Could anything more dramatically illustrate the wisdom of the First Amendment to our nation’s Constitution in clarifying the relation of religion and politics in our public life than the recent dustup over who was to do the praying at President Obama’s Inauguration on Monday?
Initially (and I use the terms “church” and “minster” skeptically), Atlanta megachurch minister, a fundamentalist preacher named Louie Giglio, was invited to offer one of the prayers. Until a video surfaced showing him denouncing “the homosexual lifestyle.”
At which Mr. Giglio was summarily dis-invited, to be replaced by an Episcopal priest, the Reverend Luis Leon, who serves a neighborhood congregation near the White House. As it is commonly called, “the church of the presidents.”
In other words, it’s OK to pray at a public political gathering as long as your theology and ethics pass muster with the prevailing politics.
Not that I agree with Mr. Gigio’s politics or ethics. That the Bible, in general, or Jesus, in particular, have anything to say on the subject of sexual orientation as such a complex aspect of anyone’s human-ness is understood today.
Hence the genius of the First Amendment, meant to protect both religion from politics and politics from religion. Since, given the insight of the framers of our country’s Constitution, anytime the two get confused–religion and politics–worse problems are apt to happen than when they are separated as far from one another as possible.
Which, of course, isn’t always, nor usually the easiest of things to do.
As on the occasion of our President’s Inauguration a few days ago, when I–and likely countless others–were praying for him and his family, for our nation, and for all among us who hold government authority and responsibility. Indeed, my kind of Christian faith admonishes me to do so (Romans 13: 1-7), just as the First Amendment protects my freedom, as an American citizen, to engage in such practice of my religion.
Not unlike Louie Giglio, who is just as free to practice and promote his kind of religion, as much as I may disagree with him or it. Not to mention, those among us who choose to embrace and practice any other kind of religion. Or for that matter, no religion at all.
Since, if the First Amendment protects yours or mine or anyone’s freedom of religion, it also protects the freedom of whomever from religion.
As for “public praying” in a “public institution” (e.g. government or education, at least here in America) versus praying in a “private institution” (e.g. a religious or private school), in the Sermon on the Mount (specifically, Matthew 6), Jesus suggests otherwise: that the “public praying” be “private.” Such that I suspect, whatever the public display, there was no shortage of such “private praying” on the occasion of Monday’s presidential inauguration.
Except that, in the Bible at least, praying is understood as having a depth, a gravity to it–indeed, a moral dimension–expressed so profoundly by the ancient Hebrew prophet, Amos. Speaking for God, he declares:
“I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies . . . Take away from me the noise of your songs [your ostentatious praying?]; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5: 21-24).
According to the Bible, then, the most profound praying–public or otherwise–will be found, always, not as much in what any of us may say, as in what the scriptures consider the “prayer” of honorable, just, fair and faithful living.
[Interested readers would likely appreciate a recent article, “When Was the Last Time a Rabbi Prayed at a Presidential Inauguration?” in Religion and Politics, a free online periodical published by the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. You can Google it.]
