How tolerant are we?

The various ceremonies surrounding the inauguration of President Obama featured prayers and messages from people of an amazingly broad spectrum of religious traditions – Protestant of almost all stripes (Pentecostal, Evangelical, Liberal main line), Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish. Although there was some flak about the placement of some of these, especially Rick Warren at the inauguratal ceremony, nobody seemed to mind this reflection of American religious diversity and tolerance for others’ beliefs.

Which is one reason that I find this story interesting.

Oklahoma is a place with which I am not familiar, but one would think that people there would want the records of their legislative bodies to be correct, even if they did not all like what happened.

But I guess the matter is not clear cut, after all. According to the web site of the United Church of Christ Rev. Scott Jones, pastor of Cathedral of Hope – Oklahoma City gave an invocation for the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

After Mr. Jones gave the invocation, the House actually debated on whether to include the prayer in the journal and 20 voted against putting it in.

The pastor is gay. The congregation is primarily gay and lesbian. And the church is in the capital city of the state. Surely people knew this before inviting the man. The pastor’s denomination is upset and its leaders are screaming “bigotry.” I think I can safely assume that his congregation is less than happy.

My first thought is that there is a whole lot of unnecessary ugliness here. But after thinking more about it, I am wondering if maybe we should be glad that even though it is a shame how some reacted, that fact that the leadership appreciated religious diversity enough to invite Rev. Mr. Jones in the first place is an encouraging thing.

(In Minnesota Ojibway shamans have given invocations, even being allowed to light the otherwise taboo tobacco in the chambers in preparation. I don’t think that there are any members of the legislature who practice Ojibway religion and almost all of them are clearly anti-tobacco, but they are accepting enough to welcome the shamans.)

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