In his inaugural invocation Tuesday, evangelical Pastor Rick Warren delivered a message of unity that pleased some of his most vocal critics in the gay and lesbian community.
Yet even as the founder of Orange County’s Saddleback Church appeared to mollify those who have fought with him over gay marriage, he raised other eyebrows by invoking Jesus’ name and concluding with the Lord’s Prayer — both distinctly Christian practices on a day that has typically been characterized by more general expressions of “civil religion.”
“I don’t think he acquitted himself very well,” said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Columbia University who considers Warren a friend. “To lead the nation in saying the Lord’s Prayer, which is so particularly Christian, was a mistake.”
[blockquote]”To lead the nation in saying the Lord’s Prayer, which is so particularly Christian, was a mistake.”[/blockquote]
Why is it okay for a Rabbi to lead a Jewish Prayer and an Imam (sp?) to lead a Muslin prayer but not for a Pastor to lead a Christian prayer? That’s a rhetorical quesition, by the way.
Rick Warren prayed to God. What matters is what God thinks of his prayer, and not the reviews from the LA Times and others.
Rick Warren never forced anyone to say the Lord’s prayer. I was not at the inuguration, obviously, but I joined in the Lord’s prayer as I was driving and listening.
Rick Warren’s prayer made me day.
Fr. Kingsley+
Yet another lefty, looney liberal Episcapoid:
“To lead the nation in saying the Lord’s Prayer, which is so particularly Christian, was a mistake.”
Rick Warren had hundreds of thousands of people praying the Lord’s prayer in unison. What have you done, Mr. Balmer?
An interesting sentence about Rick Warren, found in [url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5536734.ece?print=yes&randnum=1232389015383]this essay[/url]:
“He realised that Rick Warren was an egomaniac and wanted some kind of platform, so he gave him a largely symbolic role at the inauguration and allowed Warren to preen.”
There isn’t a word in the Lord’s Prayer that an orthodox Jew couldn’t say in good conscience.
But it’s true Muslims couldn’t call their god ‘Father’.
Randall Balmer’s criticism is a slightly surprising comment from someone who describes himself as an evangelical. I haven’t read his work but I wonder if underlying it is a particular view of the place of religion in the public square.
So which is it???
“both distinctly Christian practices on a day that has typically been characterized by more general expressions of “civil religion.” (LA Times)
OR
Bishop Robinson said he had been reading inaugural prayers through history and was “horrified†at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were.†(NY Times)
RE: “…he raised other eyebrows by invoking Jesus’ name and concluding with the Lord’s Prayer — ”
Did anybody seriously think that a theologically conservative, evangelical Christian like Rick Warren would NOT offer a distinctly Christian prayer?
Rick Warren has obviously read the Bible:Â
“And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” Luke 12:8-9 (ESV)
It might be helpful if the LA Times found knowledgable, serious “religious” writer(s) instead of the serial neophyte cub reporters they have been assigning to this task. None of them have exhibited a genuine grasp of “religious” issues. Who, for example, cares what a “gay spokesmen” has to say about his antipathy concerning a Christian prayer. Does this “spokesman” then approve the placing of one’s hand on a Bible on one hand and then foreswear a prayer tothe God of that same Bible on the other. Brilliant choice of interviewees. I suggest viewing on PBS the invocations to God as exhibited at the inaugurations of Truman, Reagan, Ford, Goldwater et al – all of whom had very definite, positive and meaningful invocations to God Almighty in their text.
FWIW I have now read a tiny bit of Professor Balmer’s work and he describes himself as a “liberal evangelical”. I understand that means he is politically a proud liberal on all the hot button social issues of the day. I’m just not sure what the “evangelical” bit means – a particular liturgical or devotional style? One would need to read more of his works – some purposefully polemical – to know more. I wonder if “low church liberal” may be an accurate way of describing where he has ended up. Not that any of this matters.
Balmer is jealous of Warren’s reach. He says regularly how he considers Warren a “friend”, but …… ( always a proviso ). Balmer ran unsuccessfully for local public office – twice. His book on the “radical right” is filled with absolutely naive drivelly stereotypes which liberals have about “rightwingers” and “Republicans”. He blogs on sites like the Huffington Post. He does not “get” what evangelicals really are.
I respect the right of every American to hold the faith of his choice, but I pray that we will become once again an overwhelmingly Christian nation. Evangelization means spreading the faith to non-Christians living among us as well as to those in far-away places.
#7: The passage from Luke was the first thing that came to mind when I read Bishop Robinson’s comments. Very sad. How could a bishop–a successor to the Apostles–deliver a public prayer at such an important venue and purposely refuse to acknowledge his Lord? Can you imagine one of the Apostles doing the same???
Rick Warren’s prayer was a breath of fresh air in comparison–and not offensive. I like the way he used a personal slant to invoke the name of Jesus “who changed my life.” Authentic, personal conviction.
Maybe TEC should just declare itself the Church of Secular Humanism and be done with it — or merge with the Unitarian Universalists.
I support the ordination and ministry of Bishop Robinson. I felt Rev. Warren’s prayer was exceedingly better.
The benediction was best. That preacher knew his Scripture and wasn’t afraid to use it or to ask God for specifics. Where’s the fire on his cottails from these religiosity hacks? Or is it because he’s of colour that they won’t address his remarks in prayer. Or is it because of politics……..
What is so revealing about Gene Robinson’s words in interviews prior to his very secular prayer is that it showed, as Fleming Rutledge+ said in a separate thread above, that he really does not believe in the universality of Christianity. As I’ve mentioned before about Gene and our TEC hierchy (including our infamous PB), they have forgotten the first great commandment, but they think they are still following Christian precepts because they believe they are following the second great commandment, and that is enough for them. As Bp Carpenter of Alabama used to tell me at least 6 times a year, “Remember who you are and who you represent.” Gene apparently doesn’t know who he is (Christ’s own forever) or who he represents (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). He is only concerned with not offending someone by using Christ’s name – he is only concerned with the “inclusion” of everyone in his own personal human “love,” and he has forgotten to call everyone to be included in (and to make a decision to accept) Christ’s love, which is why he is a clergyman, much less a bishop in the first place. This is where TEC has gone off the rails – so many clergy and bishops, like Gene and our PB, are so concerned with political correctness and liberal political ideals that they have made an idol of those things and forgotten that they are here to serve and love the God of our salvation and call all peoples to Him. It’s very simple but very complex.
Thank you Billy (#15). Very well said!
Does everyone realize that Gene Robinson’s prayer was NOT televised? He began at 2:20 but TV coverage didn’t start until 2:30. The station carrying it apologized and tried to make up for it by playing it on the jumbotrons (??) on the mall on Tuesday hours BEFORE the innauguration — like anybody there was listening at that point. But it was never televised. Further, if you’ll look at the version on YouTube you’ll see that the vast majority of people standing in front of him are paying absolutely no attention until the very end when it starts to sound less like a political speech and more like a prayer. I hope he (and everybody else) didn’t agonize too long about this whole thing because it turned out to be a total nothing.
Of all the prayers offered, Rick Warrens was outstanding. He called on the name of Jesus and stated it in several variations and ended in the Lord’s Prayer. What could be more fitting for an ostensibly Judeo/Christian country. Lowerys prayer was an insult to the nation and should have been repudiated. We are past the things he mentioned at the end. He lives in the past.
Perhaps the reason that religious liberals have no objection to the President being sworn in while placing his hand on the Bible is that it stays closed better that way! OTOH, Rick Warren, as it were, opens the Bible just a bit in his prayer, thus the fits of the vapors from the Scripture-allergic crowd. 😉
But many presidents have taken the oath on an open Bible. Perhaps they thought this one was too fragile to have open in such frigid weather? I’ll be pointing out my disagreements with President Obama on many things, but this is not one of them.
Lowerey DOES live in the past. He is 86 years old and one of the last living close associates of Martin Luther King. That was the reason he was invited — his remarks were more suited to events of 30 years ago, but I think people thought it was fitting on this occasion to close with a voice from a (now) long-gone era. It won’t be very long before all those voices are stilled.
To #21 – Fine. Lowery’s was a mocking spirit – supposedly an attempt at humor – used to be referred to as “shuck” and “jive”.
Lowery was simply paraphrasing a phrase long part of the Black community’s descriptive response to discrimination. Hardly “shuck and jive”; more like “we will survive”.
I enjoyed Lowery’s prayer. It would have been better if the reference to “whites doing right” had not been in there.
I did google and found some interesting responses. My favorite was the following advice, in rap form:
🙂
I thought Lowery’s prayer was the best of them all. It had levity, reverence and mirth mingled with an elder’s still shining faith. I was deeply edified.
Yeah, what’s a little racial dig on the big day? If it had been Rick Warren who had said it, the press would have been all over him.
I thought that Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery both did an outstanding job.
Rick Warren was, for me, a very welcome voice and made me proud to be a follower of Jesus, as Warren said, “the one who changed my life.” I thought that was a very personal affirmation and touched a familiar place in my own experience.
Invocations and Benedictions in public office have become problematic and the positive thing about Obama’s inauguration is that they were plentiful. Like everything else in our public dialogue it tends to become polarized for political ends. It was just good to hear someone pray out loud in such a highly public, and important event. Lets hear more prayers from people of good will who affirm the reality of the divine in their own tradition. Rick Warren’s prayer was a high point for me.
