Listening to the preachers at the National Prayer Service this morning, I can’t help thinking that they would be better off listening to Obama than the other way around. What a letdown.
I was mildly interested to see the first woman preach at the service, but unfortunately that historic moment was marred by, well, by preaching! …and her cadence was about as good as Elizabeth Alexander’s (Obama’s inaugural poet).
Another preacher suggested that he couldn’t think of a better way to start Obama’s journey as president than by praying. The audience’s response was priceless. Laughter!
I’m sure many people were as ecstatic as I was to hear mention of nonbelievers in the inaugural address. But then the question remains whether it is just lip service, or a sign of real change? He is after all sitting in church on his first day.
Check out the first item on the Additional Issues page in the Agenda section of the new whitehouse.gov site (complete with RSS feeds for the first time!). It mentions Obama’s “doubts” and “the need for a deeper, more substantive discussion about the role of faith in American life.”
I just don’t think you make this the first (additional) item — ahead of Child Advocacy, Science and Transportation — unless you’ve got some humanist-friendly goals in mind.
The reality is that you can’t yet win in American politics by eschewing belief in imaginary friends (or “childish things”), and Obama is exactly what we need to bridge the gap between that reality and some new one where it no longer matters. I can’t wait!
