Who would you pick to offer presidential inauguration prayer? (Fear Not blog)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Do you know someone who could pray for us all?

There’s an opening for the closing prayer slot at President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Once again -- in this land where the public performance or non-performance of religion by public officials continues to be a point of contention -- the congregation is restless over who will deliver the opening and closing prayers at the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

The good thing about these arguments, of course, is that they maybe get all of us thinking about something we might otherwise snooze or daydream through during our own religious services. Prayer does matter, it turns out -- at least when it gets this close to politics and international news coverage.

Obama has asked Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of the murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers to offer the invocation, the opening prayer.

Evers-Williams is the author of "Watch Me Fly: What I learned on the way to becoming the woman I was meant to be" and past chairwoman of the NAACP.

But she is not an ordained minister. With this choice, Evers-Williams becomes both the first non-clergy and the first woman to be asked to pray at a presidential inauguration.

At Obama's first inauguration, Huntsville native, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, an icon of the civil rights movement, gave the benediction, the closing prayer.

Pastor Rick Warren, one of the world's best-known Baptist ministers, gave the invocation. Warren's prayer included a riff on praying in the name of Jesus that pretty much put to rest evangelicals' concern that Warren might tone down his Christianity in order to offer a prayer suitable for both Christians and non-Christians.

Warren’s choice was controversial for many people because he had just urged his California congregation to vote against Amendment 8. That amendment would have allowed for gay marriage.

This year, the unholy donnybrook is over who will give the benediction, the closing prayer. Obama’s initial choice for the benediction was the Rev. Louie Giglio.

Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church in Rosswell, Ga., has led a fight against human trafficking and modern slavery. But Giglio has also, in the past, directed his congregation to fight the so-called "aggressive agenda" of the gay community and proclaimed that allowing homosexual people to marry would "run the risk of absolutely undermining the whole order of our society."

With the first objections over his selection beginning to noise abroad from people who think Giglio’s views don’t reflect the inclusive nature of America, Giglio today, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2013, said that he would withdraw his name. Giglio said he doesn’t want the issues raised by those sermons, which he says he no longer emphasizes, from overshadowing the prayer itself.

Which leads us to the opening that Giglio's withdrawal creates: Who would you recommend to offer what may well be one of only two prayers that a hefty proportion of Americans hear all year? Max Lucado? T. D. Jakes? People of faith who are also leaders in interfaith understanding like Rabbi David Saperstein or Eboo Patel? How about inviting someone like David Silverman, president of American Atheists, to demonstrate that secular leaders can offer a non-theistic moment of national reflection and intention?

I’d vote for inviting a children’s choir to sing a closing prayer like “The Lord Bless You and Keep You.” Or, goodness, maybe Obama should choose another woman – after all: Why not have two women pray to begin to balance all the years of when only men did the praying?

1. Please add a comment, below, with your nomination for presidential prayer-giver. After all, a son of Huntsville was prayed the first time around, why not sending one of ours to Washington one more time!
2. And a second request: For all of you who are the kind of people, whether as professional or lay ministers, to offer public prayer,

I’d love to do a future story, as we did in for Obama’s first inauguration, that offers local examples of how to pray for us all.

For a lovely recording of the Lipscomb High Chorus singing, in fact, a cool arrangement of the biblical blessing, here's this video --

Kay Campbell, religion reporter for The Huntsville Times and www.al.com , can be reached at KCampbell@al.com and 256-532-4320.