Godless Prayer

Most of the religion-based inaugural attention is going to Barack Obama’s pick of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation this Tuesday, not much mind is being paid to the fact that gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson (seen here looking like a million bucks) will be delivering the opening prayer of official inauguration festivities on Sunday. (Seriously? Festivities? This is a presidential inauguration, people. Not a maypole-dancing coronation fair.) And according to an interview with NPR, Robinson won’t be invoking the name of Jesus. “My intention is…to make this a prayer for Christians and non-Christians alike,” he said. He’s taking a cue from his experience in twelve-step programs for alcoholism and making reference only to a “god of our many understandings”. Of course, any such motions toward all-inclusiveness fall short in one key area. Even if you’re talking about some amorphous god blob that means the same thing or nothing to all people of faith, you’re still leaving out people of no faith. This is why Alcoholics Anonymous, even with its adherence to a vague god-thing, it still considered a religious program by the courts. Evangelical nutjobs, of course, are outraged. But that’s really their natural state of being, so it’s nothing to worry about. More details here.