A prayer unanswered

The Washington Post's "On Faith" panel of 19 writers discusse the "State of our Disunion" while lamenting how Rick Warren's Inauguration Day prayer is far from being answered.

Warren prayed that Americans would "have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes, even when we differ."

Instead, note the Post's Sally Quinn and Jon Meacham, "clarity, responsibility, humility and civility seem to have given way to self-righteousness, anger, resentment, and what columnist Kathleen Parker calls 'a political era of uninhibited belligerence' that is finding expression in sermons, at town hall meetings, on radio talk shows, even on the floor of Congress -- especially when we differ."

Susan Jacoby, whose entry has attracted about 400 comments, discusses how faith and hatred often co-exist. She says:

What we are seeing is the rage of a minority--we don't know exactly how large, but we do know that it is almost entirely white and concentrated in the South and Southwest--at an African-American president who is considered not only wrong in his policies but illegitimate as the leader of our nation.

Jacoby also tells of a college student afraid to tell her parents she supports Obama for fear they'll no longer pay her tuition and writes:

Many Americans spent a good deal of time last November patting themselves on the back for having elected an African-American president. What we are seeing now is the bitterness of an unreconciled minority that will never accept the legitimacy of that election.

Would it be that she were wrong but the full sweep of post-Civil War Southern history says she isn't.

Still, we long for the day when Warren's prayer is answered.

Warrenology (for heaven's sake?)

Warrenology was invoked by Mark Silk of Spiritual Politics yesterday for another run at Rick Warren's inauguration invocation.

He and Dan Gilgoff now agree with us that Pastor Warren's ever so carefully inclusive prayer, wasn't.

Until he actually stood to deliver at the inauguration, a great many of us thought Warren was a contender for the "America's Pastor" role created by the Rev. Billy Graham. As Beliefnet's Steven Waldman explained:

[Graham] pulled it off by using broadly inclusive language. In 1989 he referred just to "God" and in 1993 he declared: "I pray this in the name of the one that's called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace." Note, too, that he used the word "I" rather than "we," which would have assumed all in the audience were Christian.

Warren, says Mark Silk, "wanted to have it both ways--gesturing at inclusivity while sacrificing nothing to exclusivity."

It didn't really work, and one scholar and friend of Warren's has flatly called it "a mistake," although Warren's core audience on the evangelical right seems to have been well-pleased.

What were we to expect of a man given to inspirational references to Hitler youth, confusion of gays with pedophiles (and later denying that), support of condom-burning African regimes and other, similarly interesting views and involvements?

Whatever Warrenologists may conclude about the big guy's intentions and effects, he was never asked to audition for the role as "America's pastor." Not by a president who not only pulled an unprecedented range of American faith traditions into his inaugural festivities, but was also the first to acknowledge nonbelievers.

Ours is a more complex, democratic era than the one the elder Rev. Graham handled so well. Warren has the ambition but not the internal poise and or inclusive breadth of presence required to preside as Graham did.

Let us pray, together

Inaugural invocation and benediction were as stark in contrast as they could be, without breaking the civil peace of the occasion.

Southern Baptist pastor Rick Warren made his aggressively Christian evangelical conclusion palatable by opening with clear references to both Judaism and Islam. He then went, wrote Professor of Law Emeritus University of Toledo Howard M. Friedman at Religion Clause, "well beyond the usual half dozen words at the end invoking Jesus. Warren ended his invocation (full text) with:"

I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life, Yeshua, Essa (ph), Jesus, Jesus, who taught us to pray, "Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." Amen.

By thus seeking to fulfill his obligations to President Barack Obama, Warren won the approval of his politically and theologically conservative evangelical Christian constituency.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery's benediction was fiery, poetic and the unmistakable voice of the dean of the civil rights movement (full text).

Yet it was accessible to Christians and non-Christians alike while delighting the left, infuriating the right and apparently leaving almost everyone else inspired.

All without transgressing the bounds of properly practiced civil religion.

The inaugural poem, (text here), perhaps not a prayer, was nonetheless lovely, moving, telling us as it concluded:

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Helping, we believe, all of us and a new president face what may for a time be an unremitting series of crises we all must overcome.

