Obama-Hajj: 2 Million People, Maybe More

Did you know that the Hajj is not the only annual religious event to draw pilgrims in the millions?

I hadn't thought about this much, until December. The Hajj was much on my mind then, when I opened up the Washington Post and read this article about 5 million Catholics converging on the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City to pay their respects to the Virgin.

I had no idea. I had been thinking of the Hajj as a singular event, unique to Islam in its power to draw literally millions of people into one particular space to pay respects. The Virgin pilgrimage in Mexcio proves the Hajj is not alone -- and when I gave it some thought, I could come up with two more pilgrimages drawing such great numbers of believers: millions of Hindus flocking to bathe in the Ganges on Mauni Amavasya (it'll be next Monday this year), and millions of Shiites making the pilgrimage to Karbala, in Iraq, on Ashura.

Despite the trend of American evangelical mega-churches servicing tens of thousands at a time on Sunday mornings, I could come up with no religious holidays here in the United States with the power to draw a crowd of millions ...

... which brings me to today.

I got up early this morning to join a couple million of my fellow American citizens in marking the ascendancy of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States -- an event not without its insistent religious overtones, whether it counts as a true pilgrimage or not.

The Obamas, of course, began their day with prayer, as is customary, at St. John's Episcopal Church across the street from the White House. (They worshiped at the 19th Street Baptist Church two days ago, on Sunday.)

I started my day with neither prayer nor church attendance (and I was busy on Sunday with other pursuits besides church).

As it happened, I started my day with a very quick shower, before cooking a breakfast of eggs and tomatoes with a side of veggie sausage for my houseguests. We were 15-strong in my three-bedroom apartment, with my housemates and I providing temporary lodging for pilgrims from Chicago, Brooklyn, and Raleigh-Durham.

At 8:15, I left the house with two of my guests to meet three other friends and move as a unit of six down to take our place on the National Mall. We had aimed for a medium-close vantage point, but after finding checkpoints blocked twice, we eventually settled for a very-far-away vantage point and took up a nice spot near the World War II Memorial, about a mile away from the actual event, but close to a large Jumbotron and loudspeaker.

Nearby stood four religious protestors holding signs.

"The Wages of Sin is Death," read one sign. "Trust Jesus," read another. A third sign quoted a very lengthy passage from 2 Chronicles about nations turning to God to receive blessing, and fourth man held no sign but wore an electric-blue T-shirt stretched tightly over his enormous belly, with a printed message inviting the reader to "Ask me why you're going to Hell."

The fat man and the sign-bearers took turns with a megaphone informing one and all why we are going to Hell -- whether we had asked them about it or not. When the megaphone wasn't being directed toward the crowd to inform us of our sins (focusing on the usual suspects, of course: gays, feminists, abortionists, atheists), it was directed toward the heavens to invoke the wrath of god.

Moments after the blue-shirt man had called on God via megaphone, the second invocation of the day began to be pronounced -- this time from the dais of the inauguration.

As is well-known, Obama chose to invite Pastor Rick Warren, the evangelical preacher famous for his solid support of California's Prop 8 (as well as his self-help book and his mission creep toward more traditionally liberal issues like poverty and AIDS), to offer a prayer to God before his swearing-in.

When Pastor Warren's face appeared on on the Jumbotron, I discovered with surprise that I had to turn my back. I had not planned ahead to do this, but to face the screen, and give him the same attentiveness I had given to Dianne Feinstein or Aretha Franklin or Joe Biden or John Paul Stevens would have felt like an untruth to me.

So, I wheeled silently around and turned my face upwards and saw bare brown branches criss-crossing a perfect blue sky. Nobody else within my view chose to do this, and I avoided looking into their faces, preferring to trace the branches and mull over the content of Warren's prayer. I noticed that others nearby chose also to react to Pastor Warren in various ways, such as cheering when he announced that Jesus had changed his life, or chanting along with the Bible verses.

One of my friends later remarked that she found the invocation to be "ecumenical." (I disagree.) Another stated that Warren had offered up a number of "surprisingly good lines." Fair enough: Warren did offer that his god is "loving to everyone," allowed that the country is not united by "religion" but by "freedom," and called for "civility in our attitudes even when we disagree." Fine. All very nice sentiments.

For what it's worth, I think a simple back-turn does represent "civility of attitude even in disagreement," and also I do deeply disagree with Warren's presence as part of the program.

I disagree with Warren's anti-gay attitudes -- no doubt about it -- and found it quite disappointing that after the Election Day combination of the Prop 8 catastrophe with the Obama win, that Obama chose to repeat that unhappy combo on his Inauguration Day.

