Prayer in America

14. December 2007 by Liliana.

I’ve been involved in an interfaith effort about Prayer in America that will result on a special PBS program to be aired by the end of February. Representatives of different faith traditions: Muslim, Catholic, Baptist, Jewish, Orthodox and Unitarian Universalist have been meeting with Shirley Winslow of PBS for several months to discuss the James P. Moore’s book “One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America.”  Attached to the PBS special will be a half hour Rhode Island interfaith conversation about prayer for us here. In preparation for this program PBS has organized a conference on the subject for January 24th at URI South Kingstown. You will receive the announcement through the ABCORI notes. At this conference I will be co-leading a workshop on Prayer and Forgiveness.  After reading the pertinent material I am awestruck by the depthness of the topic.

Dr. Susanna Morrill, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Lewis and Clark College, states that the themes of prayer and forgiveness have receded from American public discourse. I think the impact of this is huge for our society. On the one hand, prayer has become obsolete for many; more and more people claim not to be religious at all in our Country. Of course we must accept the reality that we don’t live in a Christian Country, and as Baptists we celebrate the diversity. But the issue here is that secularism leaves out all forms of religious expression, not only Christianity. On the other hand, forgiveness is not an option for many. We are imbarked in a war of retaliation; we hope for death penalty to be a way of getting even with harsh criminals, and we claim our privilege to bear arms as our God-given right to destroy those who attack us first. Perhaps you, like me, don’t identify with any of these feelings, but what are we doing about it?

The power of forgiveness for the purpose of healing is invaluable. If we don’t learn to forgive one another, and even our enemies, we will never be whole as a Nation. Let me clarify that forginess is always possible because it’s a matter of the heart. Now, reconciliation requires repentance. I would not forgive an abusive husband and stay in dangerous relationship. I would leave the abuse, and forgive in my heart. If we carry the resentment everywhere we go, we are the ones to suffer. The healing qualities of forgiveness go in every direction. We must forgive ourselves and believe that we can live without guilt. We can accept God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ and his restoring gift. We can forgive others who have hurt us and move on. We can also repent and ask for others to forgive us for our own wrongdoings.

In this we must understand the difference between repentance and guilt. When I worked in hospice I dealt with a lot of people with guilty feelings. Some of them had real things in their past lives that required true repentance. But many others had unfounded reasons to feel guilty. After trying really hard to explain to people that there was no reason to feel that way I realize you cannot change the way people feel just by telling them. Something larger that this was needed. So, I remembered-how could I forget?-the concept of Grace! What do we do with our guilt, real or undounded? We receive the grace of Jesus and accept his forgiveness. Dr. Harold Dean Trulear, Associate Professor of Applied Theology at Howard University Divinity School, says that “the experience of forgiveness brings with it a chance to begin anew the journey of life.” We shall not dwell in our past guilt. We cannot go from generation to generation dragging the guilt of our foreparents injustice to African or Native Americans, for example. We must repent; true repentance in this issue means the end of all racist feelings. And then we must move on at once without re-living the experience over and over again. That’s real cleansing. It requires radical love-a topic I have addressed before- and a close relationship with the giver of grace.

Would you give me your thoughts on this?

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