{"id":637,"date":"2009-01-12T15:46:02","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T15:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/the-inaugural-prayers-thicket.html"},"modified":"2009-01-12T15:46:02","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T15:46:02","slug":"the-inaugural-prayers-thicket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/the-inaugural-prayers-thicket.html","title":{"rendered":"Gene Robinson, Rick Warren and The Inaugural Prayer Thicket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/imgs\/generobinson-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"generobinson-1.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/128\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/01\/generobinson-1-thumb-269x410-2805.jpg\" width=\"269\" height=\"410\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/a><\/span>The inaugural commitee has now announced that the inaugural festivities will also feature prayers from Rev. Gene Robinson, the episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, who is openly gay &#8212; and whose selection prompted a worldwide global schism within the Anglican church. In addition,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/01\/11\/us\/politics\/11minister.html?_r=1&amp;ref=us\"> Rev. Sharon Watkins, the first woman to head a major denominational body, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ),<\/a> will preach at the National Prayer Service the day after the inaugural.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/playbook\/0109\/playbook553.html\">The Obama folks told Politico<\/a> that this was in the works before the controversy erupted over one of Obama&#8217;s other designated pray-ers, Rick Warren.<br \/>\nIn any event, it sure seems that they&#8217;ve countered the selection of someone who infuriates the left with someone who infuriates the right. Balance, yes.  Harmony, not so much.<br \/>\nSomething else likely to get lost amidst the yelling: these three, plus the other inaugural speaker, Rev. Joseph Lowery, are all Protestants.<br \/>\nThe last nine people to pray at inaugurations have been Protestant. But before the 1990s, Presidents typically made a point of including a Catholic and, often, a Jew. <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/inaugural-invocations-and-pray.html\">(Click here for my new archive of all the inaugural prayers)<\/a><br \/>\nRonald Reagan&#8217;s 1985 inaugural included his personal pastor Rev. Donn Moomaw, but also Rev. Timothy S. Healy, a Catholic and Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk, president, Hebrew Union College .<br \/>\nRichard Nixon in 1973 had a Baptist (Rev. E.V. Hill, a Jew (Rabbi Seymour Siegel), a Greek Orthodox (His Eminence Lakovos) and a Catholic (Archbishop Terence J. Cooke &#8211; Catholic).<br \/>\nEven back in 1949, when it was a much more Protestant nation than now, they mixed it up. Harry Truman&#8217;s inaugural included a protestant (Rev. Edward Hughes Pruden), a Jew (Rabbi Samuel Thurman of St. Louis) and a Catholic (Father Patick A. O&#8217;Boyle).<br \/>\nIn fact, from 1937-1977, every single inauguration featured at least one non-Protestant.<br \/>\nNow that Protestants make up only 50% of the population they get 100% of the inaugural speakers. Politically, this is particularly odd given the importance of the Catholic vote to Obama.<br \/>\nI suspect the Obama folks got so tangled up in the culture war politcs &#8212; balancing on gay rights, gender and race issues &#8212; that they forgot, or downplayed, old fashioned religious base-covering.<br \/>\nReligious politics grows ever more complicated with each year, doesn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The inaugural commitee has now announced that the inaugural festivities will also feature prayers from Rev. Gene Robinson, the episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, who is openly gay &#8212; and whose selection prompted a worldwide global schism within the Anglican church. In addition, Rev. Sharon Watkins, the first woman to head a major denominational body,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Gene Robinson, Rick Warren and The Inaugural Prayer Thicket - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/the-inaugural-prayers-thicket.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gene Robinson, Rick Warren and The Inaugural Prayer Thicket - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The inaugural commitee has now announced that the inaugural festivities will also feature prayers from Rev. Gene Robinson, the episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, who is openly gay &#8212; and whose selection prompted a worldwide global schism within the Anglican church. In addition, Rev. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}