning.

From then on, I turned my hobby over to my daytime journalist persona and almost immediately found myself at the center of America's new political reality--one that will dominate next year's presidential election. The joke, it turned out, was on me, the American citizen.

Late December 2002, I'm at the Market Street Marriott in Philadelphia's Center City, dressed in a bad suit and trying to fake uproarious applause. The White House Faith-Based and Community Initiatives seminar was in the midst of its dramatic climax--the leader himself, George Bush, was addressing us.

Thousands of ministers and church officials from around the country had come to take part in these proceedings, designed to teach religious groups how to apply for federal funding under Bush's FBCI.

I was one of the religious leaders. A few months earlier I'd stumbled upon a White House press release calling for volunteers for Bush's "Army of Compassion" to sign up ahead of time for the conference.

I did. Two days later I received a bulletin from the White House, confirming a place at the conference for "Matt Taibbi, Youth Pastor, Erie Church of Christ."

The reason for attending the conference as a pastor and not as a journalist should be obvious. If ever there were a news story that existed entirely between the lines, it was this one. Ostensibly--i.e., as far as journalists are concerned--the FBCI, while legally dicey enough on the surface, does not technically fund religious activities in any direct way.

The legislation for the program has been drawn up carefully, no doubt, by an army of government lawyers. In word it maintains some semblance of the traditional barriers between church and state. But in reality the language of the program and the speeches surrounding it are little more than an elaborate wink to religious leaders, letting them know that although some formal restrictions will remain in place to keep the liberals cool, in practice churches and religious organizations will be able to do whatever they want with all the government money they'll get.

It was therefore necessary to get an inside look. And so it was, not long after Bush's entrance, that I found myself in the middle of something I never thought I'd see: a crowd of black people cheering for President Bush, shouting, "Preach, brother! Preach!"

Let me explain. Early on in the day I'd made the mistake of trying to ingratiate myself with a crowd of white Southern preachers who were, it seemed, quietly loitering in the lobby before the speeches began. After a few minutes of waiting for them to show a sign of life, I realized that they were praying.

When they finally snapped out of it, I introduced myself and was immediately set upon by an older man, Randall, a minister in a Kentucky congregation. Noticing my name tag, Randall began quizzing me on the Book of Matthew, specifically about the identity of the author of that gospel.

"Well, it sure wasn't Tom Clancy," I quipped in desperation.

"Haw!" he said. "Too bad! I love his books!"

"Oh, hell, me too," I said.

He asked me about my background. I said I was a Baptist and a youth counselor who'd been sent by the congregation to Philly because I had grant-writing experience. He asked me if Buffalo was where I'd found the Lord.

"No," I said. "I found him between the couch pillows."

Dead silence.

This was not a good crowd for religious humor. After slinking away from the group, I decided to go find a table of black ministers. The decision left me with what turned out to be a front-row seat for George Bush's coming-out party as a black politician.

Three floors of the Philadelphia Marriott were swarming with Secret Service agents and bomb-sniffing dogs (who spent most of their time, I noted with amusement, sniffing the press section). The entrance to the main hall was flanked by metal detectors.

On my way into the hall, I walked behind a black preacher in a sky-blue suit and a Moochie Norris afro who was caught in an epic Spinal Tap--esque battle with a metal detector. The Secret Service spent five full minutes trying to determine what the preacher had on him that was setting off the machine. Finally, the man laughed and pulled an afro pick out of his back pocket.

"Man, this must be it!" he said.

He went through. The Secret Service men handed him his pick. Once he left, I overheard their conversation:

"What the fuck was that?"

"It's that thing for their hair."

I ended up sitting at a table about 40 feet from the main podium with eight religious leaders from Springfield, Massachusetts, Plainfield, New Jersey and Savannah, Georgia. They told horror stories about their neighborhoods and how much they needed HUD funding, as well as funds for prisoners and juveniles.

Race was a powerful theme at the event. Trent Lott's comments about Strom Thurmond and desegregation hung in the air, still a hot national issue. President Bush himself used the conference as the occasion upon which he threw Lott to the wolves. Moreover, the conference was disproportionately attended by blacks, who made up about half of the 3000 or so participants.

