Greece v. Galloway: The Place of Public Prayer

As a pastor, I will happily pray when asked.  Want to start something with prayer?  I'm there  Unless it's a family dinner, when I'd really rather someone else do it. Because Daddy gets enough practice.

In worship, prayer is a core part of what I do.  It's a fundamental and irreducible part of the pastoral skill set, and a basic component of any faithful life.  It's as central to what we Jesus folk do in our lives together as meditation is to a Buddhist.

It's how I start my day, too, at least the days where I feel more centered and grace-filled.

I start pretty much every church meeting with prayer, because when you're deciding about your future, it's a good thing to remind yourself exactly why you're there in the first place.  But in those meetings, I'm aware that the purpose of the meeting, generally speaking, is not to listen to me praying. That doesn't make the prayer less necessary.  It becomes a marking: what we're doing is part of a sacred commitment.  And as Jesus so pointedly put it, we don't need to ramble on endlessly.  Keep it focused.  It's the vocal equivalent of ringing a bell, a bright tone that hangs in the air, marking a transition.

When I'm praying publicly and outside of the bounds of a service or church meeting, though, there are other things to think about.  I am usually aware of who is around me.  I'm aware of what will work, and what will be meaningful.

And that means, when I pray in mixed company, meaning a room that might include infidels, unbelievers, and other family and friends, I'm aware of how my prayer might sound in their ears.  Typically, in such circumstances, I'll pray the sort of prayer that, were Thomas Jefferson and George Washington sitting around the dinner table, they'd be able to say Amen.  On a good day, I might even be able to get a nod or a grunt out of Richard Dawkins.  OK, it would have to be a very good day.  But it's within the realm of possibility.

Meaning, I reach into my Enlightenment Deist toolbox, which is a subset of what I believe, and pray from that.

There are plenty of Christians who have a problem with that, or who struggle to figure out how that gets done authentically.

It's part of what's at play in one of the cases currently before the Supreme Court, as a township in which  prayers regularly begin public meetings has struggled with a legal challenge to that practice. I tend to think that in mixed company…as our nation is…it's better to go with a time for silent contemplation.  Seek the truth you know, and the common good, and meditate on it.

The township seems to have done everything reasonable to accommodate all belief systems, opening itself to Muslims and Buddhists and Wiccans.  If a humanist wanted to lead off with a secular reflection, they'd be welcome to do so.  I find it hard to see that as exclusionary or establishmentarian, by any rational definition of those terms.

But I find myself reflecting less on the legal merits, and more on how this impacts how Christians publicly speak.  if you find yourself in a place of public prayer, as I have on occasion, you can do it right, and you can do it wrong.  Here, I'm not thinking about the law, or about the Constitution.  Love this country as I do, it does not have my primary allegiance.  I'm thinking about the Gospel.  There are ways we can screw up the Great Commandment, and make the Gospel look brittle and unwelcoming, and we can do it publicly.

I know this more deeply than most pastors, because through a peculiar twist of the Lord's providence, my family is Jewish. My wife is. My kids are. I've been in places where prayers that closed them out have been offered, and I know…because they are my flesh and blood…what that feels like.

A few years back at a scouting gathering, an earnest youth pastor from a large nearby Jesus Warehouse offered up a sustained prayer to the gathered scouts in the name of Jesus, invoking the sacrifice of the Cross and the Blood of the Lamb.  I think, for those in the gathering who were already part of his community, the prayer probably sounded fine.  "It's just how we talk," they would say.

But it jarred not just my wife, but others in the gathering, because it did not establish a sacred space that the whole group could enter together.

A prayer that is ferociously and defiantly cast at a group from the collective in-group language of Christianity does not draw more people to the message of Jesus. It might feel good, to be up there, praying in the Blessed Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ so that all Might Hear His Glorious Name, but what you're really doing when you do that is neither group prayer or evangelism.

Because they already know you're Christian. They do. What they don't know is why that's a good thing.

I know, I know, don't be ashamed about what you believe.  But honestly? It's equally important not to be foolish about it.  If the Paul had marched up Mars Hill in Athens and tried to hammer folks with the Unvarnished and Uncompromising Gospel Truth, he'd have failed.  Put him in Greece, and he knew what he had to do.  Paul knew how to speak to those who were different.  That didn't make him weak.  It made him an Apostle.

Christianity first spread because it was willing to articulate its transcendent truth cross-culturally, to express itself in terms that had nothing to do with groupspeak, and instead to find ways to be self-evidently good.

But we have to pray in the name of Jesus, folks will respond. If we don't, then we're not following Him!  That's just namby-pamby wishy-washy liberal relativism! To which I would ask, simply: When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, in the one great prayer of our faith, did he tell us to do so in his name? Or did he invoke our Maker, and then call us to humility and mutual forbearance?

When we find ourselves in a position to make public statements…particularly public sacred statements...that rise from our faith, there's no good reason for us not to find and use common language. Yes, there are other things you believe. But who will care to learn about them if your language is a closed door?

Mister Jefferson's Indecent Proposal

I am, I will freely admit, not the most impressive alumnus of Mr. Jefferson's University.   My undergraduate career was singularly undistinguished, as I struggled and floundered about trying to figure out exactly what it was I intended to do with my life.