Yet even more than I disagree with Warren's views on gay relationships, I deeply disagree with such an invocation of god at all at a governmental function.

Warren opened his prayer by calling out to "Almighty God," whom he addressed as "our Father." He suggested that "all nations, all people" will "stand accountable" before his god on a day of judgment. And he closed his prayer by making sure that it was signed, sealed, and delivered in the name of Jesus -- in not one, but four languages -- before quoting the words of Jesus as recorded in the book of Matthew, in the form of the Lord's Prayer.

That's not very ecumenical to me (not all Christians believe in Judgment Day, or stick to the old-school "Father" formulation), and beyond ecumenism it certainly does not take into account the interfaith pluralism that comprises America -- much less acknowledge those of us who follow no religion at all.

Obama, it must be noted, did indeed acknowledge this pluralism in his own speech, when he declared that "We are a nation of Muslims and Christians, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers." And yet even that, to me, did not go far enough. We are a nation of Buddhists and Taoists and Wiccans and Zoroastrians and practitioners of the spiritual traditions of America's indigenous people -- as well as many variations and combinations of these, and more.

Furthermore, I would remind our wonderful new president that "atheist" is not a bad word. Atheists and agnostics and humanists and secularists and ethical rationalists need not be defined in relative opposition to what he thinks we are not ("believers"), not least because most of us, most likely, believe in quite a lot. (The word "atheist" is helpfully very precise about what it is we do not believe.)

I do happen to believe, like Rick Warren, in civility even in disagreement. I also believe, like Rick Warren, that commitment to freedom is more essential to the preservation of the American union than commitment to religion. And though I do not believe in heaven, I do not begrudge the poetic sentiments behind Warren's suggestion that Dr. King (who did believe in heaven, probably) is looking down with approval from above on today's inauguration; I'd simply express such respect for an ancestor with different language.

In 2013, when Obama is elected to his second term, I would challenge him to remember that he chose three Christians to pray over his first inauguration (Revs. Gene Robinson and Joseph Lowry, in addition to Warren), to the exclusion of literally all other faiths. And I would suggest that if he is comfortable with the invocation of "Y'Shua" at his inauguration, then he should be comfortable with the invocation of Allah, or the Four Corners, or any one in the pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses: Lakshmi, Saraswati, Brahma, Hanuman, or any of the others.

And if he's not comfortable with those other invocations, then I've no doubt that an upstanding atheist -- perhaps a member of a local Ethical Society -- would be more than happy to oblige him by writing some appropriate remarks that invoke no deity at all, before respectfully making the pilgrimage.

The Five Pillars: Shahada (No god but Allah...)

When I came up the stairs in the Hindu temple from Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam's concert, I was running a bit late to return my rented car, but I wanted to see inside the worship space. I hadn't even peeked in before, while I was asking the man in the lobby shop where to buy my concert ticket, so after reading a couple of posted signs to try to ensure I wouldn't be breaking any rules by entering, I stepped from the lobby into the worship space.

The Muslim worship spaces I have experienced are empty, with rugs on the floor for praying. The Jewish worship spaces I have experienced have tended to be furnished with rows of chairs with arms, like a theater, with great variation in the style of ark situated in the front. Christian spaces, of course, have pews, with or without a baptismal pool or font in the front. The Hindu worship space surprised me in its difference.

Whether rugs, chairs, or pews, the monotheistic spaces are designed to arrange the worshippers in rows, facing forward, toward one thing: the ark, the East, the cross, whatever. The Hindu space (as perhaps I should have predicted, but did not) had no single focal point. Rather, the space contained shrines to 16 different named gods. The space was not quiet. People were talking and children were running around. Some people stood or bowed before particular shrines, others were simply sitting on the floor in lotus position, not apparently focused on any shrine in particular.

My instinct was to walk through the space and investigate each shrine one at a time. I walked up to Vishnu's space, because his was one of the largest, and because the depiction of the figure inside was different. Whereas many other shrines depicted a seated, standing, or dancing figure, the object inside the Vishnu shrine looked more like a corpse, or more specifically like a sarcophagus. There were flowers and bananas left on the stairs up into Vishnu's space and a sign at the top of the stairs reserving the inside of the shrine for priests only.

Next to me, a woman fell to her knees before the shrine of Hanuman (a god who symbolizes devotion to selfless service and humility), and pressed her forehead to the floor. This shrine also bore a sign reserving its inner space for priests, and the figure of Hanuman sat in a recess behind a curtain that could be closed. Next to the woman on the floor, another shrine, to I know not which god, had its curtain closed, and a living figure -- presumably a priest -- was moving around inside.

The rebuke from the woman at my last iftar rang in my head: "You can't be a religious tourist. Those people are there to pray."

