Public invocations …

WHAT WAS the reaction of the students whose invitations Garret Keizer refused? ("No can do," Nov. 14). It was a very small honor but an honor nevertheless. How did the school teachers feel?

Public prayer, including school prayer, has a bad name in part because so many clergy seize the opportunity to inflict a convoluted Christology on mixed audiences. "How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" is the basic question. Some clergy just say no. They cannot function away from the altar. Like Keizer their attitude is, "If people want to pray, they can come to us."

A few years ago my chaplain daughter and I collaborated on a grace to be given at an awards lunch for women in federal service. At that time Congress had failed to pass legislation providing payment for most federal employees. Only "essential" workers were being paid. So when my daughter prayed for a blessing on the women workers she prayed for "essential and unessential" workers. When she said those words a murmur ran around the room.

Women came to her afterward. They thought if she had the wit to know what was going on in the secular world, then her judgment in religious matters might also be relevant.

I am sure the student and parents who came to Keizer's church after graduation benefitted greatly from his careful attention. Perhaps other students and their parents and their teachers are the poorer because of his refusal to share an invocation.

E. Arnie Porter
Alexandria, Va.

Garret Keizer assumes that the request to offer a graduation invocation came from a superficial motive. What about those parents who struggled with both their eighth grader and the school system to get their daughter or son to graduation? What about the achievement of eighth graders who had dealt with learning difficulties? What about the need for all to recognize God's presence in the mission of education?

How sad that Keizer decided God did not want his witness there.

A. Wayne Schwab
St. John's Episcopal Church,
Essex, N.Y.

COPYRIGHT 2001 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning