Thoughts and Prayers in a Secular Age

A hot take on "thoughts and prayers" and how to navigate the news.

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You’ve probably heard the news.

A 23-year-old shooter killed two and injured seventeen at a church in Minneapolis yesterday.

Journalist Robert Evans called it the natural consequence of “mass shooter fandom.” Journalist Hannah Gais noted that this “seems more or less straight out of the nihilist violent extremist handbook.”

But instead of having a deeper conversation about the societal rot that is leading to this rise in mass shootings in the United States, we’re arguing about prayer.

Note: I usually avoid offering hot takes.¹ But I’m short on time, and this is a fascinating example of how Secular3 religious reasoning actually plays out in practice. So this is going to be a rushed—and potentially sloppy—piece of “thinking out loud” writing, for which I ask your forgiveness in advance. But I think the risk of imprecision is worth the opportunity to help unpack a persistent (and unproductive) debate that isn’t so much about belief vs unbelief as it is about the Secular3 “buffered self” making meaning for itself (while also being oblivious to its secular grounding).

That said, dear reader, let’s get back to it…

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The Context

As I was saying, we’re arguing about prayer and pitting belief vs unbelief (at least superficiality).

The Mayor of Minneapolis argued that “thoughts and prayers are not going to cut it.” Journalist (and former White House Press Secretary) Jen Psaki went a bit further, saying:

Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings. prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.

This led to backlash from the current White House Press Secretary, as well as the Vice President, who directly responded to Psaki’s tweet as follows:

Of all the weird left wing culture wars in the last few years, this is by far the most bizarre. “How dare you pray for innocent people in the midst of tragedy?!”

What are you even talking about?

Is it really that simple? Is the Catholic Vice President² simply duking it out with yet another secular unbeliever who’s hostile to faith?

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Some Background Regarding “Secularity”

If you’re familiar with my writing on this Substack, you’ll know that a constant theme is the meaning of secularity. Following the lead of philosopher Charles Taylor, we’ve tackled a variety of topics all grounded in a basic proposition:

Secularity isn’t something “external” that we’re fighting, but rather something in all of us.

Because, like it or not, we are all secular.

In this Age of Authenticity, where the richness of a divinely created cosmos is reduced to the flatness of a purely physical universe, individuals are tasked with creating meaning for themselves in a world that is devoid of spirit—a world where we see divine action as improbable, if not impossible.

And it’s important to note that everyone, even people of faith, navigates this same disenchanted world in similar ways...

Because people of faith may believe as their forefather did, but they believe differently than people did in a pre-modern age; the basic assumptions of disenchantment are taken as a given by all, believer and non-believer alike.

Believer navigate belief from within a Secular3 framework, not from without.

(Start here if this is new to you.)

This means (among other things) that:

1. The modern is self is buffered rather than porous, and navigates the world as if it were sealed off from any divine action (which it finds inconceivable, in any real sense); and

2. Faith is a matter of purely private opinion grounded not in a shared sense of truth but rather a private, purely individualistic question for self-actualization and meaning-creation.

That’s why, in a Secular3 world, the one virtue is tolerance, which gives others space to navigate the world as buffered beings and make meaning for themselves.

Similarly, the one vice is intolerance, which pierces the buffering of the individual and prevents this autonomous self from determining meaning for itself.

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Prayer and the Buffered Self

Something unique about faith in our Age of Authenticity is that it can be used as a shield to preserve the self’s individuality and autonomy.

(As a shield to preserve our secularity, in other words.)

Let’s take the comments of JD Vance, for example…

Note first the intellectual dishonesty of his tweet: Psaki asserted that “prayer is not freaking enough” and demanded further action to address the epidemic of gun violence. Vance twisted her words to make it seem as if she was offended that a Christian would pray by summarizing her initial tweet as: “How dare you pray for innocent people in the midst of tragedy?!”

Taking Psaki’s tweet at face value, though, her tweet is better summarized as: “Are you willing to do anything besides pray?”

