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Posted: December 19th, 2006 at 12:33am By: Rev. Jay Speights
I attend a lot of meetings where the folks in charge choose to open those meetings with a prayer. This is a good thing, because I firmly believe that any meeting that begins with asking for divine presence and guidance usually produces a good result, if the intention is pure. So I am not opposed to this. However, there is something that bothers me about how it is done in many instances.
What bothers me is that many of the people who open their meetings with a prayer do it from a Christian perspective. They invoke or intone the name of Jesus as if there were only Christians in attendance. In many instances, I have seen this done when it's extremely obvious that there are adherents of other religious traditions present, who could be readily identified by the garments or jewelry they were wearing.
There are other instances where it may be an oversight. I was present at this one community meeting when a man was asked to offer an opening prayer that began, "Oh, Jesus Christ our lord and savior, look down upon us who are assembled here." There is nothing wrong with this prayer, because I love Jesus, but I think this gentleman should have considered the possibility that the fellow sitting right next to him was Mr. Muhammad.
Yes, he was a Muslim and I knew him. And, judging from the look on his face, he felt diminished, and I empathized with him. I also felt and still feel a certain amount of pity for the gentleman who offered the prayer, because he assumes that everybody in the world is like him. There was no excuse for this oversight, because this meeting was held in a very diverse community.
This is a sad thing, and it is one of the major problems that I have with many Americans and their perspective about Christianity as it relates to other religions. Even though America is overwhelmingly Christian, it is becoming increasingly more religiously diverse every year. This is a reality. Many Americans are either unaware of this change or don't seem to care. There are probably many like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who are so arrogant and absolute about their Christian beliefs that they feel other religions just don't count and that their followers are invisible.
This is something that has been troubling me for some time. You see, several years ago I did an internship in chaplaincy at a major hospital. When my fellow interns discovered that I was an interfaith minister, some thought that I was either crazy or, as one called me, "a heretic." However, the majority did not understand my choice or refused to accept it.
Think about it! Here I am training to be a chaplain at a world-renowned hospital with a group of men and women, who were all from Christian denominations with either a master's or doctorate in divinity or theology, and they could not accept my choice to become an interfaith minister. It's even more astounding that these chaplains in training were ministering to the spiritual needs of a very large and religiously diverse hospital staff and patient population. (Thank God — or should I say, "Thank whatever God you worship" — for the program supervisors who insisted that we learn how to minister to the patients and staff based on their religious beliefs.)
In many of our group discussions as interns, I was repeatedly and disrespectfully challenged about how I could find value and truth in non-Christian religions. I grew extremely weary of having to validate my religious beliefs in these group discussions, because this was supposed to be an enlightened group. After about three months into the program, I basically told them that I would not entertain their challenges anymore, and that they would just have to accept my choice and get over it.
You know, it's troubling that in the 21st century Americans are still struggling with diversity at so many levels, especially as it relates to religion. We can talk about race in a different column. However, I have to ask, why did the Mayflower land at Plymouth? Why did Martin Luther King march? Hell, why do we have the Constitution of the United States? There is a single answer to these three questions and it is, "So I could be an interfaith minister and Mr. Muhammad can sit in a public meeting and not feel diminished."
— — —
Rev. Jay Speights is an interfaith minister and main United Nations representative for The New Seminary in New York. He has a master's degree in public policy. You can learn more about his work at the United Nations at The New Seminary website. His email address is {email jayspeights@newseminary.org}jayspeights@newseminary.org{/email}. © copyright 2006 by Jay Speights
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I attend a lot of meetings where the folks in charge choose to open those meetings with a prayer. This is a good thing, because I firmly believe that any meeting that begins with asking for divine presence and guidance usually produces a good result, if the intention is pure. So I am not opposed to this. However, there is something that bothers me about how it is done in many instances.
What bothers me is that many of the people who open their meetings with a prayer do it from a Christian perspective. They invoke or intone the name of Jesus as if there were only Christians in attendance. In many instances, I have seen this done when it's extremely obvious that there are adherents of other religious traditions present, who could be readily identified by the garments or jewelry they were wearing.
There are other instances where it may be an oversight. I was present at this one community meeting when a man was asked to offer an opening prayer that began, "Oh, Jesus Christ our lord and savior, look down upon us who are assembled here." There is nothing wrong with this prayer, because I love Jesus, but I think this gentleman should have considered the possibility that the fellow sitting right next to him was Mr. Muhammad.
Yes, he was a Muslim and I knew him. And, judging from the look on his face, he felt diminished, and I empathized with him. I also felt and still feel a certain amount of pity for the gentleman who offered the prayer, because he assumes that everybody in the world is like him. There was no excuse for this oversight, because this meeting was held in a very diverse community.
This is a sad thing, and it is one of the major problems that I have with many Americans and their perspective about Christianity as it relates to other religions. Even though America is overwhelmingly Christian, it is becoming increasingly more religiously diverse every year. This is a reality. Many Americans are either unaware of this change or don't seem to care. There are probably many like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who are so arrogant and absolute about their Christian beliefs that they feel other religions just don't count and that their followers are invisible.
This is something that has been troubling me for some time. You see, several years ago I did an internship in chaplaincy at a major hospital. When my fellow interns discovered that I was an interfaith minister, some thought that I was either crazy or, as one called me, "a heretic." However, the majority did not understand my choice or refused to accept it.
Think about it! Here I am training to be a chaplain at a world-renowned hospital with a group of men and women, who were all from Christian denominations with either a master's or doctorate in divinity or theology, and they could not accept my choice to become an interfaith minister. It's even more astounding that these chaplains in training were ministering to the spiritual needs of a very large and religiously diverse hospital staff and patient population. (Thank God — or should I say, "Thank whatever God you worship" — for the program supervisors who insisted that we learn how to minister to the patients and staff based on their religious beliefs.)
In many of our group discussions as interns, I was repeatedly and disrespectfully challenged about how I could find value and truth in non-Christian religions. I grew extremely weary of having to validate my religious beliefs in these group discussions, because this was supposed to be an enlightened group. After about three months into the program, I basically told them that I would not entertain their challenges anymore, and that they would just have to accept my choice and get over it.
You know, it's troubling that in the 21st century Americans are still struggling with diversity at so many levels, especially as it relates to religion. We can talk about race in a different column. However, I have to ask, why did the Mayflower land at Plymouth? Why did Martin Luther King march? Hell, why do we have the Constitution of the United States? There is a single answer to these three questions and it is, "So I could be an interfaith minister and Mr. Muhammad can sit in a public meeting and not feel diminished."
— — —
Rev. Jay Speights is an interfaith minister and main United Nations representative for The New Seminary in New York. He has a master's degree in public policy. You can learn more about his work at the United Nations at The New Seminary website. His email address is {email jayspeights@newseminary.org}jayspeights@newseminary.org{/email}. © copyright 2006 by Jay Speights
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