This brief article was originally written for my congregation as a teachable moment.
Some of you made me aware of the congressional prayer offered yesterday by Emanuel Cleaver. In most typical cases, I would not comment on this since comment on such things can be perceived as political. But I think there is a teaching point to make here that is valuable to our local church family.
I want to talk briefly about why it’s important to say what you mean, mean what you say, and why it matters to be accurate in what you say. In other words, doctrine — please don’t tune out now that I said that word!
Each new Congress is seated, and many of us don’t give it a second thought to it. Each time Congress is seated, there is also a prayer that also normally gets ignored. But this year, that changed, but I feel for the wrong reason.
Closing his prayer, Cleaver said, “Amen and A-woman.” Of course, as many have already pointed out, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the word’s etymology since it comes from a Hebrew word that has no gender attachment. Since giving the prayer, Cleaver has defended his closing as a pun. If it is wise to pun in a prayer or to pun at all, I’ll leave to you. But I feel there was a much larger error made that we can learn from.
Just after quoting the Aaronic Blessing from Numbers 6:24-26, and just before his now infamous ending, Cleaver said the following:
“We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and the god known by many names, by many different faiths.”
Here is where we can learn a few things. In sum, this sentence is tragically inaccurate and carless, and with a heavy heart, I also believe it to be highly presumptive and arrogant on many levels. The lesson for us, however, is that without proper knowledge we can do the same.
Cleaver’s prayer in gist was very much in the line of a vanilla Judeo-Christian prayer, and fittingly enough he begins the end of his prayer with “monotheism.” The first error, however, is to whom he applies monotheism. In fact, Cleaver’s language, and his application of language is so confusing, I played the prayer back a few times to make sure I heard it correctly. The god Cleaver names is Brahma, a god of the Hindu religion. Hinduism is defined by its polytheism, which obviously means it is not monotheistic. In Hinduism, Brahma’s principal role is the creator god who was originally hatched out of a golden egg. Over time, however, Brahma’s popularity has wained to the point of becoming potentially the least popular god in Hinduism in the face of more popular gods within this religion, such as Vishnu and Shiva. So then, by elevating Brahma as representative of Hinduism and implying Brahma’s role as the singular god in Hinduism is a quite seismic fundamental error. Additionally, to suggest that we should pray “in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma” is to mistake the prayer customs of (some) Christians for the way Hindus pray. Hindus do not pray in this way. Finally, to compound matters, to use language in this way confuses categories, since, again, it calls a god monotheistic, when a god is never by definition “monotheistic,” a particular religion would be qualified as monotheistic (which, Hinduism is not). The lesson here: Brahma comes out of left field, but should have stayed in left field.
Again, I hate to be so heavy-handed, but the (unintended, I believe) arrogance of the ending is surprising. As I suggested above, the prayer projects American-Christian customs of prayer and Judeo-Christian categories upon another world religion. In our pluralistic day, this may seem to be allowed and in fact encouraged to show acceptance and tolerance. Instead, the actual result is that these ill-defined, and truly cavalier, use of terms only serve to offend those for whom one is attempting to include. Of course, since his prayer, we have heard many of the liberal and conservative pundits talk about how Christians or Jewish believers should be offended or should not be offended, normally split down party lines, (which I take to be another example for why we should not too closely tie our two-party American politics with the preaching of the gospel, which is synchronism). But my question is: How does the rest of the majority world feel? What happens when some American congressman suddenly conspires, though maybe well-meaningly, to co-opt the terms of your religion for their purposes? Hinduism, especially, but many other Eastern and indigenous religions are far from monotheistic. So, asserting “and the god known by many names, by many different faiths” is not only fundamentally flawed but highly misrepresenting and offensive to the majority of religions in the world. The irony is that was the opposite of his intention. The lesson is: words mean things, and not other things. One thinks of Inigo Montoya of The Princess Bride fame, who says, “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Finally, some world religions do not have a god, including a growing “religion” in the West, Humanism. Buddism does not, per se, have a god. It’s goal is not even salvation but individual enlightenment. Additionally, Humanism’s god can be many things including science, hedonism, social causes, etc. Humanism is also the source of communism, which never had a place for a god or gods. Much like the polytheistic religions of the world that I addressed in #2, Atheism is a large majority of the world’s population today as well. This simple fact shows how exclusive Cleaver’s prayer actually turned out to be, though to reiterate, he meant it to be inclusive. There are so many lessons to learn from one misstated sentence, but another lesson is: one can become so inclusive that one become unintentionally exclusive, and in reality offensive to all whom they try to show deference.
So where do we go from here? We can go in many directions, but I’ll pick a lane for the sake of brevity.
I once sat across from the table for Sunday breakfast from Dr. Charles Ping, long time president of Ohio University, (as was my custom with my friend Sam after church, since he was his grandfather). I learned many things from Dr. Ping, but one thing stands out for our purposes here. He once complained of the lost art of using an actual paper dictionary to spell a word or know its meaning. I didn’t know what he meant at the time, since I could easily use “spell check,” which drew his ire when I suggested that as a solution — God only knows what he thinks of the “hey, Siri” culture!
The point is that the increase of access to knowledge, and it being at our fingertips, has lulled us to sleep in what we actually know and can actually accurately articulate, much like the the journey being interrupted by the poppy fields in The Wizard of Oz. The church is not excluded!
Friends, doctrine matters, much like knowing a word’s meaning. Doctrine makes your faith make sense to you and to those looking in. Without proper definition, you say things you do not mean, you exclude those you want to include, and you offend others unintentionally. Being nice, in some instances, can be the most offensive thing you can do.
You may suggest that doctrine divides. But does it? At the heart of our clearly defined Christian doctrine is reconciliation and unity into one body of Christ by unmerited grace offered to all, free of charge. On the other side of the coin, we can all see now that ill-defined words and doctrine, like above, divide and exclude.
Some might also say, “Isn’t loving Jesus enough?” I would ask, “Is it? If so, why?” Your answer will be doctrine. But will it be accurate doctrine? We can see from above how inaccurate doctrine misrepresented over 1.2 billion people in the Hindu religion, and nearly a billion more who do not have a god.
So, to reiterate, I do not like to be perceived as a political pundit; that is not the purpose of this article. My hope is to use a current and well-known example for our purposes as a church family. We must have a clearly defined identity, and this will happen by all of us pulling in one direction by meeting together in church, reading and hearing Scripture together, taking the sacrament together, praying together, hearing God’s Word preached together, saying catechism questions together, tithing together, Sabbath-resting together, and small group-ing together. By this, we will begin the journey of learning how to mean what we say, and say what we mean. Upon embarking on this journey, we will be a purposeful light to the world, and shine to those who have only anchor-less words and theories, but actually want the solid foundation of Jesus, the King, Lord, Messiah, and Savior.
Aaron White is the Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in South Charleston, OH. He holds a PhD in New Testament Studies from Trinity College, Bristol University. He is the author or editor of multiple books, including Who Created Christianity: Fresh Approaches to the Relationship between Jesus and Paul. Aaron is a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
