Will Warren say “Jesus”
A new issue has come up on the issue of the inauguration prayer that will be provided by Evangelical Rick Warren for Barack Obama. People are worried that Warren will say Jesus as part of the prayer.
This brings me back to my days when I lived in Kenner and would attend the Kenner City Council meetings. Councilman Marc Johnson would always say the invocation and he would always end it with “In Jesus name we pray” or he would “thank God for sending us Jesus to die on the cross”. I made a request that he consider making a prayer that was more applicable to every citizen of Kenner. Basically, I would have liked to have said “amen” at the end of the prayer but was unable to because it violated my beliefs. The request was taken out of context by Councilman Johnson (who thought I was telling him how to pray, I wasn’t, I was asking him to do me a favor, not telling him to do anything). The request has also been taken out of context by several nola.com posters in the “Kenner Town Hall”. They tried to use this as “proof” that I am “anti-Christian” (even though I had previously thanked the City Council for honoring Pope John Paul II). They have said that I tried to stop the prayers at the meeting, when all I did was try and suggest that the prayer should be inclusive to everyone in Kenner (since Kenner Government is supposed to be representative of every Kenner citizen). They suggest that I “chastised” Councilman Johnson when, again, all I did was make a request that I thought would help bring the citizens of Kenner together. *
Anyway, Pastor Warren’s response was:
I’m a Christian pastor so I will pray the only kind of prayer I know how to pray
Of course that is not an answer to the question. The article does bring up that evangelicals want their pastors to mention Jesus when they pray and when they don’t that it somehow hides their beliefs.
This is of course absurd. I am a New Orleans Hornets season ticket holder. Before every game they have an invocation that is typically led by Christian preachers. One of their games was even “faith and family” night. At every single game that I have attended, not one of those preachers mentioned the name Jesus. So it seems clear to me that very religious people speaking in front of an audience of diverse faiths are absolutely capable of giving inspirational messages that are applicable to all and not just to one group. Nobody is going to think that Pastor Warren is “hiding” his religion, it would be impossible for him to do so because everyone paying attention will know who he is and what he believes.
* The reason I bring up the Kenner story is because some people in that forum do read this blog and that discussion with Marc Johnson will be brought up when it isn’t even relevant to the conversation. Me bringing up Warren requires me to preemptively explain what happened in order to cut my “detractors” off at the pass.