Amen and Awomen

Submission 15,023

About

Amen and Awomen refers to a quote from U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver who added "A-woman" after the traditional "Amen" in a prayer to open the 117th Congress in January 2021. The statement sparked controversy online as well as becoming a catchphrase in memes shortly after where it was used in a mostly mocking fashion.

Origin

On January 3rd, 2021, U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver opened the 117th Congress with a prayer and added “A-woman” to the traditional “Amen” at the end of his speech to begin the first session of the new House of Representatives. The prayer was uploaded to YouTube by several media outlets and users, including one by YouTuber^[1] Howard Mortman that received over 258,000 views in roughly 48 hours (seen below).

The prayer’s unconventional ending then kicked off a mix of bemusement and anger from other politicians shortly after, as well as many online who made memes mocking the statement. One such early example was posted by Redditor Owlbusta to the /r/memes^[2] subreddit on January 4th, 2020, receiving over 15,800 upvotes, 185 comments and several Reddit Awards (shown below).

Spread

The phrase continued to spread in the following days appearing in memes on most major sites and platforms. On January 3rd, 2021, Twitter^[3] user Kyle Mann, a writer for the satirical news site the Babylon Bee, tweeted a meme reacting to the prayer from Lord of the Rings, which received over 18,200 likes and 1,900 retweets in 41 hours (shown below).

On January 4th, Redditor Mr_Gimli posted a version of the quote in a meme to the /r/Anarcho_Capitalism^[4] subreddit, receiving over 1,900 upvotes, 91 comments and several awards in 17 hours (seen below, left). That same day, Redditor WithRoots24 posted another example to the /r/PrequelMemes^[5] sub, receiving over 1,600 upvotes in 28 hours (seen below, right).

On January 4th, Ben Shapiro posted a reaction to the prayer on his YouTube^[6] channel that mocked Cleaver, accumulating over 652,000 views, 75,000 likes and 11,800 comments in 24 hours (seen below, left). That same day, Donald Trump Jr. also mocked the statement during one of his speeches at a rally in Georgia that was uploaded to YouTube^[7] by BlazeTV where it accumulated over 51,000 views, 6,700 likes and 800 comments in 24 hours (seen below, right).

Rep. Cleaver’s Response

On January 4th, Snopes^[8] published an article on the prayer and the ensuing controversy that included a response Cleaver provided to the site where he said “a-women” was intended to be a pun (shown below).

I am deeply disappointed that my prayer has been misinterpreted and misconstrued by some to fit a narrative that stokes resentment and greater division among portions of our population. I believe prayers to be a personal conversation between El Shaddai and the invocator. With this conversation, in the presence of the 117th House of Representatives, I concluded with a light-hearted pun in recognition of the record number of women who will be representing the American people in Congress during this term as well as in recognition of the first female Chaplain of the House of Representatives whose service commenced this week. I personally find these historic occasions to be blessings from God for which I am grateful. Rather than reflecting on my faithful requests for community healing and reversion from our increasingly tribal tendencies, it appears that some have latched on to the final word of this conversation in an attempt to twist my message to God and demean me personally. In doing so, they have proven one point of my greater message--that we are all “soiled by selfishness, perverted by prejudice and inveigled by ideology …”