Perhaps it has something to do with my sharing a birthday with another notoriously unsuccessful UVA student.  Edgar Allen Poe and I both managed not to quite stand out academically, for many of the same reasons.  I didn't gamble nearly as much, though I...cough...made up for it in other areas.

There were false starts and misses and at least one semester of academic probation, but when I did finally settle on Religious Studies as my major, things settled in.  And it was, without question, an astounding and transforming experience.

The department and the professors were excellent across the board, as demanding and enlightening as any I've had in my masters and doctoral studies, and what I learned there continues to inform my vocation as a Presbyterian pastor.

I've also been a tick remiss at giving to my alma mater, perhaps because while I value that education, I'm reasonably sure that their five point three billion dollar endowment is adequate.

It was an excellent, world-class education, and, notably, also one that managed to be affordable.  That commitment to a first tier education at a sane cost is what made the University of Virginia a truly great institution, and it is a commitment that is in danger.

A recent task force convened to make recommendations about the future direction of the University has proposed making changes designed to make it less of a public school.  There need to be fewer connections to the state, and more focus on making UVA like a Harvard or a Princeton.

On the one hand, given what often comes out of Richmond, I can see that.  Virginia has some remarkably shortsighted folks in power, and a significant element within Virginia leadership is actively opposed to academic liberty.  Attorney General Cuccinelli's grandstanding suppression of scientific research and his efforts to intimidate scholars haven't exactly deepened the love between the state and its historic flagship university.

On the other, well, that first hand isn't why this is being done.  The rationale behind the report, which you can read right here, is deeply grounded in something else.

A premier education yields high ROI, we hear.   The idea that higher education is a public good is waning, the report notes, and instead, institutions should focus on education as a competitive endeavor.  The goal of an educational institution in such a context is to compete for the best students, and to use "innovative, market-based solutions" to increase financial viability.

Although if you're already charging four times what you were when I attended, and you're sitting on five point three billion dollars, it would seem that you should be doing fine on the financial viability side.  But maybe I'm missing something.

Moving away from being a traditionally public and state-affiliated school would allow UVA to position itself as a premiere national semi-private institution, which would have two collateral results.  One, it would have a much larger pool of top-tier students if it was free to increase out of state attendance.  Two, and related, those top-tier out-of-staters would bring in a whole bunch more money, as out of state tuition is considerably higher.  As a semi-private school, that could be set higher still.

As a University of Virginia trained teacher of practical ethics...well, that's part of being a pastor, anyway...what strikes me about the implications of that is rooted in a section of the opening statement.

The University as an economic engine yields a high return on investment, making long term support a moral and economic imperative.

Our morality is our teleological framework, or to say that rather less densely, it's the framework through which we understand our relation to one another and the world around us.  Morality establishes value.  It gives us a way to define and understand the good.  I know this, because it's what I do.

What is clear from this planning statement, in both its language and its underlying assumptions, is that this views education through the moral framework of profit-seeking enterprise.  The University is an "economic engine."  That is what gives it value.

With that as a governing ethic, students become profit centers and/or consumers.  Professors and teaching assistants and high-cost/low-profit small classes and intimate, well-run discussion sections become financial liabilities, to be minimized through cost-cutting and finding efficiencies.

And administrators?  Well, we need to pay them well, so that we can attract the best talent.  Of course.  That goes without saying.

But when consumerism as a moral and ethical framework comes to define education, when a "Public Ivy" becomes a pricey boutique product for the elite?  That hardly serves the interests of the state of Virginia.

Just the interests of those with resources either inherited or borrowed, and those who get wealthy selling them the premiere education experience and market ROI of a recognizable brand.

The Lord's Prayer and How We Pray

One of the wonderful things about looking at Scripture for a living is that I am always--always--being struck by something that I've not seen or observed before. You'd think after having read the Bible over and over and over again that you'd have the whole thing down. Blessedly, that's not the case. If that were true, preaching on Sundays would get mighty old mighty fast.

What jumped out at me today was a passage in Matthew, following on the text I'm using on Sunday. It's Matthew 6:1-14, smack in the thick precious sweetness of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus teaches us how to pray, saying, "Our Father, who art in heaven..."

The Lord's Prayer is one of those things that is hardwired into the liturgical consciousness of cradle Christians. It's just something that we do as part of our public worship life on Sundays. Maybe we're thinking about it. Hopefully. But we all do it, mumbling along communally with each other.

The striking thing comes when you read the teaching of the Lord's Prayer in the context of Matthew's Gospel. He's already told us in verses 1-6 that we shouldn't engage in showy public displays of faith. Our prayers are between us and God. And as we pray in secret, we show that we understand that God sees in secret. (Matt. 6:6) Jesus then takes that understanding of God further. In Matthew 6: 7-8, we are told not to blabber on and on to God. What can we possibly tell God about our needs that God doesn't already know? I've always seen those verses as a bit of a jab at those whose public prayers occasionally seem like exercises in windy self-indulgence. But read in context, it seems that Christ doesn't present the Lord's Prayer as simply a model of how we should pray in public. Verse 7 doesn't say, "When you are praying in public.."

He tells us it's how we should pray, and we've just been told that we should be praying in private.

It isn't that we can't pray in other ways. We are perfectly free to prattle on to God like overtired toddlers who've gotten into the Mountain Dew. God loves us enough to indulge us in that. But nothing more is needed than the simplicity of that perfect prayer.