For reasons I don’t fully understand, the black church here doesn’t seem very involved with the annual National Day of Prayer events around the country. This is a fairly big deal among evangelicals and conservatives, who typically use the NDP platform to press their usual concerns about abortion and gays, many praying selectively for our “good conservative” leaders and praying that God would, I suppose, awaken from His coma and do something about all this liberalism gone wild—as though God were not still sovereign regardless of which political party is running the nation.

Which could be the reason we’re not involved in it. A quick glance at the NDP website shows no images of black people or, frankly, non-white people, just smiling white folk and a drawing of what appears to be some colonial-era leader seeking God’s guidance. I tend to believe, had our colonial forefathers actually sought God’s guidance, they wouldn’t have owned my great-great-grampa or raped his wife, but that’s beside the point. It’s possible we’re not involved with the NDP because, frankly, we weren’t invited. The chair of this city’s African American Ministerial Alliance, the pastor of the city’s largest African American church, was invited to a total of zero NDP events. He was not even a blip on the radar as Ourtown, the Mecca of conservative evangelism, blithely went about the business of planning several citywide events, flying in bigwigs from hither and yon while completely—completely—ignoring the black church. Of course, we can and may sponsor our own NDP events, but the National Day of Prayer is intended to be a day of ecumenism—unity among otherwise divided Christian denominations. It is, in practice, a promotional and networking event where, each year, pastors jockey for a kind of Nielsen rating on who and how important they are. And, year after year after year, these NDP events go on without so much as a how-ya-do to the black church.

Then again, I don’t see a lot of black churches inviting white evangelicals to our annual Watch Night extravaganzas, either. We are hardly innocent in these matters. My point is—we, all of us, white and black, are simply far too divided. And this political thing—this male gender organ political jockeying—has no place at all in the work of the Lord. Our having a “black” NDP event while the evangelicals have their :white” NDP events is as wrongheaded and shameful as churches sponsoring Easter egg hunts. It is soulless religion—our topic for this week. It is Church Folk—white and black—practicing religion while missing the entire point of Who Jesus is and what He desires of us. “Let’s fly in the big names! Spare no expense!” Look at what you’re doing: putting on a great show of unity without having any actual unity.

The National day of Prayer is a good idea and an important opportunity to share Christ with others; to show the world the love of Jesus Christ and demonstrate the power of the cross. But far too many of us miss the point of the day, using it instead to promote our individual churches and one-up one another. It is The Idiotic Thing We Church Folk Do, and I’m saddened to realize it ain’t just black folk doing it.