Sun. January 18, 2009
Washington, DC -
New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson gave the opening invocation for Inauguration Week by calling on God to "bless us with anger."
Robinson opened a star-studded concert at the Lincoln Memorial. His invocation was pre-empted on the exclusive HBO televised broadcast of the concert, possibly because of conservative outcries about the choice of Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church.
According to AfterElton.com, an LGBT Web site, HBO and the show's producer have blamed the Presidential Inaugural Committee for making the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show.
It also turns out half the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial couldn't hear Robinson give his prayer. A malfunction in at least one massive speaker tower is being blamed.
Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Robinson prayed "Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people."
Robinson also called on "freedom from mere tolerance" and prayed that God would help President-elect Barack Obama "to 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."
"Please, God, keep him safe," Robinson prayed for Obama. "We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking far too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe.
"Hold him in the palm of your hand -- that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.'"
Before Sunday's event, Robinson told the New York Times that he would avoid explicitly Christian terminology in an attempt to be inclusive.
Mister Obama and the Inaugural Committee tapped Robinson to give Sunday's prayer. Robinson endorsed Obama during the Democratic primaries and has advised Obama and gay and lesbian issues.
Robinson's selection was seen as a move to quiet criticism of Obama's invitation to evangelical pastor Rick Warren, an opponent of same-sex marriage, to give the invocation during the inauguration Tuesday.
Warren, who is pastor of the Saddleback Church in Southern California, spoke several times in favor of Proposition 8 and likened gay marriage to polygamy and marriage to children.
Sunday's pre-inauguration concert drew over a million people and included perfomances by Bruce Springsteen, U2, Beyonce, Usher, Garth Brooks and Stevie Wonder. Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III and Queen Latifah gave readings.
Monday, Obama has declared a nationwide "call to service" in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.
Tuesday, nearly 2 million people are expected to crowd the National Mall for the Inauguration ceremony. Obama is to be sworn in at noon on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, using the same Bible that Lincoln used at his own swearing in on March 4, 1861.
Read full text of Gene Robinson's Prayer for President-elect Barack Obama
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