CREEDE HINSHAW: Prayer still undergirds local government

This week I had the privilege of praying over the democratic process at one of its most basic levels. I was invited to pray before the Macon-Bibb County commissioners’ monthly meeting.

Most citizens have had the experience of exercising civic duty via a jury summons. Consider my invitation the ecclesiastical equivalent. I don’t know how I got on the list. Maybe, having run through their active clergy, they were scraping the bottom of the retired clergy barrel. Whatever the reason, I was pleased to accept.

With all the bombast about religion being removed from the public square, I believe civic religion is still very much alive in the public square. My guess is, that at least in the South, many governmental meetings are opened with prayer. The one praying is no longer exclusively Protestant or even Christian. Rabbis and imams are just as likely to open a meeting in prayer these days. No matter who is offering the prayer, government officials are acknowledging that their decisions and authority are subservient to the One to whom we publicly pray.

Before me sat nine city/county commissioners, the mayor, a city attorney and a recording secretary. Behind me sat a room mostly full of ordinary citizens, black and white, present to make comments, to petition the council and to observe the work of government. Call me silly or naïve, but it was inspiring – in light of the gridlock in Washington – to realize that government on a level much closer to home is still somewhat participatory.

One doesn’t know exactly how to pray in such a circumstance. I remembered an inflammatory civic prayer I’d once seen on the internet prayed by a clergyman with a political and theological axe to grind. His take-no-prisoner invocation was highly popular in some circles. But somehow it seems unfair and an abuse of the privilege of prayer to pray in such a fashion. Clergy, like other citizens, can communicate their desires to their elected representatives in the normal way rather than slipping it into a prayer before a captive audience.

I thanked the commissioners for serving, expressed my appreciation to them for a specific piece of legislation they had passed after a certain amount of wrangling, and then invited those present to bow for prayer. I’m sure the prayer was a variation of one frequently heard: gratitude for the community, the hope that our representatives would give as much attention to the poorest constituent as the wealthiest donor, the plea that our city would not overlook the homeless, the immigrant, the incarcerated and the indigent and thanks to God for those who offered themselves as servants. Amen.

The evening agenda was lengthy; I hope my prayer was appropriately brief. When I finished, three high school girls led us in the Pledge of Allegiance after which the business of the people commenced. I came home believing that in some unknowable fashion a prayer and a pledge lent important perspective to the meeting.

Email columnist Creede Hinshaw, a retired Methodist minister, at [email protected].