Gene Robinson on his prayer
President-elect Barack Obama has asked Bishop Gene Robinson… to deliver the invocation at a kickoff inaugural event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, two days before the inauguration itself. …
In recent years, and especially during the inaugurations of President George W. Bush, ministers gave explicitly Christian prayers. Bishop Robinson said he had been rereading inaugural prayers through history and was “horrified” at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were.”
Bishop Robinson said, “I am very clear that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture or anything like that. The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.”
He said he might address the prayer to “the God of our many understandings,” language he said he learned from the 12-step program he has attended for his alcohol addiction.
– read the full report from The New York Times. And there’s an audio interview from NPR.
(Photo: Episcopal News Service/Mike Collins)
The open Bible in England — F.F. Bruce
“When William Tyndale, as John Foxe tells us, uttered his dying prayer at the stake at Vilvorde on 6 October 1536, ‘Lord, open the king of England’s eyes’, he could not have known that his prayer was already beginning to be fulfilled.
Twelve months earlier, a complete English Bible had been printed on the Continent (probably at Cologne, the setting of the first and abortive attempt to print Tyndale’s New Testament ten years before). This English Bible, the work of Tyndale’s associate Miles Coverdale, was largely dependent on Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, the Pentateuch and Jonah …”
– Church Society has republished this 1988 Churchman article by F.F. Bruce (PDF file direct link).
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…