A PRESUMPTUOUS PUBLIC PRAYER

One of the most personal of human actions is the offering of some sort of prayer to a deity or supreme being. Some people do not believe in prayer.

Most formal religions have managed their distinctive ways and means for making contact with their chosen gods, be it verbal, liturgical, written, lyrical, musical, chants, or whatever.  When a person becomes part of some religious persuasion, the act of prayer plays a role in his or her personal and social relationships. Even some medical authorities say that praying might help the healing process; and, of course, all sorts of “miracles” have been attributed to various forms of communicating with someone’s or a group’s “God”.  

Personally and professionally, I have long believed in the “power” of prayer; with my own ideas to interpret that concept, right or wrong in any other person’s eyes. 

Now, as we are basking in the euphoria of THE inauguration (at least most Americans seem to be!), I feel I must address, in a critical way, one aspect of that wonderful event.

President Obama is the personification of an inclusive social order; virtually every thing about his own life and the ideas he espouses clearly delineates the need for America, and indeed the world, to overcome the divisions and exclusionary ideas and attitudes that have caused harm to millions of persons over the centuries.

Some of the worst eras in human history have seen the wars and devastation that resulted from the narrowness and selfish secularism within religious communities.  President Obama is the surest public servant in recent decades who offers an opportunity to overcome some of those ills that were devised in the name of religion. 

Today, beheadings (once a Christian device for “sinners”) are done at the hands of extremists and terrorists; mainly for political purposes. But, all of us, in different ways, often figuratively “behead” others, when we shut them out of our own narrow world view. 

Back to prayer. I felt that the President’s selection of a self-proclaimed spokesperson for God to offer an invocation (prayer) was unfortunate. But, it was the Presidents prerogative, and so be it; something of a political decision.  Mr. Warren was given the high honor of “invoking” the hope for America to follow a source of wisdom and strength that is beyond mere human achievement. It is a customary rite, and most of us see a need for it. 

But, in Mr.Warren’s case, his praying presented a form of prayer that in its very wording and emphasis was exclusionary; it did not invoke a deity to which every believing and religious person might understand.

In contrast, the elderly African-American pastor, who had been a beacon in the Civil Rights movement, pronounced a benediction (also a prayer) that emphasized the inclusiveness of our society.

Warren’s emphatic and specific reference to Jesus might seem the right thing to do, for many of us who adhere to the Christian faith, and it would be quite proper in his church. Likewise, using a very directed Christian expression, “the Lord’s Prayer “,  was totally improper.  Perhaps we should have had a prayer used in the Islam faith. 

America is not just a “Christian country”, as much as some of us like to think so. It is not a Moslem country, or Jewish country, or Buddhist country; or even a non-believer’s country; although all of these persuasions are part of our collective understanding of the hopes and dreams we share for America.  When we say, in the pledge, “One nation under God”, that does not necessarily mean a Christian god, or any other form of one.

Mr. Warren is well known for his own ideas about exclusions of certain members of society; and he is joined by other judgmental religious groups who have determined that some types of social interaction are “sins”, and thus the basis for condemning some persons to a fate of “damnation” and eternal torment. Straight out of the Middle Ages.

Of course, we will live through Mr. Warren’s presumptuous “prayering”, and President Obama is still launched on perhaps the most meaningful era of American leadership. We hope so, and PRAY so, but our prayers are far more significant if we do not limit them to one specific method or doctrine.

John W. Biggers

Advertisement