Bishop Robinson's warm-up for Obama

Rev. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, issued a series of prayerful challenges in his benediction for the inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial, including:

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

. . .

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

. . .

It was good as a prayer and better as a rhetorical warmup for President-elect Barack Obama, whose remarks included:

What gives me that hope is what I see when I look out across this mall. For in these monuments are chiseled those unlikely stories that affirm our unyielding faith - a faith that anything is possible in America. Rising before us stands a memorial to a man who led a small band of farmers and shopkeepers in revolution against the army of an Empire, all for the sake of an idea. On the ground below is a tribute to a generation that withstood war and depression - men and women like my grandparents who toiled on bomber assembly lines and marched across Europe to free the world from tyranny's grasp. Directly in front of us is a pool that still reflects the dream of a King, and the glory of a people who marched and bled so that their children might be judged by their character's content. And behind me, watching over the union he saved, sits the man who in so many ways made this day possible.

And yet, as I stand here tonight, what gives me the greatest hope of all is not the stone and marble that surrounds us today, but what fills the spaces in between. It is you - Americans of every race and region and station who came here because you believe in what this country can be and because you want to help us get there.

It is the same thing that gave me hope from the day we began this campaign for the presidency nearly two years ago; a belief that if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everyone together - Democrats, Republicans, and Independents; Latino, Asian, and Native American; black and white, gay and straight, disabled and not - then not only would we restore hope and opportunity in places that yearned for both, but maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process.

The call to come together as a nation and so prevail over towering difficulties, which cannot stop us if we put aside enough of our differences, could not be more clear.

How to word an inaugural prayer? With/without Jesus?

How should the Christian inaugural prayergivers speak their faith to our diverse national audience?

Jesuit priest Rev. Thomas J. Reese reminds us that:

Billy Graham did not mention Jesus in his inaugural prayers in 1989, 1993 or 1997. On the other hand, his son Franklin in 2001 ended his prayer with "We pray this in the name of the Father, and of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." Likewise, Kirbyjon Caldwell (Methodist) in 2001 ended his prayer with "We respectfully submit this humble prayer in the name that's above all other names, Jesus the Christ. Let all who agree say 'amen.'". Four years later, Pastor Caldwell softened it a bit but still kept Jesus: "respective of all faiths, I submit this prayer in the Name of Jesus."

Writing for Newsweek/Washington Post On Faith, he goes on to explain that:

In fact, inaugurations did not start with a prayer until 1937. Perhaps the depression focused people's minds on God. Roosevelt had a Protestant and Catholic minister pray. Truman added a Jewish Rabbi. Eisenhower added a Greek Orthodox bishop. Jimmy Carter cut it back to a Protestant and a Catholic. Ronald Reagan had only a Presbyterian for his first inauguration but by his second he had two Protestants, a Catholic and a Jew. George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton had Billy Graham, with Clinton adding another Baptist in 1997.

Inclusion was one of President-elect Barack Obama's overarching campaign theme.

His approach to inaugural prayer and preaching appears to be steadfast in keeping that promise and, Reese's account suggests, to set a new historic standard.

To honor that and respect the diverse audience, Reese says:

But in a public prayer outside a Christian institution, I think Christian ministers can and should pray to God without bringing in Jesus. This does not deny Jesus. It simply invites everyone in our pluralistic society to join our prayer to the fullest extent that they can. Would Jesus mind? I don't think so.

We who favor public prayer should be the first to acknowledge that a prayer at the inauguration will not magically save our nation nor will the absence of a prayer damn us.

No inaugural prayer at all? Not likely

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a 34-page legal complaint seeking to bar prayer from the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.

There is some debate over the possibility that the suit filed by Michael A. Newdow, 17 other individuals and 10 groups has a chance of success.

We think Scott Walter, executive director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty was on target when he told the Washington Post:

Newdow's lawsuit over the inauguration is a lot like the streaker at the Super Bowl: a pale, self-absorbed distraction. And anybody who looks at it carefully can see there's not much there.