Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin almost stole the show with a political shot at President Barack Obama, telling her fans, “You too know that we must not fundamentally transform America as some would want. We must restore America and restore her honor!”

But there was only one African-American preacher present whose last name was spelled K-I-N-G. There was only one orator who could infuriate pundits simply by standing with Beck on the 47th anniversary of her martyred uncle’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Tears of rage? Tears of joy? The Rev. Alveda King knew she would cause both by linking the Rev. Martin Luther King’s classic cadences with the religious and cultural issues that loomed over what Beck insisted
was a nonpolitical rally. Once a Democrat in the Georgia Legislature, the evangelical minister now leads African-American outreach programs for the Catholic group Priests For Life.

First, she reminded listeners that her “Uncle Martin” had compared America’s promise of equal protection to a check marked “insufficient funds.” But when, she asked, will “we know that the check Uncle Martin spoke of is good?”

“We will know when prayer is once again welcome in the public squares of America and in our schools. We will know when our children are no longer in mortal peril on our streets and in our classrooms, and in the wombs of our mothers,” she said.

“We will know when righteousness rolls down like waters, and justice like a mighty stream. Yes, I too have a dream … that America will repent of the sin of racism and return to honor. I have a dream that white privilege will become human privilege and that people of every ethnic blend will receive everyone as brothers and sisters in the love of God. I have a dream that America will pray, and God will forgive us our sins and revive our land.”

Critics were not kind.

Chatting with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, columnist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post dismissed Alveda King as a “convenient figurehead or puppet. … She’s a fundamentalist, very conservative Christian. … She’s estranged from the rest of the King family, and from the keepers of his legacy.”

And in a Washington Post essay before the rally, Martin Luther King III anticipated the coming efforts to embrace the causes now identified with the first family of civil rights. His father’s dream, he stressed, “rejected hateful rhetoric and all forms of bigotry or discrimination, whether directed at race, faith, nationality, sexual orientation or political beliefs. … Throughout his life he advocated compassion for the poor, nonviolence, respect for the dignity of all people and peace for humanity.”

For Alveda King, these debates are signs of painful divisions — many of them theological — inside the Civil Rights Movement, black churches and the extended King family. While the late Coretta Scott King supported abortion rights and gay rights, other members of the family have fiercely questioned whether the views of her husband would have evolved in that direction.

One debate, for example, focuses on the significance of the decision by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to accept the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood in 1966. Alveda King and other opponents of abortion note that this was six years before Roe v. Wade and only three years after a Planned Parenthood pamphlet warned that, “An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.”

America’s ongoing battles over abortion, insisted Alveda King, are one of many symptoms that her uncle’s work remains unfinished.

“Our material gains seem to be going the way of our moral losses,” she said, in her Aug. 28 sermon. “We are still suffering from the great evil divide of racism. Our children are suffering in failing school systems. Our sons and daughters are being incarcerated at astronomical rates. Sickness, disease and poverty of the spirit, soul and body are plaguing our communities. The procreative foundation of marriage is being threatened, and the wombs of our mothers have become places where the blood of our children is shed in a ‘womb war’ that threatens the fabric of our society. …

“Yet, we are not without hope. Faith, hope and love are not dead in America. Hallelujah.”

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That’s true in the current debates about health care, poverty and even gay marriage, he said, at the recent National Prayer Breakfast.

“Surely we can agree to find common ground when possible, parting ways when necessary,” said Obama. “But in doing so, let us be guided by our faith and by prayer. For while prayer can buck us up when we are down, keep us calm in a storm, while prayer can stiffen our spines to surmount an obstacle — and I assure you I’m praying a lot these days — prayer can also do something else. It can touch our hearts with humility. …

“Through faith, but not through faith alone, we can unite people to serve the common good.”

But while the president preached unity, this year’s National Prayer Breakfast was surrounded by controversy. There were signs this event on the semi-official Washington, D.C., calendar may no longer be able to serve as a safe forum in which a wide variety of religious and political leaders can unite their voices. The breakfasts began in 1953 and every president since Dwight Eisenhower has taken part.

Before the event, the leaders of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the White House and to Congressional leaders calling for a boycott. They also urged C-Span not to televise the breakfast. Meanwhile, a coalition of gay-rights activists and religious liberals announced a series of alternative “American Prayer Hour” events in Washington and other cities nationwide.

Both groups focused intense criticism on The Fellowship, the nondenominational Christian organization that sponsors the prayer breakfast and similar networking events in Washington and around the world. The key is that numerous Ugandan leaders are active in Fellowship activities in that country, including the politician who introduced anti-gay legislation that includes capital punishment for some offenses.