It had been no secret that the FBCI was conceived by the Bush camp at least in part to secure a new electoral stronghold in the black community--that it was, as BET political writer Joe Davidson calls it, a "political tool to whittle away at the Democratic bear hug on the black vote."

Since the program was proposed by Bush during his campaign, surveys had consistently shown that the religious poor support the measure in far greater numbers than the religious middle and upper-middle classes. These numbers are expressed most graphically along racial lines. In a Pew Institute survey about the program, 81 percent of blacks and Hispanics supported the program, while only 61 percent of whites did, numbers that were sure to make Karl Rove's heart sing.

In the spring of 2002, then Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert Ehrlich of Maryland became embroiled in controversy when he spoke without using the approved code about supporting an initiative to give a black church funding to buy HUD properties.

"I'm a white guy. I'm a Republican. But I'll deliver," Ehrlich said in an account from the May 1 Washington Post. "I'm not saying this gets me 20 percent of the black vote, but it lowers the temperature." Courting the black vote used to be a hot proposition for Republicans. But God--and some cash--makes it easier.

It dawned on me what a brilliant strategy this was. Don't spend any more money on social services, just redirect the money you do spend to black churches. That way, you can take all the money you want from schools and usual budget expenditures and still win some of the vote by directly buying off the heads of local congregations. "Walking-around money" had become "walking-around millions."

Not that there wasn't concern among the people at my table about the unnervingly overt nature of the bribe. One of the issues I was watching at the conference was whether grant money would be deposited directly into the bank accounts of churches, or whether that money would have to be kept in the account of a separate organization. The Bush administration had yet to explicitly say it insisted on keeping the money separate.

And indeed, when FBCI staffer Rebecca Beynon spoke earlier in the day about the ins and outs of the program, she'd made it clear that the government would not insist on keeping the money separate.

"You may want to consider keeping a separate bank account," she said, lingering on the word may.

The contingent from the Plainfield ministry visibly shuddered during this speech. "Our bishop warned us about this," one minister said. "We're advising every black church we can find to keep separate accounts. This thing doesn't sound right."

Nonetheless, when Bush ascended the stage, you'd have thought Medgar Evers had just walked in. The scene was a visual non sequitur. The president and his trademark prep-school smirk--the picture of a petulant child who keeps wandering into the adults' room to be praised for learning how to operate the one switch on his new $3000 train set--triggered an outpouring of emotion from the black leaders of depressed neighborhoods.

"You love God with all your heart, all your soul," he began.

"Yay-uh!" shouted the crowd.

"You believe that every person in need is a worthy child of God," the president continued.

"Yay-uh!"

"You are the generals and the soldiers of the armies of compassion."

"Yay-uh! Yay-uh!"

"You know that building more prisons is no substitute for building responsibility and order in our souls."

"Preach, brother!"

This from the person who campaigned for increased funding for prison construction and an end to parole for repeat felons. Many of the programs of the FBCI were grants for prison counseling and juvenile reentry programs. Now the Republicans were not only putting blacks in jail, they were giving blacks a piece of the prison-industry pie. As pure, cynical politics, it was beautiful to watch.

When Bush delivered his line that "remarks by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of the country," the group at my table stood up in applause. When he moved to a table to sign an executive order making the FBCI law, the place erupted in the kind of ovation Philly hasn't heard since Doc and Moses were around in 1983.

"Lord," the Plainfield minister said. "He sure can talk."

"Can't find a pen in this place," complained Morris, a pastor from a northeastern state. "I was so prepared otherwise, (continued on page 152)Faith (continued from page 112) but I've left all my pens in the car."

We'd met in the parking lot outside the Marriott before the conference when we'd both briefly argued with the attendant about whether we qualified for the $10 early-bird special. In a hurry to keep our places in line, we'd both forgotten essential items in our cars: Morris, his pens; me, a pack of Hostess Sno-Balls.

"Gotta get us some of that money," he joked as we waited in line. "Only problem is, we don't have money to hire a grant writer. They're having me do it. It takes me forever to write anything."

