Jesus Christ and Rick Warren's inaugural prayer

The speculation surrounding President-elect Obama's controversial selection of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the opening prayer at his inauguration ended yesterday.

It's worth mentioning that I personally supported President Obama's decision. It helped offset the mainstream evangelical movement's general suspicion of his candidacy and signaled of his intent to bring all Americans to the table in his new administration, even those who probably didn't vote for him. In my book, these are both positive developments, and reason enough to invite him to pray.

Nevertheless, as Warren opened the prayer I found myself speculating about whether or not he would choose to explicitly invoke Jesus Christ, and if so, how.

After all, the inaugural prayer is inherently ecumenical, designed to call on God's blessing for the new President, the nation and all Americans, regardless of their religious background. To invoke Jesus Christ is to tribalize an otherwise inter-faith prayer, making it distinctively Christian. To neglect speaking Christ's name is to offend your own constituency -- namely, evangelical America -- and probably your own conscience.

Eventually, Warren did invoke Jesus Christ, but not in the way I expected.

"I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life, Yeshua, Isa, Jesus, Jesus (hay-SOOS)..."

In so doing, Warren walked an impossibly fine line with substance and grace, staying true to his own vision of Jesus Christ, while humbly acknowledging Jesus of Nazareth's wide interfaith and global appeal: Jewish (Yeshua), Muslim (Isa), Christian (Jesus), and hay-SOOS (the Latino, global south).

Other highlights included the following:

"Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans, united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all."

"When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us. When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the Earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us."

View Warren's prayer below.

Comment by dlw on January 21, 2009 at 11:09pm: I'd surmise that Warren had to submit his speech to Obama's people but no follower of Christ worth their salt would get upset with the cross-cultural appeal of Yeshua of Nazareth.

There's a great book, "Neither Wolf Nor Dog" that describes how the Lakota Sioux were drunk on Jesus, to say nothing of how WEB Dubois rewrote Jesus's story in the context of the persecuted African-American people with much power.

dlw

Comment by Fred Holland on January 22, 2009 at 5:58pm: I'm not sure that a public prayer by Warren(or anyone else for that matter) is of any importance. It's the ones he prays in secret that reveal the true heart. I, like many, listened to see if he would use the name "Jesus" as there was speculation that he was not going to be allowed to use that name so not to offend non Christian people. But to be honest, I wasn't praying with him. Not because of any personal convictions about public prayers, but rather because I listened to the news media hype about it.

Now isn't that silly? I found myself waiting to critique the guys prayer even though he had done me no harm. I don't even know the guy. Never really heard of him before. So I missed an opportunity to share a spiritual experience with many because I was waiting for him to use the wrong words. As I recall, Paul one time warrned Timothy(or Titus) to avoid people who make arguments over words. I think he was reffering to those who are in the habit of picking on others words.

So here is my remorse. To appologize to Rick Warren(if he reads this post). And my repentance is to give full ear to another human's spiritual ramblings and prayers without picking on the words they use or judging their motives. To hear others the way my Father does, with the ears of love.

Fred

Comment by dlw on January 23, 2009 at 7:37pm: amen.

I'd say public prayers, like civil religion, are "okay", inasmuch as they help to sow points of contact for capturing people's hearts and minds to join us in seeking to follow Jesus better with all aspects of our lives. Having said that, the de facto civil religion of the US has been heading south for quite some time(more so due to it's hyper-individualism/materialism than it's tolerance/political-correctness. )...

dlw

Jesus Christ and Rick Warren's inaugural prayer

You need to be a member of Recovering Evangelical to add comments!

WHAT IS RECOVERING EVANGELICAL?