Prayer Breakfasts

February 12, 2010

Prayer is not going to get the job done, yet once again the religious community gathers in Washington DC under the pretext of lobbying whoever will listen, that climate change is an important issue. No problem with the premise, but the strategy is the old paradigm, too late. Prayer breakfast as a way of showcasing talent has been the strategy of the conservative, albeit reactionary religious community for years. Many marquee names of the stalwarts of the so-called and self labeled ‘moral majority’, which was neither, would offer their particular list of grievances at the breakfast held every February and then ask God to make sure they get their wish by advocating for a particular political candidate. Yes, this was how it worked. What was interesting, besides this inappropriate melding of church and state, was that the President would attend, thereby legitimizing something that in its very name speaks of lobbying God? As hard as people may pray, God is above the efforts of lobbyists, regardless of their religious stature or following or eloquence.

The God I worship is present at every breakfast, and if you believe that God is omnipresent the mere invocation of God’s name at a designated breakfast says more about the participants than God. I have been invited to The Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on numerous occasions and this week the religious community for ‘climate change action’ (my italics and emphasis) is meeting in Washington while honoring the pioneering NASA climatologist James Hanson. This week they are debating how many prayers to have at the beginning of the breakfast. (I might suggest they also limit the words each prayer giver can use for my fellow clergy are not known to be brief when a pulpit is extended to them for advocacy.) This style of breakfast is more in keeping with my personal beliefs, I know several of the key organizers and I respect their progressive and thoughtful religious agenda, yet I can’t legitimately point the finger at one prayer breakfast contingent while honoring the other.

I admire this group of clergy working hard on key environmental issues like forest preservation and climate change, and they are representing many different denominations, and religious communities. I joined with them in Washington DC a couple of years to lobby the World Bank, and I appreciate the direction they have taken to awaken fellow people of faith communities to the seriousness of the issues. I have also lobbied them, albeit without much success to put teeth into their rhetoric. I have implored them to consume less, eat lower on the food chain, give up beef altogether and become noisy – radical advocates for God’s creation are needed because the old paradigm of being ‘nice clergy, priests and rabbi’s’ is not getting the job done. Once again, I am afraid, is that the safe approach seems to be more comfortable for most. Radical activism has been negated by more pressing issues such as who should give what prayer at the breakfast; a bit of tongue in cheek, but the time for prayer has come and gone.

I smile inwardly knowing that over 20 years ago a broad spectrum of religious communities began to pray, sing, dance, and preach about God’s garden and what the human family is doing to exploit it for short term gain and long term pain. Like many others, I drafted worship services with environmental themes, wrote new creeds with an environmental focus and promoted prayer on behalf of all God’s creatures. Many across religious lines wrote resolutions for conventions, offered specific guidelines to churches for retrofitting to save energy, crafted environmentally focused and thoughtful Sunday school curricula, and honored Earth Day with congregational participation on many levels; yet, when all the smoke clears from our frenzied activities one can not see any more clearly today than 20 years ago, for the potential for a sustainable future is still way up in the clouds someplace.

The time has come to stop praying, or praying with a different focus, so that our energies are released to be more Jesus like, if we are Christian, or Moses like if we are Jewish, or Buddha like or Mohammed like if we are from the Buddhist or Islamic traditions. Look at their lives - when synthesized we see an over-throw of the ruling elite, the criticism of the establishment where corruption rules, and a revolution of thought that places equity and justice above all else should be our prime focus as religious people.

As a Christian priest my prayer is that we wake up and be more Christ like (in the sense of an archetypical role model) and not emasculate the message to fit our political agenda. Jesus used parables to teach, parables with nature as the context, and revolution to awaken a new paradigm for the modern world. Without question, the models, the archetypical human expression of the divine is not represented in any one figure but in the collective, and when we put the collective together, adding in perhaps Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King (with all their human shortcomings and frailties) we get a sense of what we are called to be. Each stepped out from their culture to challenge with love in their hearts.

Prayer breakfasts were probably not high on the agenda of those who have walked a path wide enough for millions to follow. Pick a person, know their story, and build personal confidence that revolution is a viable answer and methodology – for in each of the above, revolting against something defined their mission, as did our ancestors around, oh say 1776. Oddly enough, all cited had a different approach or relationship with the One to whom everyone prays at Prayer Breakfasts.