Gay Bishop’s invocation not aired by HBO but moves quickly on YouTube
So Sarah Pulliam is a reporter for Christianity Today. We worked together a few years ago at the Colorado Springs Gazette. Sunday’s big “We Are One” concert at the Lincoln Memorial and that aired on HBO, starting with the invocation of Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. It was suggested he was asked to speak to offset the choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation in the inaugural ceremonies. Didn’t really matter. It seems HBO didn’t air Robinson’s prayer.
Maybe it didn’t get air play but it lit YouTube up like a pinball machine. ranked number one in news and politics videos today and made the top views lists in countries around the world. Overall it was fourth most viewed video of the day with 116,344 views (including two myself) since being added Sunday night.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee and HBO has since apologized, saying that he was part of a pre-show and not the main show telecast which started at 2:30, not when Robinson spoke ten minutes earlier. It will be included in updated versions of the concert.
“It is ironic that he wasn’t in our telecast,” they said in a statement “as the whole show conveyed a message of unity and inclusion. He would have fit in perfectly.”
Here’s the prayer’s text in-full.
Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president. …
Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah. …
