Some time ago I was teaching a Sunday School class and the topic of prayer at public events came up. Now I would have a serious problem offering prayer at a public event. Though I support the idea of separation of church and state, my major objection is not based on the constitutional principle. After all, courts have allowed prayers in congress.
My opposition is simply that I believe public prayer is prayer offered for a group. If it is just a ritual, or if it cannot reasonably be expected that the group joining in the prayer actually does join, then to me it is empty. I could sit out in my car and pray for a blessing on the activities of government, but I could not stand up in the group and offer a prayer as though God and the governmental meeting were on the same program.
In my private prayers for the government, I pray largely that God will give wisdom to political leaders. I do not make the assumption that those political leaders and the political system under which I live are somehow more on God’s program than any other.
I think that prayers at government events are not designed to invoke God’s favor, nor are they designed to seek God’s will. They are designed to give the impression that those who are doing the government’s business are, in fact, blessed, and are somehow blessed. It’s the whitewash on the sepulcher.
In any case, to get back to the story, my explanation of my own view didn’t get through. One gentleman raised his hand and said, “I think you just don’t have the courage of your convictions.”
“No,” I told him, “I don’t have the courage of your convictions.”
In the discussion that followed, it became clear that he simply could not conceive of a reason for not offering a public prayer, other than that I was afraid of offending people in the audience. He (and many in the room) were so certain that this was an appropriate activity that they simply couldn’t see any reason not to. To them, America is God’s country, a Christian nation, and there’s no problem with Christian prayers.
I was reminded of this when reading this post by Arthur Sido (HT: Dave Black Online via Christian-Archy.com). This is a topic that will shock many, many American Christians. Why not wear a “God Bless America” T-Shirt? It’s not something they’ve ever considered. The conviction that God is on our side runs very deep. Often it erupts in the claim that American policy carries out God’s will, either knowingly or unknowingly. That claim in turn can lead us to give up the church’s mission and ministry to the world.
If we truly believe that the Gospel is “God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes” then we ought to act that way. But over and over again our solutions for economic problems, crime, moral issues, and even family relations is to get the government to solve it for us. I don’t doubt that the government needs to have its eye on such things, but how much of our effort as Christians needs to be used in that way?
Would we not change more people and make more of a difference in our world by living and proclaiming (and I believe proclaiming without living is no proclamation at all) the good news accomplish more than all the political activism we can do as a church?
I don’t know this, but I think most of us simply don’t believe that the Gospel will transform people’s lives. I don’t think we really believe the Gospel will work. I suspect that, throughout Christian history, our resort to the sword of the state results from a lack of faith.
The separation I’m most concerned about is the separation where the church says, “We cannot compromise the gospel with the state’s structures of power. We need to stay away to maintain the integrity of the gospel.” The theological separation is more important than the constitutional.
Leave a Reply