Prayer - Keep This Nation Under Your Care

Earlier this morning I watched the January 21st Inaugural Prayer Service from the National Cathedral It was simply beautiful and inspiring. The sermon was amazing and I was blessed by every word, every song and every moment of the service.

The Service Leaflet is here


Of course when the congregation sang the hymn Great is Thy Faithfulness. I immediately thought of my mother and realized how much she would have loved the outcome of this election. Mother was always “dreaming of the day….” It is certainly a hopeful trait, the idea of looking forward. But mother often forgot how to live in the moment. But I forget that she didn’t know how.

Wait a minute is this post about the Prayer Service or my mother? Maybe both, I get a warm and poignant feeling from thinking about both. How I miss her and wish she were here to talk about this with me.

I recall the day the President Kennedy was assassinated, November 22, 1963. After I got home from school, that evening mother and I went down to Temple Beth Jacob on Park Boulevard in Oakland to join in a Prayer Service. Unlike Wednesday morning’s service, the service in 1963 was not pre planned. It was just a place where the outpouring of national grief could find a home, regardless of religion.

Monday night Stephen and I and a friend went over to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for an Inter Faith Prayer Vigil for the Country and the President.

That too was a beautiful time of reflection on what is ahead for us as a Nation. This time there is an outpouring of national hope, regardless of religion.

Dr. Ingrid Mattson, the President of the Islamic Society of North America
and Director of Center for Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary prayed this:

On this day of new beginnings, with hearts lifted high in hope, may we be a people at peace among ourselves and
a blessing to other nations. We pray to you, O God, saying
Keep this nation under your care,
And guide us in the way of justice and truth.

No Outrage Here

Stephen and I were discussing this issue last night.

In the NPR interview, Bishop Robinson said;

....I hold the scripture to be the word of God those scriptures are holy to me and Jews and Christians....

At the end of his column, David Brody asks;

....will there by any outrage? Is there any?

These are my thoughts on the subject.

The God of my understanding is Jesus.
But that isn't the case for everyone, this is America.

The inauguration and related festivities is not church.
The inauguration and related festivities is not a revival meeting.
The inauguration and related festivities is not a evangelical outreach opportunity.

The inauguration and related festivities is an America political event.
And while this inauguration is certainly a historic one, it is political, period.

Blessings to all our country, regardless of race, religion, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, age, etc.....

Here is another thought on the subject, including a little perspective from history.

H/T Huff Po & beliefnet

Intersection

One important feature of the historic 2008 presidential election was the presence of progressive religious voices in the campaign.

So begins a letter I received on Christmas Eve. With that letter was a survey addressed to me specifically and explaining that my name was chosen at random from lists of “active citizens who have a unique perspective on the 2008 campaign”.

Here is the final paragraph from the cover letter explaining the purpose of the survey:

This survey is conducted exclusively for scholarly purposes. It is paid for by the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. John C. Green is the Institute's director, a distinguished professor of political science, and a long-time student of national politics. He is widely quoted in the news media, from the Christian Century to the New York Times. His most recent book is The Faith Factor: How Religion Influences American Elections. Robert P. Jones, Ph.D., a religious studies scholar who is president of Public Religion Research and author of the new book Progressive & Religious, is serving as an advisor to the project. Thank you for your time and consideration.

This is a 9 page survey and therefore somewhat time consuming to complete. Generally I consider myself a moderate in most things and it was a challenge not to choose the “neither yes or no” answer on certain questions.

Here are examples of just a few questions:

•In your judgment, how important was the 2008 election to the future of the country?
•Overall, how would you describe your views on political issues?
•What is your view of the Scriptures?
•What should be the main goal for religious people when they engage in politics?

When I see poll statistics, I often wonder why I am never polled. So this was a welcome opportunity to "speak my mind". Although I am still trying to figure out how I came to be on this list of “active citizens”. But I was glad for the opportunity to take the survey and found many of the questions thoughtful. I was grateful for the chance to stretch my mind a bit when considering my responses.

I will be getting a summary of the results sometime in the Spring of 2009.

Christmas Blessings to All

The Coming

And God held in his hand a small globe.
Look he said.
The Son looked.
Far off, as through water,
He saw a scorched land of fierce color.
The light burned there.
Crusted buildings cast their shadows:
A bright Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant with slime.

On a bare hill a bare tree saddened the sky.
Many people held out their thin arms to it,
As though waiting for a vanished April
To return to its crossed boughs.

The Son watched them.
Let me go there, he said.


R. S. Thomas 1913-2000

Hell?

Many of my favorite bloggers are commenting on this topic. And much of my own personal Bible study and reflection lately has me grappling with the idea of a literal hell.

Stephen just sent me this link

It is an interesting documentary from NPR's This American Life.

Below is the description of the audio, link noted above.

304: Heretics Aired Dec 5, 2008

The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson, a renowned evangelical pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who cast aside the idea of Hell, and with it everything he'd worked for over his entire life.

Prologue.
Carlton Pearson's church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the reverend. He didn't have an affair. He didn't embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse: He stopped believing in Hell. (2 minutes)

Act One. Rise.

Reporter Russell Cobb takes us through the remarkable and meteoric rise of Carlton Pearson from a young man to a Pentecostal Bishop: from the moment he first cast the devil out of his 17-year-old girlfriend, to the days when he had a close, personal relationship with Oral Roberts and had appearances on TV and at the White House. Just as Reverend Pearson's career peaked, with more than 5,000 members of his congregation coming every week, he started to think about Hell, wondering if a loving God would really condemn most of the human race to burn and writhe in the fire of Hell for eternity. (30 minutes)

Act Two. Fall.

Once he starts preaching his own revelation, Carlton Pearson's church falls apart. After all, when there's no Hell (as the logic goes), you don't really need to believe in Jesus to be saved from it. What follows are the swift departures of his pastors, and an exodus from his congregation—which quickly dwindled to a few hundred people. Donations drop off too, but just as things start looking bleakest, new kinds of people, curious about his change in beliefs, start showing up on Sunday mornings. (23 minutes)

Postscript: Carlton Pearson renamed his church after the story was produced: It is now called New Dimensions.

Song: "Let the Church Roll On," Mahalia Jackson