[blockquote]”To lead the nation in saying the Lord’s Prayer, which is so particularly Christian, was a mistake.”[/blockquote]
I am reminded of an article that I read in an ecumenical journal some twenty or so years ago. The writer was describing a meeting in Germany in the mid-1980s between Christian and Jewish leaders. In the course of the meeting, which included prayers together, one of the Christian leaders, more from a sense of sadness than frustration, asked why Christians have to deny who they are when praying together with Jews; i.e., why their prayers have to suddenly lose anything that makes them distinctly Christian. In response, one of the Jewish leaders suggested that they recite the Our Father together. “After all,” she said, “it is a Jewish prayer.”
But despite years of tradition to the contrary, I don’t really think that Christian leaders should offer prayers as part of what is essentially a secular constitutional moment in the life of a secular government. Pray for the President and the Vice-President and the Congress and the Supreme Court, yes – but do so in our churches, and on the lawns of our churches, and in prayer services held in public places. Just not as part of the government-sponsored, official inauguration ceremonies.
You will understand that I am not suggesting that the public square should be naked with respect to religion, or that Christians should divide their lives between civil and religious aspects. It’s just that, as far as the Constitution and the mood and understanding of the populace are concerned, the prayers might as well be offered to the god of American civil religion, who serves pretty much the same function as the Capitoline Jupiter in the Roman Republic of old. And I’m not sure that a sincerely Christian prayer, like that offered by Mr Warren, is heard [i]by the mortal hearers[/i] in any way other than a prayer to the Capitoline Jupiter.
Never forget that the word “God” is not univocal. When a Christian hears it, he understands it to mean “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”, but that’s hardly true for everyone, even for people who are culturally “Christian”. Offering Christian prayers – or Jewish prayers long-associated with Christians, like the Our Father – as part of official government ceremonies probably doesn’t do much to challenge peoples’ assumptions about who the god is in “God bless America”.
I was at an annual Christian-Jewish interfiath prayer service followed by food and a discussion between the Rabbi and the Baptist minister (Cooperative Baptist Fellowship) with questions and answers from the atendees afterwards.
One of the Baptist folk asked the Rabbi if Jews would object to the Lord’s Prayer as it has no mention of Jesus. The Rabbi said that as a Jew he was not deeply familiar with the New Testament and had heard of the Our Father but did not know the prayer himself. He invited the Christians to pray it aloud for Jewish ears to hear.
After we did this the Rabbi said that while their was nothing offensive to Judaism in the prayer it would most likely never be prayed by a Jew because of centuries of oppression by the Church and by groups of Christians which has tainted the possibility of a Jew praying a “Christian”.
So where does the claim of the Lord’s Prayer being Jewish come from?
Probably because it originated with a Jewish Rabbi in the first century.
[blockquote]So where does the claim of the Lord’s Prayer being Jewish come from?[/blockquote]
Well, libraryjim’s answer is the likeliest. For more than that, you would have to ask the German (repeat [i]German[/i]) Jew who made that claim in the midst of a Jewish and Christian gathering.
archangelica, are you just trying to be argumentative, or actually to throw some light on the subject?
The oath of office does end in ” so help me God “. Apparently Abe Lincoln thought, coupled with the placement of his hand on a bible, “thus sealing or making the nature of the oath binding under the witness of God Himself”… “that making this oath meant his act was ‘registered in heaven’ ” …. probably had something to do with helping to get him through the Civil War (templestudy.com)
To tie the above comment to the Randall Balmer “mistake” comment: since 85% or more of those attending the ceremonies were statistically Christian; since those non-Christians present were uniformly blessed ( whether they knew it or not ) by the fact that historically Christian values have created a social environment wherein they could worship whomever they choose ( not true in most non-Christian nations ), then why are we all arching over to comply with the loudest minority – atheists and the fast-going-bankrupt-media/lefties ? Last week the Vatican disapproved of atheists placing ads on buses and billboards. Hip hip hooray. Look what has happened to the wimpy European countries trying so hard to be in-blooming-clusive. They are so secular that they have become prisoners in their own countries. This is America. It is a Christian country, with a Christian-based governmental structure, and with a 90% edge given to leftists ( including the Randall Balmers ) who are attempting to tweak these values out of our children within their highly overpriced ivy halls and who will refuse admittance to any faculty unless the applicant has their leftist view. This is inclusiveness become fascism. I once took the Conversion Class at the University of Judaism. I would submit that a VAST majority of Jews would have no clue as to whether the Lord’s Prayer was Jewish or not. Most are cultural Jews. One would suspect they should be more concerned with the Madoffs amongst them rather than the Christians amongst them.
Todd Granger:
I have a particular interest in Christian-Jewish relations. I have just started to meet regularly with an erudite and delightful retired O.T. prof. from Bexley Hall in order to learn more about the Jewish origins and influence of Christianity.
