American civil religion is always exemplified in presidential
inaugurals. Typically the selection of clergy for inaugural prayers
has not been controversial. But amid culture war of recent years
and secularization of America’s elites, plus the implosion of once
predominant Mainline Protestantism in favor of evangelicals,
inaugurations have more recently showcased the nation’s religious
and moral divisions. Franklin Graham excited controversy at
President George W. Bush’s 2000 inaugural for praying in the name
of Christ. Rick Warren provoked protest at President Barack Obama’s
first inaugural, having publicly backed California’s Proposition 8
defining marriage as man and woman.
This year the Obama Administration initially picked for the
benediction Atlanta-based evangelical pastor Louie Giglio, a
seemingly safe choice, better known for his widely popular
“Passion” ministry for victims of sex trafficking than for hot
button cultural war stances. Early this month his Passion
conference in Atlanta attracted over 60,000, mostly college
students. But within two days of his January 8 selection, Giglio
was forced to step aside, LGBT and other liberal groups having
protested a sermon from the 1990s in which Giglio disapproved of
homosexual practice. Breaking the news first was a blog associated
with John Podesta’s Center for American Progress. The initial
“New York Times” story, later amended, said Giglio
withdrew by the Administration’s request. Giglio declined to
say. The inaugural committee explained that Giglio failed to live
up to the Administration’s vision for “diversity.”
Prominent evangelicals have complained that this vision of
“diversity” would exclude virtually all evangelicals, plus Roman
Catholic clergy, and traditionalists from almost any major
religious tradition. “The imbroglio over Louie Giglio is the
clearest evidence of the new Moral McCarthyism of our sexually
‘tolerant’ age,” pronounced Albert Mohler, president of Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, the nation’s largest
seminary. “The Presidential Inaugural Committee and the White House
have now declared historic, biblical Christianity to be out of
bounds, casting it off the inaugural program as an
embarrassment.”
Mohler warned: “By its newly articulated standard, any preacher
who holds to the faith of the church for the last 2,000 years is
persona non grata. By this standard, no Roman Catholic prelate or
priest can participate in the ceremony. No Evangelical who holds to
biblical orthodoxy is welcome. The vast majority of Christians
around the world have been disinvited. Mormons, and the rabbis of
Orthodox Judaism are out. Any Muslim imam who could walk freely in
Cairo would be denied a place on the inaugural program. Billy
Graham, who participated in at least ten presidential
inaugurations, is welcome no more. Rick Warren, who incited a
similar controversy when he prayed at President Obama’s first
inauguration, is way out of bounds. In the span of just four years,
the rules are fully changed.”
Prominent Catholic ethicist Robert George of Princeton
University, in a column with Southern Baptist theologian Russell
Moore, wrote that “no one is arguing that Evangelicals or Catholics
or anyone else must have a designated slot on the dais.” But he
complained: “The end result of the sexual revolution is that those
who see marriage as a conjugal relationship — the union of husband
and wife — and believe sexual conduct outside the marital bond to
be morally unworthy, will come to be viewed as bigots, the
equivalent of racists.” Like Mohler, he warned of “dire
implications for religious liberty and freedom of conscience.”
The Presidential Inaugural Committee promised after the Giglio
controversy that “we now work to select someone to deliver the
benediction, [and] we will ensure their beliefs reflect this
administration’s vision of inclusion and acceptance for all
Americans.” Keeping their promise, they chose Episcopal clergy Luis
Leon of historic St. John’s Church next to the White House. Mostly
low key, Leon supports his denomination’s pro-LGBT stance and
backed same-sex marriage in Washington, D.C. He prayed at Bush’s
2005 inauguration. His prayer this time cited “gay and straight”
and avoided mentioning Christ.
Meanwhile, prominent United Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton of
Kansas City was picked to sermonize at the inaugural National
Cathedral interfaith service that the Obamas will attend Tuesday,
the day after the inauguration. Last year, Hamilton unsuccessfully
urged his denomination formally to acknowledge disagreement over
its teaching that sex is exclusively for heterosexual marriage.
Also speaking will be a clergywoman from the predominantly
homosexual Metropolitan Community Church denomination. Episcopal
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, a strong LGBT advocate,
also will speak. Retiring Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, whose
2003 election as the Episcopal Church’s first openly homosexual
bishop created schism in the global Anglican Communion, apparently
is not on the service agenda. But he tweeted that President Obama
had invited him to the presidential viewing stand for the inaugural
parade, where he’ll be “practicing my queenly wave for all my LGBT
friends!” In retirement, Robinson is relocating from New Hampshire
to Washington, D.C., where he already serves as a senior fellow at
the Center for American Progress, the same group whose blog first
challenged Giglio’s 17-year-old sermon.
Unlike 2008, the 2012 Obama campaign made virtually no outreach
to evangelicals, accurately realizing they could win without them.
Obamacare’s contraceptive/abortifacient mandate on religious
institutions, plus stances on same sex marriage and abortion, have
perturbed many evangelicals, Catholics, and other religious
traditionalists. The Giglio imbroglio almost certainly will further
estrange the Administration from many religious communities. And it
will be remembered as one more landmark signifying that even benign
rites of civil religion, once unifying, have become increasingly
contentious.
