So we have a new president now and it seemed like the whole world revolved around Washington D.C. this past Tuesday as now President Barack Obama was sworn into office. The huddled masses in D.C. braved the bone chilling cold weather to catch a glimpse of our new Commander and Chief, who has become a source of hope to so many people. The President gave an interesting and someone somber inauguration speech, but for me (and apparently many other people), the talk of the inauguration was the dichotomy of who gave the opening prayer of the festivities on Sunday and who gave the invocation on Tuesday. On Sunday, the Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay Episcopalian bishop, gave the invocation at the kickoff to the inauguration week festivities and on Tuesday Rick Warren, a Southern Baptist minister, who opposes same sex marriages, gave the invocation at the Inauguration ceremony. These two individuals are seemingly polar opposites in the Christian world, but both are involved in the ceremonies surrounding the same political figure.
You can view Bishop Robinson’s prayer here and Rick Warren’s prayer here. Before Warren’s prayer, Robinson commented that he was shocked at how “aggresively Christian” past inauguration prayers had been. After Warren’s prayer, journalists and bloggers remarked that the “inclusive” prayer was anything but “inclusive.” Now, I’m about to applaud Warren for the tone and verbage of his prayer, but I don’t want to people to misunderstand me. First, I’ve actually never been a huge fan of Rick Warren and I have been critical of a few of his public statements in the past. Second, I do not think that our country was ever or should ever be a Christian nation. That said, I was pleased with what Warren said in his invocation.
When President Obama asked Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration, he no doubt was reaching across the proverbially aisle. He also probably was aware of the uproar his selection would cause. However, I’m not sure what President Obama was expecting Warren’s prayer to be like. Everyone can claim all they want that Warren’s prayer was too Christian or not inclusive enough, but what are people expecting. I mean, if you ask a Christian pastor to pray at your event, to whom do you expect them to pray? Vishnu? Zeus?
To illustrate my point, I want to use the example of a question someone once asked me. I was teaching a class at my church titled “Comparative Religions,” in which we discussed the theologies of Judaism, Islam, Mormonism and Buddhism. During the week we studied Islam, someone asked me, “In your opinion, is a Muslim praying to the same God who Christians pray to?” I told him that in order to answer his question thoroughly, I needed to preface my answer. I answered him, “I believe that the Muslim who prays to Allah is not praying to the same God that Christians believe in, in the same capacity as the Jew who prays to God. This is because we as Christians believe that Jesus is God (the 2nd person of the trinity) and if you don’t believe Jesus is God then you do not believe in the same God as I do.” T0 me, this is of the utmost importance to every Christian.
In Matthew 11:27 Jesus states, “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”. Jesus can say this because he himself is one person of God. In addition, when asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus says, “The most important is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Matthew 12:29). Logically, if you need to know Jesus in order to know God and if there is only one God, then praying to anyone other than the God of Christianity is praying to nothing.
I applaud Rick Warren for being explicitly Christian. We cannot forget that, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The reason Bishop Robinson is worried about past inauguration prayers being so “aggresively Christian” is because he is apostate. He has a low regard for scripture and is living outside of anything that be considered reasonably Christian. Christians must be Christians regardless of political correctness. Solomon writing about pursuiting everything but God saying, “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14). I pray that Christians would not pray to the wind any longer, but to the Way, the Truth and Life.