I am especially blessed by the Association of Hebrew Catholics:
http://hebrewcatholic.org/
I simply would like proof/reference/documentation regarding the claim that the Our Father is of Jewish origin and did not originate with Christ.
I’m trying to learn, not be argumentative. Geesh!
I could easily be wrong here, and I would sincerely like to be informed and corrected by an Old Testament/Hebrew scholar. The traditional Prayer Book says it thus: “And now as our Saviour Christ hath taught us, we are bold to say, Our Father, …” The idea I have is that the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish customs do not, in fact, refer to God as Father regularly, certainly not in the familiar “abba” tone. Jewish teaching is of course, like the Christian, that we are all created by God, but is “Father” a frequent appellation? I had thought this was a new was of looking at it, through Jesus. Please enlighten me.
Question 1: Was Y’Shua (Jesus) Jewish?
Question 2: Did Y’Shuah ever renounce his Judaism?
Question 3: Was Y’Shua accepted as a rabbi?
Question 4: Did Y’Shua teach his [i]talmudim[/i] (disciples) the prayer we call “the Lord’s Prayer”?
Question 5: Since Y’Shua 1) was Jewish 2) in good standing, 3) was a Rabbi, 4) had primarily Jewish followers, then doesn’t this make the Lord’s prayer a Jewish prayer, taught in the traditional Rabbi/Student manner?
[blockquote]I simply would like proof/reference/documentation regarding the claim that the Our Father is of Jewish origin and did not originate with Christ[/blockquote]
archangelica – and I mean this in all honesty, without snideness or superciliousness, but I am astounded at your distinction between “Jewish origin” and origin “with Christ”.
As to the “claim that the Our Father is of Jewish origin”, as I pointed out, a Jewish religious leader – not, mark you, a Christian theologian or cleric – made that statement in an interreligious gathering of Jews and Christians. I suspect that she was recognizing the fact that Jesus was a Jew and that he taught the prayer as a Jew to other Jews. The widely varied work that has been done by both Christian and Jewish scholars over the past thirty years or so (including such worthies as Dr N.T. Wright and Professor Jacob Neusner) demonstrates how essentially Jewish Jesus’ ministry and proclamation were. Not that I would insist that, because of its Second Temple Jewish provenance in the messianic movement centered around Jesus, the prayer should be included in the prayerbooks of Jewish synagogues. But that essentially Jewish provenance can be recognized.
As to the question of the use of “Father” to address or to refer to God (Katherine, #37), here is what Prof Otfried Hofius wrote in the [i]New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology[/i]:
[blockquote]As in the OT, so in Palestinian Judaism of the pre-Christian period the description of God as Father is rare. In the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha, as far as writings of Palestinian origin are concerned, it is found only very occasionally (Tob. 13:4; Sir. 51:10; Jub. 1:24 f., 28; 19:29), which the Qumran texts provide but a single example. In Rab. Judaism of the 1st cent. A.D. the use of the name of Father became more widespread, but it was still far less frequent that other descriptions of God…The new element as compared with OT usage is that in Palestinian Judaism the individual worshipper too speaks of God as his “Father in heaven”…The texts emphasize, however, that the indispensable condition for this personal relationship of child to father is obedience to God’s commandments (cf. Sir. 4:10).
As an invocation of God, we find in the 1st cent. A.D. the expression “our Father, our King”. But this is only in liturgical prayers of the whole congregation, not in the normal spoken Aramaic, but in the Heb. language of worship…On the other hand, we have yet to find an example of an individual addressing God as “my Father”…
The Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora were more frequent and less reserved than the Jews of Palestine in their use of the term father as a description of God (3 Macc. 5:7; Wis. 2:16ff; Tob. 13:4)…
In the Diaspora the invocatory use of “Father” occurs, under Gk. influence, even in the prayers of individuals (3 Macc. 6:3; Wis 14:3; Apocryphon of Ezek. Frag 3 = 1 Clem. 8:3).[/blockquote]
Todd Granger:
I “get” your astonishment. Of course Christ was a Jew but the Judaism of today (and most of history) views Him, at best, as a Jewish heretic and most claim him a false Messiah.
You had a very different experience in an interfaith context regarding the “Our Father”. It is what it is. But this highly educated rabbi, at this particular Reform temple in Dallas. Tx had no familarity with the Lord’s Prayer and said that most Jews are not normally familiar with Christian prayers, no matter how well known and widespread they are amongst Christians.
Library Jim,
I would answer yes to all five of your questions as would the various stripes of Hebrew Christians.
However, I challenge you to propose those self same questions to a Jew in the Orthodox, Hasidic, Conservative or Reform movements. I dare say none, would affirm any but the first.
Try it!
Thanks very much, Todd Granger.