I attended a Christian secondary school in India. My Hindu parents picked it for its excellence. Each morning school started with prayer. The principal of the school, a devout Christian, would say, “Let us bow our heads and close our eyes,” before she invoked God.
I neither bowed my head nor closed my eyes during prayer time. Instead, I watched those who prayed, my eyes wandering over the big hall where we congregated. When I expressed my heretical thoughts about these prayers to my more spiritual classmates, they soundly condemned them. They told me to watch out in case God took notice of my arrogance and punished me.
Strangely, when I graduated school and went to college, where we didn’t start the day with prayer, I missed my secondhand interludes with God. When I matured, the experience left me with a profound respect for those capable of suspending self for worship.
In America, though, I am slowly acquiring a new perspective about prayer — that it is a political tool for manipulating the masses. Think back to Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, the lady with whom he was certain he hadn’t had an affair. After we were treated to the sordid details of the liaison, we heard Clinton was overwhelmed by remorse. The Rev. Jesse Jackson came to pray with the president. He said then of praying with the Clintons: “We joined arms and prayed. I simply asked God to forgive us for our sins, forgive us for the foolishness of our ways, build a hedge around us to protect us.”
From a promiscuous and unconscionable Lothario, Clinton transformed himself into a pious and penitent man through Jackson. Of course, Clinton hoped to defuse public outrage by dangling his prayerful self as a diversion. Simultaneously, he challenged the public to judge him harshly when he was already asking God for forgiveness.
While President George Bush declared pre-emptive war, Clinton declared pre-emptive prayer after the Lewinsky affair. Rod Blagojevich, governor of Illinois, also resorted to pre-emptive prayer recently. Caught on tape by the feds trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the bidder willing to grant him a laundry list of venal wishes, Blagojevich prayed with some of the well-known pastors in Illinois to restore his image. Pastor Leonard Barr of the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church said of Blagojevich, “We prayed that he will continue to be a great governor for the state of Illinois.” God probably said, “Give me a break!” when He heard that prayer.
Now another prayer controversy looms in the form of the Rev. Rick Warren, who, to the consternation of the gay and lesbian community, has been invited to give the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. Warren insists he loves gays, but the gay community says that he has a peculiar way of showing it. Supposedly Warren equated gay sex with incest. He also stood firmly against gay marriage by supporting Proposition 8 in California — an incendiary issue for gays.
Obama says he favors civil unions for gays, but he also believes that the sanctity of marriage should be preserved as a one-man, one-woman rite. As for Proposition 8, Obama opposed it because he does not like constitutional amendments. He makes Proposition 8 an issue of constitutional law and argues that the amendment was unnecessary. You scratch your head and ask, “What? Is Obama against gay marriage, or is he for it?” Then you are not thinking like a lawyer — and you are thinking even less like a politician — because you want clear answers.
At least Warren is predictable and consistent. The man believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible. While he accepts gays as children of God and is glad to give his money to fight AIDS, he is not willing to sanction gay sex. The man is honest.
Not so Obama, who wants to have it both ways always. He hopes the evangelical community and the gay community will be fooled by his stance on gay marriage, and he prays that the rest of America does not know or understand California’s Proposition 8. He obfuscates by saying that there is room for contradictory opinions at his diversity table. Thus far the left has described his pabulum as nuanced. But God works in mysterious ways, and this time the gay community seems to be catching on to the lawyerly and slippery Obama way!
Usha Nellore is a writer living in Bel Air. Reach her at [email protected].
