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: Hajj (Pilgrimage)

It has been almost one month since I posted on my blog, because I have been on a four-way Hajj.

My primary Mecca was San Francisco, where my work sends me every year in November. Whenever I can, I stay afterward to enjoy some free time in the Bay Area, and also to make a secondary pilgrimage, to the home of my cousin Doris, who lives on top of a mountain in Saratoga. My third destination this year was Berkeley, where one of my old housemates lives, and finally, I paused in Kentucky on my way back to the East Coast, to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving with my family.

My travels and my work and my inattention to this blog project meant that I skipped four Bahai holidays in November, and overlooked the beginning of Advent for liturgical Christians on Sunday, November 29. The moon waxed full on the first day of my travels on the West Coast, and it was new again by the time of Thanksgiving in Kentucky. This new moon brought with it the beginning of the Jewish month of Kislev, which will end with Hannukah; the Hindu month of Agrahayana; and the Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah, the final month of the Muslim year, and the month of the Hajj.

HAJJ #1: SAN FRANCISCO

My trip to the Bay Area coincided, uh, by the grace of God, with the nationwide protest against California's passing of Proposition 8, the anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment. For me, and my Hajj, the gilded dome of San Francisco City Hall stood in for the Ka'aba, and two handsome local activists kissing behind the speakers' podium stood in for an imam's call to prayer.

The fight in California, of course, was not irrelevant to the subject of religion, with the "yes" side arguing strenuously that gay marriage leads to religious discrimination and sanction for punishment against denominations that preach against homosexuality. Personally, I don't think these arguments wash, of course, and yet pro-gay-marriage advocates don't always do all they can to disabuse the evangelicals and the Mormons of these false notions. There were protesters at the rally carrying signs that said: "Destroy the Mormon church," "Fuck Mormons," and the word "mormons," with a slash through the second "m."

Other protesters took on the religionists much more tactfully and intelligently, by praising the Biblical relationships between David and Jonathan or Naomi and Ruth, for example, or pointing out what traditional marriage really means for those inclined to read the Bible literally. These signs reminded us of Jacob and his two wives, or King Solomon and his 700 wives, supplemented with 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). If I had brought sign-making supplies with me, I might have followed this theme and condensed a story told in the book of 1 Samuel about how King David added to his harem of 12 wives by slaying 200 Philistines and slicing off their foreskins as a dowry presentation for his new wife's father.

HAJJ #2: DORIS

Eighty-four years old, widowed, energetic, thoughtful, passionate, creative, and kind, my cousin Doris lives alone in a house on a mountain overlooking the village of Saratoga, and -- in the distance -- San Francisco Bay. She has oranges and avocados growing around her house, and when she found a dead deer on her property a year ago, she enlisted a neighbor to help her with the task of dragging its carcass into the woods. She is independent and fierce, and I look up to her the way I never have to one of my elders since I was a child. She sent regular birthday letters to me in Kentucky until I was 18, and then we lost touch until I started making regular trips to the West Coast in my thirties.

Doris founded the first Presbyterian church in Saratoga, and has been one of its elders for more than 40 years. She attends church every Sunday, makes food baskets for the poor, and recently lamented to me that she does not think she should go on her church's upcoming mission trip to Guatamala because of her age. Also, Doris voted against Prop 8. When I first came out as gay to her, she told me she thinks I am wonderful, and then she asked me why I don't have a partner yet. She asks me that every time she sees me, just like a Grandmother who wants a grandson to settle down with a nice woman and start a family. It's not annoying. It's kind of a pleasure.

Like me, Doris has differences with the religion she was raised to believe. She has strong words for Southern Baptists (her parents' denomination), and she doesn't shy away from her vocal opinion that my Fundamentalist Christian parents, in their late fifties, are too old to change their views. She and I disagree on that point. Her liberal attitude and free spirit and mistrust of Baptists notwithstanding, Doris also continues to speak the language of the Christian church. She places dilemmas "in God's hands," talks about "God's will" for her future, and when she is at her most outraged about the church's disapproval of homosexuals, her hands begin to shake as her eyes flash and she shouts: "Jesus died for all of us! He died for all of us!"

HAJJ #3: DAVID

Ah, beautiful David, with that energy, that smile, those legs, that way around a kitchen, that joy of living (and that long-distance girlfriend who remains in Washington, DC). Doesn't he need a concubine to complete that picture? Doesn't he know that's traditional? The shared source-text for our two faith traditions says so!

On the walk from the BART to his apartment, David told me about his first Yom Kippur experience in Berkeley. "It was so different from what I was used to, growing up in Philadelphia," David told me about his Berkeley High Holidays. "Usually, when they talk about the gates closing, it's fearful. You want to make it through, and you're afraid they're going to close on you. But these people out here... whoa! It wasn't like that. They were dancing in the aisles. They were singing at the top of their lungs. It's like the gates were closing, but they didn't care. They were going to storm those gates."

I thought of asking him if he'd be interested in going there for Shabbat while I was staying with him, but we both ended up having other plans Friday night. Still, on Saturday, with David I had the most religious experience of my West Coast journey, as we spent the day in the beautiful natural diversity of Marin County. We started the day in the tidepools, investingating the orange and rust-colored starfish and the crabs and mussels and snails. We climbed rocks to watch the waves crash, and then we climbed a mountain up into a redwood forest. By the end of the day we emerged on a bald hill overlooking the ocean, from which we could scan a 270-degree panorama, watch the fog roll in, and witness the sun sinking fast into the Pacific.


HAJJ #4: THANKSGIVING

My mother sat at the head of the table, and announced the Thanksgiving tradition of going around the table and naming one thing for which we are thankful. This tradition began when Thanksgiving was just me and my sister and my parents as a group of four. In recent years, we've morphed into more of a motley collection of single or widowed cousins or friends of my parents -- compensation for the fact that my grandparents are dead, my parents are both only children, and my sister and I are childless.

This year, we had ten people around the table, including my sister's new boyfriend, who had never gathered for Thanksgiving before. The "thanks" that each of us spoke aloud largely centered on being thankful for the group of people assembled, and for the health of a hospitalized cousin who just beat prostate cancer. On my turn, I followed suit, naming the same things. I had other ideas in my head, such as thanks for all the workers involved in getting the food to our plates, praise for my mother's work in the kitchen, thanks for the turkey who gave its life, a recognition of the white settlers' unfairness to the native people, and gratitude for the Obama win -- but I tend to censor myself in my parents' home.

At the end of the go-around, my father concluded with a formal prayer to God, in Jesus' name. He repeated the thanks for the cousin's cancer dodge (my dad had a cancer scare of his own this summer that he didn't mention), and for the family members who had gathered. He thanked God for the food that God had set before us, and he asked God to be with those who do not have enough to eat. He asked that God's will be done in all things, and he compared us to the food with favorite phrase of his asking God to "bless this food for the nourishment of our bodies, and us for your service. All these things we ask in Jesus' holy name, Amen." This is the way he prays.