The ethics group’s letter accused this organization — often called “The Family” — of being a “cult-like secret society with unknown motivations and backing” that preaches an “unconventional brand of Christianity focusing on meeting Jesus ‘man-to-man.’ ” The American Prayer Hour coalition simply called it a “secretive fundamentalist organization.” The New York Times noted that the group has no “identifiable Internet site, no office number and no official spokesman.”

However, some religious conservatives have also expressed doubts about The Fellowship. In an investigation of its property holdings in and around Washington, World magazine called attention to The Fellowship’s “muddy theology,” its “distain for the established church” and an emphasis on privacy that “grew into an obsessive culture of secrecy.”

Describing the participants in Fellowship events, Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma told World: “Some of them are Muslims. Some of them are Christians. But they meet in the spirit of Jesus, so it’s not a denominational thing, it’s not even a Christian thing, it’s a Jesus thing.”

The ultimate issue is that this organization needs to admit that it exists and talk openly about its activities and goals, said journalist Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” It’s a sign of progress, for example, that many Americans who are active in the organization have rejected the Ugandan legislation and communicated their dismay to their contacts in Uganda.

When it comes to the National Prayer Breakfast, the Fellowship’s leaders “should go completely public,” said Sharlet, by email. They should “acknowledge their existence, the fact that this is their event, make their account of it accountable (it was not Ike’s idea), explain the process by which people are invited and … make explicit that this is about consecrating leadership to Jesus. Everybody is welcome, but it’s about Jesus.”

This kind of transparency might accelerate what already seems to be happening. Some leaders — on the left and right — might reject the big-tent approach offered by the National Prayer Breakfast and create their own events, which could focus on more explicit messages about faith and politics.

If the Fellowship’s leaders are truly “serious about what they’re about,” noted Sharlet, this “would be great by their lights. They would lose a lot of clout, but the prayer breakfast movement would at last become an actual movement, of many strands.”

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But painful experiences can lead to big questions and critical insights into the state of one’s soul, said White House spokesman Tony Snow, giving the commencement address at the Catholic University of America in 2007. The key is to take a long look in the mirror, to stop making excuses and then to move forward with wide-open eyes.

“Once you’ve gotten past the mirror phase, then things begin to get really interesting,” said Snow, in a speech that focused on faith more than news and politics. “You begin to confront the truly overwhelming question: Why am I here? And that begins to open up the whole universe, because it impels you to think like the child staring out at the starry night: Who put the lights in the sky? Who put me here? Why?”

And one more thing. It’s hard to ask ultimate, eternal, life-and-death questions without thinking about God, he said. That scares some people, but they need to lose that hang up.

“Don’t shrink from pondering God’s role in the universe or Christ’s,” said Snow. “You see, it’s trendy to reject religious reflection as a grave offense against decency. That’s not only cowardly. That’s false. Faith and reason are knitted together in the human soul. So don’t leave home without either one.”

It was easy for Snow’s audience to read between the lines on that graduation day.

The witty commentator’s 17-month tenure as President Bush’s spokesman had been shaped by a series of battles in his war against colon cancer that, eventually, spread to his liver. Snow was urging his listeners to ask, “Why am I here?” But in his own life, he had long ago decided not to be crushed by the unanswerable question, “Why do I have to leave?”

The former newspaper columnist and Fox News superstar kept growing thinner and his hair greyer, even though his one-liners remained sharp as he handled the kinds of tough media questions haunt a president with declining approval ratings. Then he walked away from the White House pressroom last fall, saying that he needed a higher salary — working for CNN — to provide for his wife and three children.

Snow’s quiet death at age 53 sent new shock waves through the clannish community of politicos and pundits at the heart of life in Washington, D.C., especially since it came so soon after the shocking heart attack that claimed NBC’s Tim Russert. Both were dedicated family men and devout Catholics. Both were known for their ability to be friendly and fair, while mixing with activists in both political parties.

The key was that Snow shunned the kind of gloomy pessimism that haunts many conservatives, argued Jewish conservative William Kristol in the New York Times. Instead, his “deep Christian faith combined with his natural exuberance to give him an upbeat world view. … I came to wonder: Could it be that a stance of faith-grounded optimism is in fact superior to one of worldly pessimism or sophisticated fatalism?”

In his Catholic University speech, Snow urged the graduates to take risks and to always strive to serve others — confident that they would learn from their mistakes and keep growing. Religious faith, he insisted, was “not an opiate” that helped people avoid hard questions and big challenges. Instead, the ups and downs that accompany the life of faith should be seen as part of “the ultimate extreme sport.”

In his case, Snow argued that his calling to live life to the fullest included the challenge to fight cancer. He learned his optimism the hard way.

“I don’t know why I have cancer, and I don’t much care,” wrote Snow, in a Christianity Today essay entitled “Cancer’s Unexpected Blessings.”

“Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out. But despite this — because of it — God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don’t know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.”

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In the age of Google, it was easy to connect this with the gospel hymn “Power in the Blood,” which says there is “power, wonder-working power, in the precious blood of the Lamb.” Soon, journalists were calling Gerson’s West Wing office asking him to underline all the evangelical “code words” hidden in major speeches.

“They’re not code words. They’re our culture. … They are literary allusions understood by millions of Americans,” Gerson told 24 journalists at a recent Ethics and Public Policy Center seminar in Key West, Fla. “It’s not a strategy. It’s just the way that I write and the president likes it.”

George W. Bush is not speaking in an unknown tongue.

Anyone who studies what presidents — from George Washington to Bill Clinton — have said in times of triumph and tragedy knows that faith language is normal. If anything, said Gerson, today’s imagery has become more nuanced. It’s hard to imagine Bush delivering anything resembling Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1942 address warning that the Nazis yearned to spread their “pagan religion” worldwide, replacing the “Holy Bible and the Cross of Mercy” with the “swastika and the naked sword.”

The historical patterns are easy to find. In addition to literary allusions, said Gerson, presidents have consistently used religious language when:

* Offering words of comfort. Presidents cannot face the nation after shocking tragedies and say that “death is the end, life is meaningless and the universe is a vast, empty, echoing void,” said Gerson. Instead, they use words similar to Bush’s remarks after the space shuttle disaster: “The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.”

* Praising the influence of faith on efforts to promote justice. Thus, in a 2003 speech on Goree Island, Senegal, Bush bluntly described America’s sinful history of slavery. But he added: “In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering Savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters.”

* Asking citizens to help their neighbors. For Bush, this “faith-based rhetoric” has been closely connected with “compassionate conservatism” and his efforts to allow religious groups to find niches within wider government programs to help the needy.

* Alluding to divine providence in national life. Here, the rhetorical bar has been set especially high by Abraham Lincoln, who insisted that Americans can hope to be on God’s side, but cannot claim that God is fighting on their side.

Presidents use religious language in wartime, said Gerson. Nevertheless, critics of the war in Iraq have attacked Bush’s consistent use of these words: “Freedom is not America’s gift to the world. It is almighty God’s gift to all humanity.”

The president wrote those words, noted Gerson. Working together, they have tried to emphasize that Bush rejects what scholars call “American exceptionalism” — the belief that America is uniquely God’s instrument in history. The president’s stance is best expressed in the 2003 State of the Union address, said Gerson.

“We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone,” said Bush. “We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.”

Those anxious to criticize how the Bush White House has used religious language should dig into the speeches of Woodrow Wilson, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and many other American leaders, said Gerson. Would critics prefer Republicans to limit themselves to the libertarian logic of big business?

“As a writer, I think this attitude would flatten political rhetoric and make it less moving and interesting,” he said. “But even more, I think the reality here is that scrubbing public discourse of religious ideas would remove one of the main sources of social justice in our history.”

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But as a rule, the Baptist marchers do not pray the rosary with Catholics. Orthodox Jews do not chant the same dirges as Orthodox Christians. It would be rare to see Methodists pray with Mormons, or Presbyterians lifting their hands with the Pentecostals. They are united by a cause, but it is hard to blend their worship.

But the scene was different at the “Prayerfully Pro-Choice Interfaith Worship Service” at the U.S. Capitol’s reflecting pool, just before last weekend’s giant March for Women’s Lives. The small service was led by clergy and laity from various traditions — Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh, Unitarian and several mainline Christian groups.

“God stands with all of us, regardless of where we stand,” said the Rev.

Mark Pawlowski of Planned Parenthood, reading from the “My Pro-Choice Credo” liturgy.

“When women choose to have abortions they are acting with integrity, aware of compassion and in realization of their own wisdom. To doubt the integrity, compassion or wisdom of women is to insult women and offend God.”

This flock finds unity in a “broad,” “universal” approach to faith, said Daniel Maguire, an ex-Catholic priest and author of “Sacred Choices: The Right to Contraception and Abortion in Ten World Religions.” It’s frustrating that images and sound bites from these rites are rarely featured in reports about the movement to defend abortion rights and sexual liberation, he said.

Journalists have, with their relentless focus on conservative believers at the heart of the abortion conflict, missed an important story, he said. There are religious people who believe that abortion can, in some circumstances, be a “holy choice” for women. Faith plays a different role in the two movements, but is crucial to both, he said.

“In the United States, I think the whole abortion issue is primarily religious,” said Maguire, who teaches ethics at Marquette University. “For those on the religious right, of course, the goal is to legislate their religious beliefs into our political life. … On the religious left, our goal is to hang in there and say that there is a religious case for our side, as well. We try to de-fang the arguments of the right.”

