Donald Miller at the DNC

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On Monday night Donald Miller, one of my favorite authors, gave the closing prayer at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Here’s the video:

I thought he did a really wonderful job, and the whole text of the prayer can be found on his website (which I link to above). His participation in the convention does raise a number of interesting issues:

1) How appropriate is it for someone like Miller, a prominent voice within the evangelical community, to participate in this sort of overtly partisan event? When I first heard that Miller was doing this, I was a bit skeptical. I love Donald Miller, I will probably end up voting for Obama, and if someone held a gun to my head and forced me declare allegiance to a party it’d be the Democrats (though I should note that is just about the only circumstance that would incline me to declare allegiance to a political party, as there are plenty of issues on which I take a conservative position), but the intersection of faith and partisan politics still makes me a little bit nervous. I appreciate what Miller said on his website:

“There is a long way to go, but sending a message to Washington that no single party has the Christian community in their pocket, thus causing each party to carefully consider the issues most important to us, is, in my opinion, a positive evolution.”

That is a positive evolution indeed, as we are currently seeing a much needed reaction against Religious Right-dominated politics. If Miller were a pastor, then perhaps his appearance at the DNC would be a bit more questionable, but he’s not. He is a person of faith who speaks about faith in a way that a whole bunch of young people around the world connect with, and that is a very good thing. I was asking myself how I would feel about a more conservative Christian political figure giving a closing prayer at the Republican National Convention, and it’s difficult to say. I suppose if it was done in a similar manner to how Miller handled his prayer, it could be a positive thing.

2. This is related, but it bears reemphasizing that it is a great thing to see Christian voices speaking from both sides of the political spectrum. The reality is, neither party speaks for God, and neither candidate is “God’s choice”, and it is important for Christians to advocate for issues that matter to God (poverty, health care, peace, protection of the environment, fair labor laws, economic justice, the sanctity of life, etc.). In their most recent issue Relevant magazine published a cover story entitled How to Vote Without Losing Your Soul, and I thought they did a great job of offering a biblical, not-so-stereotypical guide to Christian political action. The article featured interviews with Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw, and Tony Campolo, all of whom were insightful (to be fair, those three obviously do represent a more liberal stream of Christian thinking, and perhaps I’m sympathetic to them because I largely share their views, but regardless of our political bent I believe they have ideas worth listening to).

3) We could dissect Miller’s prayer, find flaws in it, and then talk about all of the reasons we didn’t like it (see the comments under this article in Christianity Today), or we can rejoice in the fact that a prominent evangelical stood in front of an arena full of Democrats and represented evangelicals in a positive manner. He even went so far as to invoke Jesus’ name at the end of the prayer, and he did so in a very diplomatic, non-imposing fashion, clearly emphasizing the “I” in the statement, “I make these requests in the name of your son, Jesus, who gave his own life against the forces of injustice.”

When I was in college I felt almost ostracized because I didn’t share the same political views as most of my friends (out of 35 guys in my fraternity house I was the only one who didn’t vote to re-elect Bush). I’m grateful that voices like Donald Miller, Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, Tony Campolo, and Jim Wallis are carrying the flag for Christians who don’t want to be owned by the Religious Right. They are rightly pointing out the flawed thinking that has led many Christians to believe that social evils can simply be legislated away (for example, they are thinking more creatively about how to eliminate abortion, noting the intellectual laziness inherent in believing that a pro-life president or a pro-life Supreme Court will do the trick. They are recognizing social and economic factors that lead to abortions and thinking about ways to address them. This is another topic for another blog post, but let me clarify here that I am as pro-life as they come). I believe these voices are paving the way for a more responsible, more Christian, political dialog, and that is a very good thing.

Kudos to Donald Miller for a job well done. If you haven’t yet, please do watch the video or read the text of his prayer.

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Tags: 2008 presidential election, barack obama, Christianity, Democratic National Convention, Donald Miller, faith, politics, prayer