I questioned my instinct to walk from shrine to shrine, wondering if treating the worship space like a museum might be unkind. Then I thought the better comparison might be to a Catholic, walking the stations of the cross -- something I have never done. I let the pressure of the car reservation make my decision for me, and after admiring only about a quarter of the shrines, I went back outside to collect my shoes from the cubby.

What would even the progressive Muslims of the suburban iftar have made of this temple, I wondered.

I have heard Christian sermons condemn Hindus for praying to "idols," and at the suburban iftar, I heard Richard (the convert from Christianity) criticize their polytheism as well. He mentioned it in the context of criticizing Christians for being "like the Hindus" in their worship of a three-part god.

"How is that monotheism?" Richard was asking a small group that had formed around him. "You've got Jesus, and you've got God, but Jesus is also God, and then there's this other thing, a ghost, and then you've got the Catholics, and they've got Mary all up in it too. And what's up with Mary always looking like some white woman from the Middle Ages? It's like, when somebody go all crazy and see Mary pop up her face on a piece-a toast or something, it always look like some white woman. And she’s a part of God too? What's up with that?"

The Trinity made sense to me as a child, but as an adult, I do feel like Richard has a point. I don't agree that the Hindus and Christians necessarily have it wrong somehow because their theism isn't as absolutely mono as Richard's, but I do see how being able to conceptualize God in three parts should put Christians in a bind to explain how they reject others who see even more parts to God, whether Catholics who add on Mary or the Saints, or Hindus who split the concept of God -- by some reckonings -- into millions of parts.

At the Kol Nidre service, we prayed to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Rebekah, the God of Jacob, the God of Rachel, and the God of Leah. I had done this before, but this year, for the first time, I heard the cantor explain her understanding of why we repeat the words "God of" each time.

"It's because each generation -- each person, really -- encounters God in his or her own way," the cantor explained. "We're not praying to this God of... a whole big group of people who always agreed on everything. We're praying to a God who was real to Isaac, and real to Rebekah, and to the rest, and we're honoring each of their encounters with the Eternal, as well as our own encounter."

So, by my count, that was seven gods at Kol Nidre. Or maybe a few hundred, if I'm counting the God of Jim, the God of Suzi, and the rest of the congregation celebrating High Holidays in the United Church.

When I went back to the United Church (aka Die Vereinigte Kirche) the following Sunday for Christian services, I wondered which God would be there. The God who just closed the gates in that same space on Thursday night? The God of the soprano cantor? The God of the woman who looked into my eyes and blessed me? The God of the Rev. Peter DeGroote, who would be preaching that morning? All of the above?

The giant banner depicting the Torah scroll had been removed from the cross at the front of the sanctuary, and on Sunday, the crowd was much smaller. Maybe 40 or 50 people attended services, most of them senior citizens and most of them women, including a returning pastor named Rita Horstmann, who was visiting from her home church in Cologne, having served as Die Vereinigte Kirche's German pastor in 2003 and 2004.

Rev. DeGroote was welcoming and kind, greeting me as an obvious visitor amongst the sparse crowd, since I was both male and off the average age by about thirty years. He and a younger pastor (who was about my age) wore black suits and clerical collars and no wedding rings. The younger man led us in song and prayer; the older man delivered a sermon based on the book of James (or Jakobus, as it was called in Der Bibel from the pew in front of me). The older reverend led us in some prayers as well.

We prayed to God, and we addressed one recited-in-unison prayer to "the Holy One," and we also prayed to Jesus, sometimes calling him Jesus Christ. We sang a song addressed to the "Spirit of the living God," which I had sung before at the Unitarian Church near my house. The song calls for the living God's spirit to "fall afresh on me ... melt me, mold me, fill me, use me" -- a very similar message to the "thou art the potter" hymn from my upbringing, and the God-as-potter song from Kol Nidre.

We also prayed pointedly to a Creator God (Brahma?), and we finished with the Lord's Prayer.

I know the Lord's Prayer. I have sung it and recited it hundreds if not thousands of times, sometimes with the language of “you“ and “your,” sometimes with the language of “thou” and “thine”… sometimes with "debts" and sometimes with "transgressions."

When I glanced at the upcoming text, printed on my church bulletin, I saw that Die Vereinigte Kirche addresses the Lord directly on the debts/transgressions line, using the phrasing "forgive us for wronging you” (no capital Y).

But that wasn't the only fresh aspect of their translation.

When Rev. DeGroote, and Rita Horstmann, and the senior citizens, and I, and the young, unmarried pastor all raised our voices to recite the Lord's Prayer to God, we said:

"Our Father and Mother in heaven, holy is your name."