Obama, Religion, and the Separation of Church and State

Much as been written about religious inclusion in events leading up to, and including, the inauguration of our 44th president. Obama's selection of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation sparked a firestorm of protest from liberals. How could the new president choose such a divisive figure to usher in what everyone had hoped would be a new era.

In "Warren Gets No Pass From Me" the Reverend Barry W. Lynn writes:

... once you pass the threshold of having two Protestant ministers, it is not unexpected that one or both (in this case, only one since the Rev. Joseph Lowery did not) is going to pray in the name of Jesus. As you know, I think the prayers should have been restricted to the worship service the then-President elect attended earlier in the day. Adding the Lord's Prayer to the end of Warren's own was really over the top, since this is such a well-known Christian intercession.

Warren doesn't believe non-believers should be elected to public office, at least not to the Presidency. So he still thinks their moral compass is inferior to his own just on the face of it. Also, I don't like people prattling on about "our commitment to freedom and justice for all" when they just participated in a campaign of injustice, in Warren's case his support for passage of California's notoriously discriminatory Proposition 8.

In an attempt to pacify the protests, Bishop Gene Robinson was invited to give the invocation at a pre-inaugural concert. Even that, however, was not without controversy as the television viewing audience on HBO was initially blocked from hearing Robinson's message.

Proving once again that it's important to speak out, the uproar sparked by this omission prompted HBO to eventually include Robinson's invocation in rebroadcasts of the event.

The Washington Post thinks the inauguration ushers in a new era of inclusion.

When President Obama rose to speak between the prayers offered by evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren and civil rights veteran the Rev. Joseph Lowery, he indicated -- without ever saying a word -- the breadth of the religious outreach ahead in his administration.

Though Warren's prayer contained touches of inclusivity, it was nonetheless explicitly and solidly Christian, ending with the Lord's Prayer. Meanwhile, when Lowery, a United Methodist, closed the swearing-in ceremony, he remarked on the rainbow of races and religions Obama will represent as president.

"Keep in mind, Rick Warren prayed while George Bush was still president," noted the Rev. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, professor of African American studies at Colby College in Maine. "It's an interesting ushering out of one era and ushering in of a new era." [...]

Obama's inclusion of gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson by having him pray at the inaugural kick-off concert Sunday only expands the expectations for the new president's religious outreach.

"With just the triad of Gene Robinson and Lowery and Rick Warren, that's a very powerful signal to American Protestants -- still more than half of the population -- that Obama doesn't want religious division to get in the way of 'being' America," said Diana Butler Bass, an expert on American religion and author of "Christianity for the Rest of Us." [...]

Lowery's prayer was so broad that even a secularist could embrace it -- and did.

"He didn't say this prayer was for Jesus or Allah or any other god, he said let all who embrace justice say amen," said Lori Lipman Brown, director of the Secular Coalition for America. "I hardly ever say amen, but how could you not say amen to embracing justice?"

And possibly for the first time, non-believers were included in the inaugural speech as well. We are all Americans, believers and non-believers.

Maybe the best way to insure that all are included is to simply take religion out of government-sponsored events. Our founders certainly recognized the danger of mixing church and state, which is why the first words of the First Amendment read: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."