A Rotary Club Prayer

Such is the term I often use to describe ultra-generic prayers that are deliberately non-specific when it comes to whom the prayer is addressed, and what the content of the prayer is. Don't get me wrong, such prayers, while inadequate, are not necessarily out of order in more secular gatherings. While I might hope for something more theologically robust, I'm not sure I should expect or demand such a thing, given the setting.

But Rotary Club prayers become a real problem when they are uttered by professing Christians in a supposedly Christian setting. And when a denomination puts out a prayer on its website that is so watered down that it could have been written and/or uttered even by a borderline agnostic, something's wrong with that picture. I give you the Thanksgiving prayer for 2008, as developed by the PCUSA.

In this prayer, God is mentioned only once, as 'Provider God'. Jesus is not mentioned a single time, either as an addressee, or as a topic of content. In a prayer that purports to give thanks, the PCUSA prayer utterly fails to mention the single-most thing all Christians should be most thankful for - the Incarnation, death, resurrection, and certain return of their Savior. Instead, the PCUSA prayer thanks God for earthly things like friends, family, and church unity (the last item being a depressing joke, given the severe in-fighting that has plagued the PCUSA for decades now). Now again, don't get me wrong. We should indeed give thanks to God for such horizontal blessings, and many others that the PCUSA prayer didn't mention. But are horizontal earthly blessings really the only thing we should be thankful for as Christians? Does a prayer of thanksgiving that doesn't mention or even allude to Jesus in any way still qualify as uniquely Christian in content and even address? Without Jesus, through which all things hold together (Col 1) and work together for good for his own (Rom 8), why should we give thanks at all? Doesn't being thankful for horizontal blessings presuppose and mandate thankfulness of vertical blessings too if one is a follower of Christ? Apparently not, according to the PCUSA.

I will give the PCUSA the benefit of the doubt and conclude that their omission of Christ as the principal and necessary object of the Christian's thanks is just a very poor yet towering oversight, rather than a calculated theological omission. I'm not sure they deserve such a benefit of the doubt, but I will extend it anyway. But it is one more unpleasant reminder of how easily we can all develop tin ears and massive blindspots that severly hamper our eyes and ears to be focused on Christ at all times, and especially when it comes to gratitude for blessings received. When a denomination that is outwardly Christian can't muster a distinctly Christian prayer on its own website, the reasons why it failed to do so start not to matter. I'm not against the Rotary Club, but the church is not the Rotary Club and shouldn't be auditioning for the role.