Public prayer

What should clergy do when asked to offer public prayers at various events? My colleagues tend to have strong opinions on opposite sides of this question. Some feel that they are being used—or that it is part of an old Christendom model of being church to offer invocations and benedictions at public gatherings. Others feel it is a time to proselytize; so they will only pray if they can do so in the name of Jesus. 

For my own part, whenever I can accept such invitations I say yes. While my prayers are to the living God whom I know through Jesus, I don’t feel like I sacrifice my integrity by letting Jesus be present more silently at interfaith gatherings; I trust that the one who washed his disciples’s feet with a towel on the last night of his life doesn't need to be forced on his fellow Jews, or Muslims, or unbelievers to make a prayer valid. I have prayed at the dedication of a new public safety building and the swearing in of a county sheriff, and at countless high school and college baccalaureates and graduations. I have blessed the holy ground of an elementary school classroom as the teacher got ready for the first day of school and the arrival of her students in the year ahead. 

I say yes to such invitations for theological reasons and for personal ones. First, I believe in the ministry of the baptized. I believe that the lawyers and business people and college presidents and bankers and public servants who were there today are doing “the Lord’s work.” Every week in my tradition we send the people out to “do the work that God has given us to do.”