So today I went with my good friends and neighbors, St. Betty and The Old Marine, to a politically-related luncheon in beautiful downtown Sugar Land. The invocation given before lunch by a local Baptist minister was the most unpalatable mix of blatant partisanism and fudamentalist rhetoric that I've ever heard. And I've heard a lot of it! I think I have a fairly high tolerance for the trappings of civil religion, but not enough apparently.
When it was over, The Old Marine leaned over and exclaimed, "that was the most political prayer I ever heard in my whole life!" The minister closed by saying "in the name of MY Lord Jesus Christ." We looked at each other in amazement. St. Betty's daughter said indignantly, "is Jesus Christ only HIS Lord?"
As I've remarked before, Sugar Land is religiously and ethnically diverse. The majority of people in the room were Christians, true, but I had friends and acquaintances in the crowd who are Jewish, Hindu and Muslim. In this context, it seems to me that an exclusively Christian prayer is insensitive.
A number of years ago I taught a Sunday School class using the book The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion by Stephen Carter, a Yale Law School professor and devout Episcopalian. The thesis of that book is that we have created a "civil religion" in this country that is acceptable in the "public square" only because no one takes it seriously.
I think this is true, and it seems to me that it is just as offensive to routinely offer prayers at public events that are so generic as to be meaningless as it is to offer the type of prayer that is exclusively Christian (and partisan). I'm coming around to the conclusion that it would be best not to have invocations at political functions or civil gatherings because there is no way to do it without trivializing the practice of prayer or making those who don't share the majority's religious beliefs feel excluded.
11 comments:
I tend to agree with the conclusion to which you're coming around. Not on the basis of the establishment clause because it cannot mean what it is interpreted to mean or the public prayers and official "religious" actions so common in the early US (even among the very people who framed this clause) would have been grossly inconsistent.
But, civic prayer is generally meaningless. Forcing others to sit by and/or participate in prayers they don't believe is repellant. If the people by general consent shared a common belief, I'd have far less problem with it. But as that is not the case, the compromise positions are not useful and really serve to trivialize genuine belief and religious practice.
And I'm fairly sure I don't understand the practice of Christians trying to compel other to adopt outward signs of our beliefs by the use of temporal force, or to enshrine these beliefs in our temporal culture -- as if the US (or any nation or group of nations) were the "kingdom of heaven". (Whether this is a liberal or conservative phenomenon -- I see it in both -- either way it doesn't seem to fit with the New Testament.)
BTW - a very bizzare story related to this topic - http://blogs.salon.com/0003494/2006/07/03.html
While the report linked is biased, the incident itself is disturbing.
I think you are right.
Carter's book was a good read for me.
Did you say anything to your partisan brother in Christ?
No, I never saw him before. He was introduced as an associate pastor at Second Baptist Church in Houston.There were about 600 people in the room and I was at a table in the back.
I never like people using their prayers (or their faith) as a battering ram to the conscience of others.
Prayer in the spirit of 'gotcha politics' always struck me as being 'of the world' not 'of Jesus'.
That pastor seemed not to trust God very much! Anytime you hammer people with your own brand of faith and politics, that's what you're doing--showing your distrust of God and your own confidence in yourself.
Calvin had a word for that kind of behavior: Idolatry!
I always sigh a deep sigh whenever I get invited to give an invocation/blessing/whatever at a public event. Saying "no" seems churlish and lacking in hospitality. Saying "yes" means the next sentence I will hear is "Um, this is a, uh, an event for, um the whole community--so, well there'll be lots of religions there, so . . .mumble, cough. .."
No Jesus, I gotcha--and the less actual God language the better.
What's the point??
I too have sat through (more like cringed through) prayers that were really lectures, poitical speeches, etc. from the right, left and every which way. Prayer is not the place to proclaim or convince, much less unload you're personal agenda. It's about God not the pray-er or their audience (since its usually quite a performance). However, I disagree on faith specific prayers. I would not be offended if a rabbi or mullah or Bhuddist or Hindu clergy prayed a prayer that clearly reflected their faith tradition. I think we have a rather anemic view of tolerance. Real tolerance isn't making everyone relate to each other by means of the lowest common denominator but to feel free to be who they are and say what they believe. Can this be done coercively(sp?)? Sadly yes, but I think that it is a more healthy environment.
Excellent point. Maybe they should just say, Bon appetit! Or Good Luck! or Party On!
I recently read Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun, a murder mystery set at a Sci Fi convention. A banquet invocation is given, something like, "In the name of the Supreme Force of the Universe." Maybe something like that would cover the waterfront?
interesting. I liked what pastor Jeff said about prayers of blessing from other religious leaders.
This is one of the things that makes me so sad about what has happened with Baptists in the last couple of decades. Second BC is a Southern Baptist church of the most fundamental type (i.e., neither fun nor mental); their pastor was prez of the SBC some years back. Anyway, many of these churches have forgotten what it meant to be Baptists back in the formative centuries of the denomination--autonomy of the local church, soul competency, freedom of religion. This amnesia is painful to me since I have been a Baptist all my life as were my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents going back at least to 1845, the date of the start of the Southern Baptist Convention. It has been a denomination that I continue to choose with hope that one day the cleansing will come.
Well, I didn't mean to spew, but it touched a nerve.
Stuart--
I really appreciate your approach to prayer in the public square--particularly in regard to the way you handled praying "in the name of Jesus." I will remember that the next time I am called on to present an invocation in a secular setting.
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