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Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Lord's Prayer is not "nonsectarian"
Posted by Jill | 6:56 PM
...unless you believe that "nonsectarian" means "acceptable for all Christians" and that no one who isn't Christian counts.

I am old enough to remember having to say the Lord's Prayer in school. Yes, recitation of this prayer was required, right along with the pledge of allegiance and the singing of the national anthem. Every day. I never really thought much about it. In the early 1960's, when I was in early elementary school, you didn't. It was part of the natural order of things. I'm sure I wasn't all that much different from most kids in that I didn't think much about the words. I never knew what "trespasses" were, though for that matter, I never could figure out why the Republic was for "widget stands" either.

For many people my age, the Lord's Prayer has always seemed kind of innocuous. Perhaps that's why it's so often said at public events where a prayer is required. It's a way to say a prayer that isn't overtly Christian because it doesn't mention Jesus.

But the Lord's Prayer is most definitely a Christian Prayer:
The Lord's Prayer, also known as the Our Father or Pater noster, is probably the best-known prayer in Christianity. On Easter Sunday 2007 it was estimated that 2 billion Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians read, recited, or sang the short prayer in hundreds of languages in houses of worship of all shapes and sizes.[1] Although many theological differences and various modes and manners of worship divide Christians, according to Fuller Seminary professor Clayton Schmit "there is a sense of solidarity in knowing that Christians around the globe are praying together…, and these words always unite us."[1]

Two versions of it occur in the New Testament, one in the Gospel of Matthew 6:9–13 as part of the discourse on ostentation, a section of the Sermon on the Mount, and the other in the Gospel of Luke 11:2–4.

The prayer's absence from the Gospel of Mark (cf. the Prayer for forgiveness of 11:25–26), taken together with its presence in both Luke and Matthew, has caused scholars who accept the Q hypothesis (as opposed to Augustinian hypothesis) to conclude that it is a quotation from the Q document, especially because of the context in Luke's presentation of the prayer.

The context of the prayer in Matthew is as part of a discourse deploring people who pray simply for the purpose of being seen to pray. Matthew describes Jesus as instructing people to pray after the manner of this prayer. Taking into account the prayer's structure, flow of subject matter and emphases, one interpretation of the Lord's Prayer is as a guideline on how to pray rather than something to be learned and repeated by rote. There are other interpretations suggesting that the prayer was intended as a specific prayer to be used. The New Testament reports Jesus and the disciples praying on several occasions; but as it never describes them actually using this prayer, it is uncertain how important it was originally viewed as being.


And there's more here.

I don't know about younger people who went to school after organized prayer was taken out of the schools, but I'm sure I'm not the only person in my age group who never particularly thought of this prayer as Christian, indeed heavily associated with Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, although it very clearly is. And perhaps that's why Rick Warren was able to get away with reciting it in its entirety in his benediction at yesterday's inaugural. And perhaps that's why I was more pissed off by him bringing Jesus into the inauguration of a man who is President of all Americans, not just Christians:
I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life, Yeshua, Isa, Jesus, Jesus (hay-SOOS), who taught us to pray, Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.


One could say that Rick Warren was simply invoking the name of someone who is important to him, were it not for the documented fact of him invoking Hitler's brownshirts as a model to follow in spreading his particular brand of Christianity around. In case you haven't seen it, I'll post it again:



"What is the vision for the next 25 years? I'll tell you what it is. It is the global expansion of the kingdom of God. It is the total mobilization of this church.

[snip]

"In 1939, in a stadium much like this, in Munich, Germany, they packed it out with young men and women in brown shirts for a fanatical man standing behind a podium named Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil. And in that stadium, those in brown shirts formed a sign with their bodies that said, 'Hitler, we are yours.' And they nearly took the world.

[snip]

When I hear these kinds of stories, I think 'What would happen if American Christians, if world Christians, if just the Christians in this stadium, followers of Christ would say, 'Jesus, we are yours'?"


Now granted, this makes it sound like the podium was named Adolf Hitler and that Jesus was a dangerous fanatic, but if that isn't a call to arms to spread Christianity by any means necessary, even at the point of a gun or a sword, I don't know what is. And that is why there is no finessing what Rick Warren did yesterday in hijacking an American President for Jesus.

I know that Barack Obama is a Christian. He is entitled to his beliefs, and no one is trying to take them from him. I even understand why he thought reaching out to Rick Warren was a gesture of conciliation to the evangelical right. It's in his nature to do these things. But with all the ministers in this country doing good work, that this snake oil salesman was chosen, and that there are people trying to spin what he did as somehow inclusive, is preposterous. I find myself thinking of Rev. Marge Munger of the United Methodist Church of Lake Orion. I'm not going to go into details, but I will always be grateful to this minister whom I've never met for the help she gave a friend of mine nearly a decade ago during a personal crisis. And there are Christians in the best sense of the word like her all over this country.

But the inauguration is now in the past, and there's nothing to be gained by continuing to harp on it. But I think it's important to recognize that while Barack Obama was gracious enough to include ALL Americans in his speech yesterday, the man he chose to open his inauguration made very clear who's boss in HIS world. And Warren's other actions have made clear that he intends to be the boss in OURS.

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2 Comments:
Blogger Bob said...
I recall The Lord's Prayer in school as the time when you could tell who was Catholic, protestant, or something else. It is a totally Christian prayer, since it was taught by Jesus as part of the Sermon On the Mount. Warren's inclusion of it was hubris, & uncharitable. Evangelicals like Warren really cannot even accept the variety of Christian belief & expression. He's a bully.
1/22/09, 12:31 PM  
Anonymous Andrew said...
I disagree with you that Warren's Hitler Youth reference is an explicit call to arms (as in "by any means necessary") for evangelical Christians.

The issue at hand is who Jesus is. The statement, "Jesus, we are yours" - can this be construed as "Jesus, we will take up the sword for you"? If "Jesus" is an empty signifier, then I guess it can, but to consider "Jesus" a pure Rorschach of a word, meaning whatever the moment calls for, is an error. Jesus is a proper name; it still carries out its basic function of identifying a particular individual. That individual, though long dead (maybe), still retains a recognizable identity, and to think that Warren hasn't (by a gazillion sermons and writings and nonverbal communications) affirmed this identity in other contexts is uncharitable at least.

If Jesus were other than he was/is, this maneuver of making Rick Warren a neo-Nazi boogeyman might be less cheap. As it is-
4/3/09, 9:28 PM  
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