At the front of the line we received our conference handbooks, then proceeded to the continental breakfast on the third floor. The meal was served in a gigantic concrete-walled hall, the kind of place you would expect to house a Teamsters' conference.

Breakfast mirrored the behavioral tenor of the conference. This was obviously a feeding frenzy whose sheer numbers could have been inspired by only one thing: money. The federal government had announced that it was opening the vault for churches, and Morris and I and just about everyone else there had conquered vast distances in order to show up on time, wide-eyed and alert to the good word.

The breakfast hall was a cacophony of munching and slurping; there was little talk as we all pored over our handbooks. Included were several booklets, but only two important ones.

The first was called Federal Funds for Organizations That Help Those in Need, basically a catalog of grant projects. The second was titled Guidance to Faith-Based and Community Organizations on Partnering with the Federal Government, which was a list of rules governing the types of religious activities allowed under the program.

In short, the former booklet was the "do" catalog, the latter the "don't" catalog. of the nine people at my table, I was the only one reading the latter.

As it turned out, a huge portion of the conference was devoted to directing the attendees' attention to the second booklet--and assuring them it was all bullshit.

The Guide to Partnering booklet was a masterpiece of disingenuous legalese. In a FAQ section, for instance, was the following entry:

"Is there any money specifically set aside for faith-based organizations?"

Answer:

"No. While there are small programs like the Compassion Capital Fund that are designed to help faith-based and community groups with the challenges they face, the federal government does not set aside funds specifically for these groups."

Of course: no money specifically for faith-based groups. Everything would be strictly equal opportunity. Indeed, creating an "even playing field" and "ending discrimination" would turn out to be key themes of the conference. The president himself would return to these themes repeatedly in his address, announcing, to thunderous applause, "The days of discrimination against religious groups are over."

The implication was clear that grant distribution was now going to be an open competition. But throughout the day, the government sent a number of signals to attendees that, in fact, a number of grants were (wink, wink) highly likely to be awarded to faith-based organizations.

I attended a workshop later in the day for groups interested in grants for programs involving at-risk youth and prisoners. Chairing the workshop was David Downey, in charge of faith-based programs within the Department of Education. This extraordinary person was at once (a) a midget, (b) a graduate of Transylvania University in Kentucky and (c) a cunning, fervent advocate of faith-based funding.

Downey spent a lot of time helping the crowd conquer the linguistic problem of identifying key euphemisms of the conference. Instead of "faith-based organizations," for instance, he frequently referred to "new grant applicants." The first two at-risk programs he talked about--grants for "youth violence prevention" and a "young offender reentry program"--would, he said, be given to "new" applicants.

Then, for clarification, he added: "I imagine most of the people in this room will qualify, and that these are programs you might want to consider trying for."

Another example of how the "don't" catalog was debunked at the conference relates to the most controversial aspect of the program: the issue of whether the government would pay for proselytizing activities. The "don't" handbook's FAQ section reads:

"What are the rules on funding religious activity with federal money?

"The United States Supreme Court has said that faith-based organizations may not use direct government funding for 'inherently religious' activities. Therefore, faith-based organizations that receive federal funding should take steps to separate, in time and location, their inherently religious activities from the government-funded services they offer."

This blanket rule was repeated several times during the conference, and at one point, attendees were even shown a slide with a picture of Uncle Sam on it that reduced the rule to a simple catchphrase: "Don't preach on Uncle Sam's dollar."

But at the same time, the speakers at the conference made it clear that the policing of this rule would be highly subjective. Both Bush and HUD Secretary Mel Martinez made it a point to tell the story of the St. Francis House, a shelter for homeless people in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which had its HUD funding revoked when it was revealed that the shelter was making residents say a prayer before they ate.

But Martinez proudly announced that he had personally overturned HUD's decision to revoke the $63,000 grant, saying the ruling was based on "old HUD rules" and that the government "no longer discriminated against those with faith in God." Like many other pronouncements at the seminar, Martinez's story was met with uproarious applause.

"Has anyone seen any Muslims here?" I asked the people at my table just before Bush's speech.