Religious believers on the left, he said, should not hesitate to acknowledge that there are strong prohibitions against abortion in the ancient teachings in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and other religions.

But they must do a better job of arguing that these traditions include other voices that — from his point of view — provide reasons for women to be able to choose abortion if their reasons are grave enough.

The religious left, he said, can make the same case on other sexual issues — including premarital sex and homosexuality.

“In other words, there is no one tradition on these matters,” said Maguire. “The pope has one way of responding to these questions and I have another.”

Needless to say, Father Frank Pavone of the Priests for Life network is familiar with Maguire’s arguments on issues of sexual morality and totally disagrees — across the board.

But Pavone agrees that abortion is not all that separates these two flocks of believers. They are separated by radically different beliefs about the very nature of belief itself.

This can be seen in their prayer services, he said.

“I think we mean something different when we say, ‘I believe in the scriptures,’ or ‘I believe in the Catholic Church,’ or ‘I believe in the creed,’ ” said Pavone. “On the pro-life side, we really believe that what we are saying is objectively true and eternally true. So if that’s the case, Baptists have good reason not pray the rosary with Catholics. They cannot act as if their prayers are all the same and that they believe the same things.”

Pavone paused for a moment, and then concluded: “The people on the left truly believe that choice defines reality and that their choices are the ultimate reality. We don’t believe that. We believe that we’re supposed to make our choices conform to reality — eternal reality. … “These are two completely different approaches to faith and that shapes everything.”

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Central Church of the Nazarene in Fort Wright, Ky., is that kind of church. Last week, the Rev. Larry Dillon told his mid-week faithful that he felt God wanted them to spend some extra time praying about the sniper attacks near Washington, D.C.

“We prayed for the victims and their families,” he said. “We prayed for the police. We also prayed that somebody out there would find the killers. … Our people just kept praying, ‘Please Lord, let this end.’ “

One layman who couldn’t be there was trucker Ron Lantz. Normally, he drove his 18-wheeler back and forth to Wilmington, Del., on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But he’d been called in special and had to be on the road Wednesday night and into the morning.

This is, of course, where this prayer story turns into a news story.

Christian truck drivers often like to take their breaks far from the temptations and noise of giant truck stops. The Myersville rest area near Frederick, Md., is one safe refuge where Lantz regularly pulls over and parks.

This time, it was a few minutes before 1 a.m. and, as usual, the 61-year-old Lantz was listening to the national Truckin’ Bozo Radio Show. The host was urging truckers to look for a 1990 blue Chevy Caprice with New Jersey license plate NDA21Z. Lantz pulled into the rest area and there was the car. He was one of the first callers to get through and alert the police.

“I called 911,” Lantz told CNN. “They told me, ‘We’ll be there as soon as possible. We’ll be there right away.’ He didn’t say how long. He said, ‘You stay right where you’re at.’ I said, ‘OK.’ “

Lantz and another driver blocked the rest area’s entrance and the exit and, about 20 minutes later, swarms of officers arrived. After a cautious stakeout around the car, the police awoke John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo and put them under arrest.

The next day, Lantz enjoyed a few sheepish moments in the media spotlight.

That was the end of that story. But what few journalists noted was that the folksy trucker was telling them that his story had a beginning, as well as an ending. Finding that deadly sniper-mobile followed some serious prayer, he said.

A week earlier, lots of truckers were talking on their CB radios about the sniper case. Finally, Lantz and several others told everybody to pull off the road. It was time for a prayer meeting. According to Lantz, at least 50 truckers and a slew of other drivers got together — a mere 20 miles from that Myersville rest area.

Lantz is on the road again this week, far from reporters. But he told the whole story in church last Sunday, said Dillon.

“That truckers’ prayer meeting is a big part of all this, the way I see it,” said the preacher. “Ron said they all knew that the sniper was probably driving on the same roads that they were. So they prayed that the truckers out there would be able to help stop him, somehow. …

“Ron’s testimony is that he was just in the right place at the right time. But Ron doesn’t think any of this was a coincidence and I don’t think it was a coincidence, either.”

It’s probably hard for journalists to figure out where prayer fits into this kind of news story, said Dillon. But millions of people sincerely believe prayer makes a difference. So they keep praying. It’s part of the story of their lives.

“I know people ask, ‘If prayer matters, then why didn’t God stop the killing earlier?’ Well, God gives people choices. They can choose good or they can choose evil,” said Dillon. “So we don’t know why those men chose to do what they did and we don’t know why God didn’t stop them sooner.

“Those are tough questions. But we know that we’re supposed to choose what’s good and keep doing what God wants us to do. We’ll have to get to heaven before we truly understand how all of this works.”

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