Obama Vetting Prayers & SBC Pro State-Sponsored Prayer

According to Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News World & Report, the Obama Administration is vetting the prayers that are offered at President Obama’s public rallies.  Here’s Gilgoff:

A once-in-a-lifetime experience for Culp has become routine for President Obama: In a departure from previous presidents, his public rallies are opening with invocations that have been commissioned and vetted by the White House.

During Obama’s recent visit to Fort Myers, Fla., to promote his economic stimulus plan, a black Baptist preacher delivered a prayer that carefully avoided mentioning Jesus, lest he offend anyone in the audience. And at Obama’s appearance last week near Phoenix to unveil his mortgage bailout plan, an administrator for the Tohono O’odham Nation delivered the prayer, taking the unusual step of writing it down so he could E-mail it to the White House for vetting. American Indian prayers are typically improvised.

Though invocations have long been commonplace at presidential inaugurations and certain events like graduations or religious services at which presidents are guests, the practice of commissioning and vetting prayers for presidential rallies is unprecedented in modern history, according to religion and politics experts.

This is absolutely inexcusable.

Any person who cherishes religious liberty and values the separation of church and state should be appalled at the notion that members of the Obama Administration are vetting prayers.

Barry W. Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United, had this to say:

“The only thing worse than having these prayers in the first place is to have them vetted, because it entangles the White House in core theological matters.”

Al Mohler, President of Southern Seminary, weighed in on his blog:

Consider what is at stake here.  When the White House requires a prayer to be submitted in advance, it takes on an editorial role.  This editorial role means that the White House is explicitly approving certain prayers for delivery.  The prayer delivered in this context should bear a label that clearly identifies it as approved by the White House — government-approved prayer….I rarely find myself in agreement with Barry Lynn, but I am with him on this issue — at least with respect to his argument that this practice “entangles the White House in core theological matters.”

…All this points to something the Obama administration — and anyone asked by the administration to offer a prayer — had better learn fast.  The government has no authority and no proper role in the vetting of prayer.  No Christian should allow any prayer to bear the label, “This prayer approved by the White House.”

I gotta give it to Al - he’s right.  No Christian should allow any prayer to bear the label, “This prayer approved by the White House.”

A few Southern Baptist bloggers have also weighed in with a critical word against the Obama Administration, rightfully so…

Southern Baptists who have an obsession with staying loyal to the the fundamentalist leaders of the so-called “Conservative Resurgence” might ought to tread carefully here.  I’m not sure where Al Mohler was in 1982.  Perhaps, Al was with Mary, “running all over campus gathering signatures for an ad in the Courier Journal, supporting women in ministry.”  1982 might have been before his official baptism into the fundamentalist movement.  Not sure.

But 18-months into Ronald Reagan’s first term as President of the United States, he proposed to Congress an amendment to the United States Constitution to allow school-sponsored prayer in public schools. Implementation of Regan’s Prayer Amendment would ultimately have placed decision-making power about prayer in public schools and in the hands of state legislatures and local school districts.

Many Southern Baptists through the Baptist Joint Committee came out strongly against Reagan’s Prayer Amendment.  James Dunn and other then Southern Baptists asserted that a watered-down school prayer written and approved by government officials was a testimony of “lowest common denomination religion” and thus a threat to authentic religion.

Despite the efforts of the BJC, James Dunn and other moderate Southern Baptists, a majority of the messengers at the 1982 meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention held in New Orleans followed President Reagan’s lead and adopted a resolution in support of his proposed prayer amendment.  Southern Baptists went on record in support of Reagan’s Prayer Amendment despite being confronted with a White House document that had been prepared by the Department of Justice which emphatically declared that under Reagan’s proposal, “states and communities would be free to select prayers of their own choosing.  They would choose prayers that have already been written or they could compose their own prayers.”  The document further elaborated that, “if groups of people are to be permitted to pray, someone must have the power to determine the content of such prayers.”

Thus, the Southern Baptist Convention went on record in support of state-mandated, government-approved prayer in public schools.

Fundamentalist leaders Charles Stanley of First Baptist Atlanta and Morris Chapman of First Baptist Wichita Falls, Texas were the two most outspoken proponents of the pro-Prayer Amendment resolution.  With this historical resolution, the SOuthern Baptist Convention became the first major denomination i nthe United States to endorse a constitutional amendment or legislation to allow organized school prayer.  Meanwhile, moderate Southern Baptists lamented the passage of Resolution 9 as an incredible contradiction of their Baptist heritage.

So, yea, sorry but while Al got it right this time, I can’t take Al Mohler and his Conservative Resurgence compadres too seriously on religious liberty questions.  His organization - an organizatio that walked lock-step with President Ronald Reagan for two terms, the Southern Baptist Convention, has an awful record when it comes to keeping church and state separate over the past 30 years.

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