Praying at political conventions
Monday August 25, 2008
The young Evangelical minister Cameron Strang, editor and publisher of Relevant magazine, a Christian who describes himself as a pro-life Republican, has been talking for some time to the Obama campaign on issues important to him. He accepted an invitation...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Better late than never, I guess. This conversation would have seemed a bit less opportunistic and partisan had it taken place some 20 years ago when the GOP was in the throes of being dominated by religious conservatives.
Not to take away from your points, Rod, for they are good ones and worthy of discussion. And, quite frankly, I share your concerns. I just wish voices like yours had been heard among conservatives back in the 1986 GOP convention when Pat Buchanan was coining the phrase "culture wars." Much damage has come to the cause of Christ from the co-opting of his Gospel by the GOP. It would have been helpful to have had voices like yours raising this concern back then. Unfortunately there were no such voices to be heard.
However, in spite of that, I am glad to see this discussion taking place. I have long believed that the Church loses whenever it allies with government or political parties. Invariably the Church comes away as the one having to change its message to accommodate the other. It would be far better, in my opinion, for the Church and her leadership to maintain a healthy distance from both government and politics.
If I may comment on your convert friend's concerns -- if his father's hatred of Democrats is so deeply-rooted and all-consuming that merely seeing an Orthodox clergyman pray at their convention (four years after doing the same at the Republican convention) would re-shape his views on Orthodoxy, I have a feeling neither the Democratic Party nor the Orthodox Church have any hope of ever counting this man among them.
When a Religious leader turns down the opportunity to pray before a group of people because he is afraid it might appear that he is "siding wit them", he demonstrates the lack of conviction in his own Faith.
He should look at it as an opportunity to witness his Faith to those who ask for it. What if Peter had turned down Cornelius's request to preach the Good News of Jesus?
I react badly to all staged prayers, private as opposed to liturgical, but done in public. Are they really talking to God at all or just giving a speech promoting an agenda? Even at Mass I sometimes think that those printed petitions we read and some offered by congregants are not talking to God but speeches to an audience on behalf of someone's agenda.
Yes, He definitely did the right thing. I think that if Obama wins this election many conservative evangelical/Protestant/Catholic/ and Orthodox Christians will feel defeated and will want to crawl into a hole somewhere. However if Obama wins, this can be a perfect opportunity for believers to re-evaluate, deconstruct and then reconstruct what the true biblical relationship to the culture should be. Hopefully without attaching it to a partisan political agenda, or person they can get in the White House like they have done in the past. Many might ask "Oh yeah so if that's true, Why didn't this happen during the Clinton administration? What makes you think it would happen now?" I think it's different now, because Obama and the current generation of our culture is significantly more progressive and liberal than Clinton and the rest of America was at the time.
I think that Cameron Strang saw this as an opportunity as an evangelical to attempt to re-establish the role of religion in our culture by distancing himself from partisan politics. Not political participation, but political partisanship. This can be an opportunity for more of a true change in the culture by using a bottom up approach, instead of a top down approach. Cultural conservatives have tried the top down approach for years and years. Sure it might have worked on the surface for a little while, but it has done very little to broadly effect the culture as a whole. Strang did the right thing by declining the invitation by the Democratic Party. I also think it would be the right move for Strang to decline the invitation from the Republicans as well.
Because I think the particularities of any religion or Christian tradition are irreducible, I have a hard time with generic prayers of any sort given in front of and on behalf religiously mixed, generic bodies. It forces the pray-er to be vague, and address a vague "God" (unless you're like Franklin Graham, who went all particularist in his prayer at GWB's inauguration). It's an exercise in American civil religion, which is neither a version of Christianity nor Judaism nor anything else but something vague centered on faith without an object that serves the classic liberal ideal.
I've never had s good explanation why the following verse is not a flat out admonition for Christians against praying in public:
"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." [Matthew 6:5-6]
I react badly to all staged prayers, private as opposed to liturgical, but done in public. Are they really talking to God at all or just giving a speech promoting an agenda?
...and didn't Jesus already condemn public praying?
Seriously, at a certain point, it's 'look how religious we are' instead of actually a prayer, which is exactly what Jesus was talking about.
Externally, praying before things has always struck me as a bit silly. Before food, before football games, before national political conventions, whatever.
You should thank God for your blessings, but he isn't some petty person who's going to be upset you didn't say 'thank you' right as you accepted them. And too many prayers before events seems to be 'And I pray this event comes out the way I want it too.'.
All too often, public prayer has turned into some sort of trite recitation of things. And, even worse, all too often it's turned into a fake recitation of things, purely to show how religious some group is.
Ideally, organized religion should play a minimal role, if that, at a political convention. Never happen, of course.
Worried that the Archbishop praying at the DNCC would give the Orthodox Church a blackeye? Surely the DNC can't be much worse than the KGB. The church in some quarters has still not lived down those years of cooperation in the USSR.
Sarcasm aside, the Church has never benefited from partnering with politicians. Every denomination has suffered the same fate. The Catholics the most classic in the Holy Roman Empire - the Anglicans under Henry and everyone since - the Lutherans in Germany - the Baptists, Reformed, and Evangelicals in the U.S. We always get used - and left when we're inconvenient. Strang is naieve to think that he might use this connection to help forge a compromise down the road. It's like the girl who thinks, "Maybe if I let him have his way with me he will ask me to marry him."
Clue: The Democrat candidate dumped his pastor of 20 years when it became politically necessary. He's not even going to remember the name of the guy who gave the benediction at the convention.
Cameron isn't a minister, as far as I know.
But he is a journalist, and for that reason alone, he shouldn't get involved with the convention.
Cameron is not a minister, as far as I know.
But he is a journalist, and for that reason alone, he shouldn't be participating in the convention.
"But that being the case, it's very odd to me that the Democrats offered him a praying gig there."
Because he's interesting and his faith vision goes beyond the miopic take of most Evangelicals?
If the "real" convention starts to get boring, watch the movie Conventioneers (2005). Very well done Indie film, and, yes, the "actor" who is doing the sign-language interpretation for Bush is the actual guy who did it - the director got him an intriguing role in the film.
If you have Netflix with unlimited Instant Viewing (i.e., you pay $8.99 or more per month) of the 12,000 movies they have for instant viewing, you can see it that way - either on your PC or, if you bought the $99 Roku box, on your TV.
Rod, His Eminence Abp Demetrios prays every year at both conventions. http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2008/08/24/2008-08-24_one_religious_leader_for_both_democratic.html
What god would he have prayed to at the Democratic convention? They have to be inclusive, ya know...can't offend anyone.
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