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It is important to separate three questions:
First: should there be prayers to open U. S. Senate sessions?
Second: should Hindus and others of "other religions" be assigned the task of offering prayer there?
Third: is the extraordinary occasion of a Hindu prayer a good opportunity to debate the first question?
The physician has a vocation, a calling, to deal with the deepest issues and commitments of life. Call it "sacred." The believer has a vocation, a calling, to deal with the deepest issues and commitments of life. Call it "sacred" as well.
Most of the time the two vocations are symbiotic: They live off each other, nourish each other, and prosper together. Rarely is there or must there be conflict between the two. However, most physicians report that on occasion there is competition for priority and conflict between the two.
What then?
Rejoicing over the birth of a child or facing my own death, I'd choose one kind of text. If I am to work for justice or mercy, others would come to mind. But for my lifelong vocation, dealing as I do at the junctures of "faith" and "culture" or "society," I'd choose Paul's letter to the Colossians 1:16b-17. "For all things have been created through [Jesus Christ] and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together."
Those who know me well will know--I think and hope!--that I do not interpret this passage imperially to promote exclusivism, but rather to urge an expansive vision. A story will help me tell why it means so much:
The late Robert McAfee Brown and I were co-lecturing at the University of California at Berkeley in the late sixties or early seventies. We were interrupted when exactly twelve young men in black leather jackets stormed the stage and positioned themselves in a precise formation. They announced their identification with one of the groups then identified as "Jesus People."
On this question I suppose I should declare "I have an interest," because I am a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and, to pile it on, an ordained minister in it. Further, I am a friend and fan--dare one call one's self that?--of the Presiding bishop, Mark Hanson, and the local bishop, Paul Landahl, was my pastor for twenty-two years and remains a cherished friend. With only one exception (heading the committee that drafted a "concordat" between ELCA and the Episcopal Church), I've not been directly involved in ELCA affairs, and feel free to pick and choose my issues.
The gay ordinations theme has not been central in my thinking and work, but circumstances push it ever closer to the center. I often observe in editorials and lectures that every Christian church body in the world is torn apart over issues that one can grasp in two terms, "sex" and "authority."
Sex means the whole biological range, with controversies over in vitro fertilization, contraception, abortion, stem cell research, sexual interactions. Authority means who decides issues in the modern world where we all have so much freedom. The ELCA is far along in what appears to me to be a comprehensive and searching study of "sex-and-your-faith," and is due to report in 2009.
What Islam Really Says About Violence, Rights and Other Religions
Gomaa, Fadlallah, Mubarak, Khan, Siddiqi, Ellison, others | On Faith
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