God is a National Resource
The slogan "God is a National Resource" appears on a banner draped over the doorway of the building where the Women's Prayvaganza is held, directly below the event's title and flanked by the regime's emblem, the winged eye. The banner itself covers the building's former name—some dead president who was shot—and the smaller print beneath the slogan reads "God Is a National Resource," with the outline of a winged eye on either side. This placement is not incidental: the Prayvaganza is a compulsory public ceremony where Handmaids, Wives, and other women gather to demonstrate obedience and piety, and the slogan frames the entire proceeding as an act of national resource management rather than spiritual worship.
The Regime's Instrumental Use of Religion
The slogan crystallizes the Gileadean regime's approach to religion as a tool of governance. Throughout the novel, the state appropriates biblical texts and religious language to justify its social hierarchy and control mechanisms. Aunt Lydia, the chief indoctrinator at the Red Center, repeatedly deploys scripture to enforce compliance, telling the Handmaids, "They also serve who only stand and wait," and instructing them to "Think of yourselves as seeds." The Bible itself is kept locked in a box, accessible only to Commanders, who read selected passages aloud during the Ceremony—passages such as "Give me children, or else I die" and "Be fruitful and multiply." The regime also broadcasts recorded scripture over the cafeteria loudspeakers, including a doctored version of the Beatitudes that omits inconvenient verses and adds the line "Blessed are the silent." By controlling access to the sacred text and selectively interpreting it, the state transforms religion from a source of personal meaning into a national resource to be managed and deployed.
The Prayvaganza as a Ritual of National Resource Management
The Prayvaganza itself is the most explicit ritual enactment of the "God is a National Resource" ideology. The event features group weddings of Angels and veiled daughters, arranged by mothers rather than fathers, and includes a Commander delivering a sermon that quotes 1 Timothy: "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection" and "she shall be saved by childbearing." The Handmaids kneel on the cement floor in a roped-off enclosure, segregated from the Wives and daughters who sit on folding wooden chairs. Television cameras record the proceedings, ensuring the display of piety reaches a wider audience. The slogan on the banner thus frames the entire event—the marriages, the sermons, the enforced silence of women—as the proper use of a national religious resource.
Contrast with Private Religious Practice
The slogan's reduction of God to a resource stands in stark contrast to the private, often forbidden religious practices of the Handmaids. Offred, the narrator, engages in silent prayer that subverts the official liturgy: she prays the mysterious Latin phrase "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum," scratched into the wall of her closet by a previous Handmaid, which she later learns is a schoolboy joke meaning "Don't let the bastards grind you down." She also recites the hymn "Amazing Grace" in her head, noting that such songs are "considered too dangerous" because they use words like "free." The Commander's Wife, Serena Joy, secretly listens to old recordings of her own former singing career, playing them with the volume low so she won't be caught. These private acts of religious expression—hidden, personal, and often nostalgic—represent a form of resistance against the state's monopolization of the divine. The slogan "God is a National Resource" thus exposes the regime's attempt to capture and instrumentalize the sacred, while the characters' covert spiritual lives suggest that the divine cannot be so easily contained or managed.