The Springfield pastor, dressed in a flaming-red satin shirt with a stiff white collar, nodded. "I saw one gentleman in a bow tie at breakfast," he said.

I went looking for Bow Tie after Bush's speech. He turned out to be an accountant from Boston.

Anyone who had doubts about the constitutionality of the FBCI had only to show up at this conference to find their worst fears realized. Though there was a solid contingent of Jewish and Catholic religious representatives, the overwhelming majority of attendees were fundamentalist protestants. As for black Muslims, there was a simple reason why they weren't there: They weren't invited. Indeed, Bush has said on a number of occasions that the Nation of Islam's prison counseling programs would not be considered for FBCI funding because the Nation "preaches hate."

Instead, Bush cited as a model prison program former White House counsel Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship, which has designed work-release programs in which prisoners graduate only if they attend church regularly. Chuck Colson's pet project at the time was a plan to send Bibles to children of prisoners at Christmas. He sat in the front row during Bush's speech.

Not that it matters--one sounds like a whiny liberal for even talking about the Constitution these days--but the idea of giving money to some churches and not to others is a clear violation of the first sentence of the Bill of Rights, the so-called "establishment clause" of the First Amendment, which begins, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." If you fund one church (Colson) at the expense of another (Farrakhan) just because you disapprove of some aspect of it, it would seem to be an establishment of religion.

And though the official FBCI literature says the program is open to organizations of all faiths, this was clearly another instance in which the FBCI was winking at its audience. The Republican leadership has said time and time again that people need to understand what it means when it talks about faith. Representative Tom DeLay, soon to be House Majority Leader, had recently told a church group: "Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world--only Christianity."

At the beginning of the new year, the FBCI story seemed to fade in the public eye as Iraq dominated the headlines. But in fact, Christian America was positioning itself for intimate participation in the war effort. I nearly collapsed from excitement when I learned that a small Daytona-based church group called the Faith Force Multipliers had been invited to participate in a training session at the Fort Bragg military base. According to various news reports, Major General William Boykin had extended an invitation to Southern Baptist ministers to participate in, among other things, live fire exercises, hand-to-hand combat training and a visit to the base's "shoot house." The idea, apparently, was to allow ministers to apply military expertise to their evangelical efforts. I tried desperately to gain entrance to this event, but the prerequisite--status as an ordained minister--made it impossible.

That didn't seem fair. I felt left out of the war effort, until I heard from my old friends at the Presidential Prayer Team, who informed me that there was one important way I could fight for God: I could play golf. Which is how I ended up at Westfields, in Virginia, in May.

Richard Webb, the Presidential Prayer Team's golf tourney organizer, wasted no time in finding me. I had come with a friend, an ace golfer. The cover story we'd made up was in line with the old spook credo of keeping one's undercover identity as close to the truth as possible. But in this situation, anything within the earth's diameter of the truth was not going to work. Webb, a tanned Arizonan with a blue sweater-vest and exquisite hygiene, was eyeing us suspiciously.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but how did you find out about us again?"

"We're in a church addiction-recovery program in Philadelphia," I repeated. "This was our prize for staying clean for six months: a free round of presidential golf."

He frowned. "And what was, uh, your addiction?"

I pointed to my friend. "He's alcohol," I said, "and I'm methamphetamines."

He paused. "Tough stuff," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "But it sure helps you work. of course," I added quickly, "I'm clean now."

He said nothing.

"There were 30 people in our program," I said in desperation. "We were the only two who made it. Otherwise, you'd have had a lot more golfers."

Webb peered at us. Our story made no sense, that was clear to him, but the alternative--that we were lying--made even less sense. Why would two people donate a hundred bucks apiece and drive a hundred miles to play in a Presidential Prayer Team golf tournament, and then lie about why they were there? The thought must have frightened him, and he quickly left our table.

I laughed about that afterward. But on the way home that day, a troubling thought occurred to me. In today's America, in the places that matter, Richard Webb doesn't need a cover story. But what excuse is there for me?

Republicans were not only putting blacks in jail, they were giving them a piece of the pie. As pure, cynical politics, it was beautiful to watch.