From the WSJ Opinion Archives

HOUSES OF WORSHIP

Zero Hour
Intercessors for America are praying for President Bush.

BY SUSAN LEE
Sunday, February 11, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST

"Zero-Year White House Curse"--sounds like a headline from the tabs, right? Well, no, not exactly. It's the focus of a "prayer alert" sent out last month by Intercessors for America, an evangelical prayer organization, well before a man firing a gun outside the White House fence was shot by a Secret Service officer Wednesday. What worries the group is that there is a "zero-year curse" that pops up every 20 years to kill any president who is elected in a year ending in zero.

According to Intercessors for America's newsletter, the curse was uttered by Tenskwatawa, a Shawnee prophet, who aimed it at Gen. Wiliam Henry Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Sure enough, in 1840 Harrison was elected president and a month after his inauguration he died of pneumonia. Then came Abraham Lincoln, elected 20 years later, who was assassinated in 1865. In 1880, James Garfield became president and was assassinated. Ditto for William McKinley, elected in 1900. What about Warren Harding, elected in 1920? Turned up dead of food poisoning in 1923. Franklin Roosevelt, re-elected in 1940? Dead of a stroke in 1945. John Kennedy, elected in 1960? Assassinated in 1963.

And then came Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980. But Intercessors for America and other prayer groups mounted a heavy-duty prayer effort that, the group believes, saved Mr. Reagan's life after an assassination attempt in 1981 and broke the curse. Next up on the tarmac, of course, is President George W. Bush, so the group is calling for a renewed effort to "reaffirm the cancellation and breaking" of the zero-year curse.

This kind of prayer effort is not unusual for Intercessors for America. At the beginning of every month, its newsletter goes out to more than 50,000 people who are asked to pray for big-ticket items. In the past, the group has prayed for peace in Israel, unity in the Christian church and the top 120 politicians running the nation (a strictly bipartisan effort).

Currently the group is also praying for Operation Starting Line, a prison outreach program launched by Chuck Colson and Franklin Graham last Easter Sunday. While the prayers include the standard evangelical hope that prisoners make a commitment to Jesus Christ, the injunction to prayer is mindful of the bureaucratic details such a program entails--the group asks for volunteers and materials. This month, the group will also pray for racial reconciliation in the wake of the divisive presidential election. (You can check out their Web site at www.ifa-usapray.org.)

Intercessory, or petitionary, prayer represents something of a theological conundrum. The purpose of such prayer is, of course, to influence God to do something--heal a sick child, quiet a volcanic eruption or give the home-team a victory. But if God is taken to be all-knowing, then God foreknows everything and prayer is a useless device for requests. Or, if God is all-good and loves humankind, then what God has ordained cannot be improved upon and prayer constitutes unnecessary nagging on humankind's part.

Christian literature is filled with attempts to make sense of this conundrum. The great thinker of the Roman Church, Thomas Aquinas, made a stab at a solution in his "Summa Theologiae," by arguing that God has arranged things so that human prayer is part of the cause that produces events already arranged by God. Modern theologians, less tolerant of determinism and more mindful of the human desire to exercise free will, argue that prayer is necessary to establish a meaningful relationship with God and thus God is interested in requests. Gary Bergel, the head of Intercessors for America, puts it this way: "God wants to be in a relationship with us, and prayer helps us to be engaged with God on a daily basis."

Whatever the niceties of the theological debate, Mr. Bergel feels that reminding God that the zero-year curse has been broken is only part of the task at hand. The White House needs a little housecleaning, too. He cites the various occult practices engaged in by first ladies, including Nancy Reagan's practice of astrology and Hillary Clinton's attempts to communicate with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Satan beware--the Intercessors for America are on the case.

Ms. Lee is a member of the Journal's editorial board and a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

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