New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson Delivers Invocation at Inaugural Kick-Off
ROBINSON
New Hampshire Union Leader
Jillian Jorgensen
Boston University Washington News Service
Jan. 18, 2009
WASHINGTON –V. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, led a crowd of hundreds of thousands in prayer at the opening concert of the presidential inauguration at the Lincoln Memorial Sunday, calling on a “God of our many understandings” to bless the country, its people, and its president and asking for unity.
“Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance, replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger,” Robinson, the nation’s first openly gay Episcopal bishop, said during the invocation.
The celebration began with Robinson’s invocation and included performances and historical readings by scores of musicians and entertainers, all while President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden and their families watched from the side of the stage, behind thick glass. Biden and Obama also delivered brief speeches to the crowd stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.
“I don’t mind being an opening act for any of them,” Robinson said with an easy smile Saturday afternoon, in an interview the day before the event. “It’s very exciting and very humbling. It’s just an indescribable honor.”
In his invocation, Robinson asked for the nation to be blessed with anger at discrimination against any group, including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, discomfort with easy answers from politicians, and humility, compassion and generosity.
Robinson then asked for President-Elect Barack Obama to be blessed with wisdom, stirring words, strength and safety.
“Give him a quiet heart, for our ship of state needs a steady, calm captain in these times,” Robinson said.
“Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims,” he added.
Robinson said he decided to address the prayer to a non-specific deity after he read older inaugural invocations and prayers and found them to be “aggressively Christian.” He said he wanted to write something more inclusive.
“All I could think about when I read them was, my goodness, what does a Jew think hearing this? What does a Muslim think? What does a Sheikh or a Hindu think?” Robinson said during the Saturday afternoon interview. “Having been not included, as a gay man, in so many instances, the last thing I want to do is exclude any American from this.”
President-elect Obama’s choice of Rick Warren, the pastor of the Saddleback Church in California and a strong opponent of gay marriage, to pray at the swearing-in ceremony Tuesday had disappointed many gays and lesbians, including Robinson himself.
“I think they just hadn’t thought through how painful that would be to gay and lesbian people only six weeks after the passage of Proposition 8 in California,” he said.
The inaugural committee told Robinson that his invocation at the concert had been planned before the Warren controversy, he said.
Robinson was not invited by the archbishop of Canterbury to attend the Lambeth Conference, a gathering of the Anglican Communion that occurs every 10 years, in England this summer. The Episcopal Church is part of the Anglican Communion.
“I was being more included by the society and the government of the United States than I was by the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which I’m a bishop. There’s something very ironic in that,” he said.
The Sunday event, titled “We Are One,” was an inclusive event, including a stirring performance by U2 of “Pride,” a song written about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an impression of the president-elect by actor and musician Jamie Foxx that got big laughs from the crowd, and performers Usher, Stevie Wonder and Shakira collaborating on “Higher Ground.”
Garth Brooks sang a medley that had the Obamas bopping in their seats and the crowd raising their hands enthusiastically during his rendition of “Shout,” and Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen led the crowd in Woody Guthrie’s classic, “This Land is Your Land.” To close the show, singer Beyonce led all the performers in “God Bless America,” a finale that brought Robinson back on stage, singing along.
“The Obama campaign definitely did a great job in terms of bringing together people from many different backgrounds to commemorate this important moment in American history,” David Imamura, the president of the Dartmouth College Democrats, said after the show.
Robinson’s consecration as a bishop in 2003 has caused significant division, but not yet a formal schism, in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
“In my life and ministry, I have tried to be inclusive of everyone,” he said. “It’s not anything that I do that’s divisive, I think. It’s just who I am that is divisive. And you know what? I can’t do anything about that. And I wouldn’t do anything about that.”
####
