Those two inaugural pray-ers
Andrew Carey Church of England Newspaper January 16
Barack Obama is proving himself to be an able politician in his honeymoon period, at least on the religious front. Having invited the world-famous, mega- church pastor, Rick Warren, to deliver the Inaugural Invocation he has now also invited an equally controversial figure, that of the Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, to open another inaugural event with prayer.
The religious left’s complaint against Warren was that he strongly opposed gay marriages. The religious right’s complaint against Bishop Robinson is that he is engaged in a gay ‘marriage’. Bishop Robinson himself was one of the bitterest critics of Warren’s selection. He told the New York Times, “It was like a slap in the face,” adding that “the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.”
In contrast there has been silence from Rick Warren over the selection of Bishop Robinson. Perhaps this is because he knows that the Bishop is taking part in a secondary event — a concert — rather than the inauguration itself. Perhaps also Warren is a much more reconciling figure, by both temperament and action, than Robinson himself is.
After all, Rick Warren is not your typical religious right pastor. He is prepared to work across the political spectrum. Furthermore, he identifies the battle against AIDS and a concern over the environment as much greater issues than other figures on the right. He is no one-trick pony, in other words.
Perhaps most controversially, as far as Anglicans are concerned, Warren has offered refugees from The Episcopal Church a home at his Saddleback campus to continue to worship as Episcopalians, as opposed to being absorbed. In contrast, Robinson’s words about Warren, and his subsequent utterances about his own involvement in the inauguration, are much more polemical and divisive.
While Barack Obama’s intent is to bridge the religious divides and unite America at a difficult time in its history, Robinson is stoking the controversy with his public utterances. Firstly, his endorsement of Barack Obama. This was early on in the election campaign at the New Hampshire primaries. Both men have one thing in common, they are both ‘firsts’. Obama is the first black President, and Robinson the first gay bishop. This is America, of course, so one cannot be surprised at party-political endorsement by religious leaders, but if a conservative endorsed McCain there would have been howls of protest from the left about the abuse of office.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, Bishop Robinson continues to this day to divide religious opinion on the subject of inaugural prayers themselves. He told the New York Times that he had been reading inaugural prayers through history and was “horrified” at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were.” He continued: “I am very clear that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture or anything like that. The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.” This leaves no doubt that his criticism is of those religious leaders who in praying the inaugural invocation have named Jesus Christ. Controversy especially er upted at George W Bush’s two inaugurations when Christ was specifically invoked. However the history of the invocations, since 1937, is that Jesus is always mentioned, especially by Billy Graham as the ‘Prince of Peace’, but earlier by Episcopal and Catholic Bishops praying in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
His statement also begs the question that if he is not uttering something he thinks is a Christian prayer, why is he doing it at all? It’s way beyond his remit to somehow think that as a Christian Bishop he represents people of all faiths. It is syncretistic in the extreme to think that his prayers are to a non-specific deity somehow representing all faiths. What about atheists and humanists who recognize no ‘God’ and don’t believe in ‘prayer?
Sadly, more than ever, The Episcopal Church looks like an extreme and unfaithful fringe church, which far from representing the diversity of Anglicanism, has narrowed itself into a politically-correct representation of Manhattan’s or Washington’s chattering classes.
A thinly diguised attack
The most aggressive inaugural prayer I have ever seen came from the pen of Bishop Gene Robinson in a US magazine which had asked him to pen his invocations. In his prayer for Obama he opined: “Give him a quiet hear t, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain for these times, not a fierce war rior who knee-jerk reacts to every real or perceived threat.” If that’s not a very thinly disguised attack on Obama’s predecessor I don’t know what is.
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