The Name
By Franklin Graham
Pray In The Name?
...In January of 2001, our nation was perhaps more divided politically than at any time I can remember....
My father has had the honor of praying or participating in some way at eight presidential inaugurations, beginning with the ceremony for Lyndon Johnson in 1965. When it came time for Bill Clinton's second inauguration, my father was invited once again to offer an inaugural prayer. Because his health problems had flared, he asked me to accompany him to Washington, D.C.
Now, four years later as the inauguration of the forty-third president approached, the inaugural committee eagerly wanted Billy Graham to participate in the ceremony....
...However, with weather forecasters predicting a cold, wet January morning in the Washington, D.C., area, my father's doctors at the Mayo Clinic had urged him not to put himself at risk by attending the inauguration, as it would be held outdoors. The Inaugural Committee, on behalf of President-elect Bush, called and asked me to give the invocation in my father's place...
.....The Friday afternoon before the inauguration, I attended a meeting of the platform participants conducted by the Inaugural Committee. We met at a Washington hotel to review the order of service. It was in that conference room where I met Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell: tall, handsome, articulate--a powerhouse of a preacher. After introductions, his personal warmth made me feel as though we had been longtime friends. We found a few minutes to talk privately, and Reverend Caldwell said, "Franklin, I want to ask you a question. Are you going to pray in the Name of Jesus?"
"Yes," I answered. "I always do."
"Good!" Kirbyjon said, flashing a great big smile. "I am too."
I chuckled to myself and thought, I like him; he's got guts for Jesus.
The time of invocation came and I made my way to the podium. Speaking into the bitter January air, I offered this prayer to God Almighty as my breath turned to white puffs:
......etc. etc. I continued:
We pray this in the name of the Father, And of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, And of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
To my surprise, I heard amens and applause from an audience assembled primarily for political interests--not religious....
...I thought I had left the inaugural flurry behind.... The Dershowitz article concluded, "If Bush wants all Americans to accept him as their president, he made an inauspicious beginning by sandwiching his unity speech between two divisive, sectarian and inappropriate prayers."
What was he talking about? I am a Christian. Don't ask me to pray like a Hindu; I am not Hindu. Don't ask me to pray to Muhammad; I am not Muslim. I am a Christian. That is who I am: a believer in the greatest man that ever lived--Jesus Christ--a Jew.
...Others chimed in with Dershowitz. Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, said that both inaugural prayers were "inappropriate and insensitive." An article in the New Republic described the prayers that Kirbyjon and I offered as "crushing Christological thuds" that "barred millions of Americans from their own amens."
....I believe that the response to the inaugural prayers is additional evidence of a disturbing trend in American public life: Christians who use the Name of Jesus and insist that He is "the one and only way to God" are increasingly viewed by many in the liberal media as narrowminded religious bigots who represent a threat to the rest of society.
Americans are extremely religious as the Gallup poll shows. But that religious bent rubs against another value in our society that may trump all others: tolerance. In our thirst for personal autonomy, the deal we seek is, "I will not question your beliefs or behavior if you will do the same for me." Does this now apply to spiritual issues too?
An eloquent advocate of Christian faith, Ravi Zacharias wrote in Jesus Among Other Gods,
We are living in a time when angry voices demand with increasing insistence that we ought not to propagate the Gospel, that we ought not to consider anyone "lost" just because they are not Christians. "We are all born into different beliefs, and therefore, we should leave it that way"--so goes the tolerant "wisdom" of our time...When people make such statements, they forget or do not know that one is not born a Christian. All Christians are such by virtue of conversion. To ask the Christian not to reach out to anyone else who is from another faith is to ask that Christians to deny his own faith.
...The media attention span is short, but at least for a few days in early 2001, the Name of Jesus was heard in public discourse as something other than a curse word.
The bold reentry of the Name would not happen again for many months, until a shocking Tuesday morning in September.
From the book: The Name, by Franklin Graham (edited by me)
AI
