{"id":221,"date":"2009-01-19T15:06:47","date_gmt":"2009-01-19T15:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/of-protestants-and-presidents.html"},"modified":"2009-01-19T15:06:47","modified_gmt":"2009-01-19T15:06:47","slug":"of-protestants-and-presidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/01\/of-protestants-and-presidents.html","title":{"rendered":"Of Protestants and Presidents…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow’s inauguration will be historic for many reasons, the most obvious being the installation of the nation’s first African-American president. What will not change, however, is the Protestant monopoly of the event.
\nThe new president is a Protestant (though in search of a new church), and while he has the nation’s first Catholic VP, the lone Catholic chief executive remains JFK–inaugurated nearly a half century ago. The Pew Forum has an excellent page of web resources<\/a>.
\n\"Presidential<\/span>The chart of the religious affiliation of all the presidents<\/a> says it all. Heck, the Unitarians have had four representatives in this presidential pantheon, and even the Quakers have had two. (Okay, one was Nixon. But still.) No non-Christians (Heaven forfend!) but three “unaffiliated”–Andrew Johnson, Jefferson and Lincoln–all of whom had beliefs of a sort, though atheist organizations also like to claim them as native sons.
\nWhy no Catholics, despite the Church’s standing as the nation’s largest single denomination? Good question, and maybe folks will have some answers. Suggestions: Catholics are so divided among themselves they have no “bloc” to get behind a candidate or party, the way evangelicals do, e.g. Or the leadership and laity are so divided that drafting a Catholic candidate is too risky. Or, perhaps, Catholicism, for all its vaunted assimilation, remains too distinctive, too “different” from the prevailing non-denominational ethos.
\nThat last factor struck me as I was reading my Beliefnet colleague Steve Waldman’s posts. Steve has written a book about the faith (or lack thereof) of the Founding Fathers<\/a>, and he has been researching the history of inaugural address and prayers (his archive of prayers is here<\/a>). Waldman also discovered the odd fact that the inaugural prayers before 1989 (FDR began the practice in 1937) were quite diverse affairs, with Protestant clergy delivering fewer than half the invocations and benedictions. By contrast, 12 prayers will have been delivered at inaugurations since 1989 and all of them will have been delivered by Protestants–including tomorrow’s, with Pastor Rick Warren and the Rev. Joseph Lowery giving the invocation and benediction, respectively. Everyone else–Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Greek Orthodox, and, yes, Catholics–will get a turn the next day at the National Prayer Service at the (Episcopal) National Cathedral.
\n\"Rick<\/span>As Steve notes in this piece<\/a> (which also ran in the Wall Street Journal), Christian clergy in earlier decades prayed in the name of Jesus Christ without disruption, because that was the culture, but also because the dais looked like one of those “walked-into-a-bar” jokes–a minister, a priest and a rabbi. The evangelical Protestant monopoly has arguably contributed to the efforts of some atheist groups (Michael Newdow et al, most notably) to try to stop such religious expressions. But as Steve notes, the monopoly really puts the onus on Warren and Lowery to be inclusive:<\/p>\n

“They are Christian ministers and need to stay true to their faith. But they are the only clergy on the podium and therefore must represent all Americans. If they can’t restore the proper balance that existed before 2001, then their prayers will–and should–increase the drumbeat to get rid of inaugural prayers entirely.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wouldn’t want to go that far, though it’s interesting to realize that the inaugural prayers, like so much about our godly “Christian” nation (“In God we trust” on the coins, “under God” in the Pledge) is such a recent “tradition.” Mark Silk unpacks it in an interesting blog post<\/a> explaining why FDR began the practice and his political savvy in choosing Msgr. John A. Ryan <\/a>(“The Right Reverend New Dealer”!) to give the benediction. Silk also says:<\/p>\n

“Arguably, FDR instituted it precisely to give Ryan the honor. And thereby to signal that Roman Catholicism was now to be an equal partner at national ceremonious occasions. And, perhaps above all, to make it clear that FDR himself was not anti-God and the New Deal not communistic.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am not arguing for special treatment in the least. And I don’t think this represents anti-Catholicism of any overt sort. Yet it does seem that there is a growing cultural hegemony of non-denominational (evangelical\/Southern Baptist\/regular Baptist) Christianity that plays particularly well. And the oddball religions that don’t fit into the tableau so neatly get stuck in the NPS party the day after, like the loser freshmen at the Omega house party in “Animal House.” Or something like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow’s inauguration will be historic for many reasons, the most obvious being the installation of the nation’s first African-American president. What will not change, however, is the Protestant monopoly of the event. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}