Martin Marty on Religion and the inauguration-
The Inauguration ceremony, the prayer service on Monday, and several other pre-and-post inaugural events went on without much religious controversy. Most of the conflict had occurred weeks before, over the choice of clerics who would pray. There was a flap over Pastor Rick Warren's closing his prayer with a heavy accent on Jesus, and Jesus Christ was invoked, quite naturally, by Christians in the National Cathedral, which is an Episcopal site, but one gets the impression that the Jesus-in or Jesus-out controversy is in its own way irresolvable and we are likely to live with it and move on to discuss what is in the prayers, not so much how to end them..
Happily, to people of my outlook, the days were not used to fire up the "culture wars." I did not hear or see all the events and may not have paid perfect attention, but in the parts I did see and hear, notably the swearing-in ceremony, we did not hear words like "abortion" or "same-sex marriage" or the couple of other incendiary terms for issues and, sometimes, non-issues. That meant that religious references came naturally or allusively when they came at all.
In some respects, most of the main ritual, as always, reflected the biblical ethos and language of the U.S. majorities. No one stomped out or seemed fired up when the President included references which, I presume, came naturally for him, as a literate citizen, and didn't have to be wedged in by speech writers. They reference provided nuances, not occasions for the president's "gaining points" among constituencies.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/martin_marty/2009/01/from_culture_wars_through_reli.html
1 comment:
Father Jim,
Does Mr. Marty's opinion on the various inaugural prayers reflect your views on the content Bishop Robinson and Rev. Joseph Lowrey included in their prayers?
Do you think it was "incendiary" or benign and appropriate for Rev. Lowery's benediction to poke at targeted racial groups when he prayed "yellow should be mellow" and "that whites embrace what's right"?
As an evangelical Christian minister you may also want to think about the effect of the misleading messages that were conveyed to the unsuspecting crowd as Gene Robinson prayed.
Bishop Robinson took the opportunity to showcase his non-Christian theology. He referred his petition to a manufactured deity that is a figment of the human imagination instead of the God who revealed himself to us in the scripture. Instead of taking a lead from Jesus who prayed "Our Father, who is in heaven" the celebrated Bishop Robinson cried out "O God of our many understandings"! It called to mind the warning in Romans 1:21 "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened."
He also made sure insert his political spin and sexual preferences into the petition by saying "Bless us with anger at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender people."
Don't you agree that if Rick Warren had cried to God for the freedom from sexual bondage of "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people" it would have caused a stir and been considered an inappropriate outrage by a hard right, religious fanatic.
It seems that to the anti-evangelical, theologically ambiguous and politically liberal the happy occasion of a peaceful transfer of power to their favorite candidate has made it convenient to blow off the theological error or outright bigotry that these two men of the cloth proclaimed.
Remember you're to have "spiritual ears" as you listen. Because deception is always being spread and the seeds of destruction are always being sown. Jesus advised "Those who have ears let them hear!"
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