I’ll be honest, I’m sympathetic to that kind of question. It’s almost cliché that Orthodox Christians speak of a “synergy” between God and man: the Lord acts and invites us to join Him in His salvific work, for the life of the world.

God’s action does not preclude man’s action but rather invites it (because enchantment isn’t magic).

• Orthodox Christians pray for the ill, and also take them to medical professionals.

• Orthodox Christians pray for good grades, and also prepare for exams.

• Orthodox Christians pray to find a good spouse, and also work to cultivate the kind of character that a good spouse would find appealing.

In our Secular3 world, when one doesn’t want to act, prayer becomes a convenient shield to reinforce the self’s bufferedness and impunity.

Psaki’s comments were so poorly received by Vance because they are an example of intolerance, the cardinal vice of our Secular3 Age. Vance’s tweet might as well have been “where does she get off telling me I’m wrong, I get to decide what it means to be a person of faith!”

Thoughts, Prayers, and Secularity

Taking this a step further, we should note that the phrase “thoughts and prayers” (which is both use by people of faith as a marker of faith, just as it used as a critique of faith by people of doubt) is very telling and emblematic of our Secular3 age.

Because prayer need not actually be offered to the Lord in this Secular Age. After all, as secular people (whether we like it or not), we’re not even sure He exists!

Faith is a thing that is about my self-actualization rather than communion with divinity: it’s something I do as I want, when I want, on my own terms.³

All that matters is the buffered self’s authentic expression.

All that matters is what we think, what we say to ourselves as we create meaning in a universe we feel to be meaningless.

(You might say that the Publican, who “stood and prayed thus with himself,” presents a good case study of what prayer can be reduced to in our Secular Age.)

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So Now What?

I’m all for actually, genuinely praying for people. Back when I worked in youth and young adult ministry, I often noted how silly it was that we spent so much effort creating new resources for kids and not actually praying for them.

But there’s a difference between actually praying to the Lord—taking steps to pierce the buffered self and make room for the Lord to act in and through us—and using prayer as a shield that defuses critique, ends conversation, and maintains the postmodern person’s buffered, self-creation of meaning.

What exactly is the action that people should undertake in this case?

Well, that’s for you to figure out according to your particular political leanings! Maybe you think we need more gun control or more mental health resources. Maybe you think we need more security at churches and schools.

Or maybe you don’t. I don’t know; this isn’t a political blog!

All I know is that the faith vs unbelief dialogue is tiresome, wrongheaded, and disingenuous.

Because we’re all secular.

Publicly posturing about prayer doesn’t change that.

1. Speaking of hot takes, you may have noticed that people are using the Minneapolis shooting to once again stir up fear about some alleged epidemic of mass shooting by trans people (which isn’t actually a thing).

(The epidemics we should be worried about are nihilism and Nazism, which both do great on the internet! But I digress.)

You’re probably tired of my repeated invectives against the madness of the internet, especially the madness of seeing it as an unqualified good that’s helping the Church.

Building on all those critiques, my ice cold take is that, if the internet has done anything, it’s made it easier to just make up stuff that fits with peoples pre-existing biases, no matter how irrational or disconnected from reality they are.

Which is—once again—part of the Secular3 story we’ll unpack in this piece. The task of modern man is to self-define meaning; truth (whether in the grander sense of philosophy or the more specific sense of factuality) has nothing to do with it!

It doesn’t matter whether or not trans people are actually behind an epidemic of mass shootings. All that matters if whether you earnestly, authentically believe it or not.

2. When we look at the faith journey of contemporary figures, it’s helpful to keep the words of President Dwight Eisenhower in mind: “America makes no sense without a deeply held faith in God—and I don't care what it is.”

Faith isn’t about encountering the Person of God; there is no road to Damascus moment. Rather, it’s about navigating the challenges of life. And, for many, religion is a useful tool to make sense of the world: no more, no less.

That’s Secular3 reasoning!

3. It’s particularly interesting to see this play out in hierarchical traditions like Catholicism, where the pope can critique ones approach to the faith and the Secular3 Buffered Self is completely free to ignore it and define Catholicism for himself as he sees fit.