Capitol Hill Prayer Walkers

On a recent Wednesday morning, Seattlest was exiting Vivace on Denny with our clergy mother, happily discussing something secular. As we descended the ramp, Seattlest noticed a group of five thirty- and forty-somethings trailing past, each with a Bible in hand. We grew confused and a little nervous. After all, this has been our haunt for a solid year now and this was the first group of Bible-toting folk we've seen there yet.

That would have been that, but then two of the Bible-toting folk stopped in their tracks and called out Seattlest's mother's name. How did they know!? The Holy Spirit? Eerie psychic activity? Alas, nothing so exciting -- they recognized Mom from local church presbytery meetings.

Turns out there's a group of about five Christian pastors from the Capitol Hill area who do a prayer walk around Capitol Hill every Wednesday morning. Who would have thought?

Seattle's known as one of the least-churched cities in the U.S. But consider this recent report from the Barna Group, which found that three out of every four American adults interpret literally the Bible story in which Jesus rises from the dead after being crucified and buried. The numbers are taken from a thousand-person telephone survey. There's some interesting poll information there, and some even more interesting commentary from the Barna Group ("Your partner for information, strategy, execution and transformation!" says their website):

A minority of the people who believe these stories to be true consistently apply the principles embedded in these stories within their own lives. It seems that millions of Americans believe the Bible content is true, but are not willing to translate those stories into action. Sadly, for many people, the Bible has become a respected but impersonal religious history lesson that stays removed from their life.

Seattlest can't find any hard data from the poll to back up these last statements from Barna, an admittedly Christian organization, and we're not sure who's providing the official description of what it looks like to "translate those stories into action." However, we would be down for a grand Seattle-style social experiment: for 24 hours, Cal Anderson Park could be turned into a playground for all the apparently-repressed Biblical literalists to freely act out their beliefs. The prayer walkers will be on hand to referee; we think this could yield a crop of fascinating YouTube material.