Inaugural Prayer Service Invites Foreign Gods

ADELLE M. BANKS/RNS

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama enter the Washington National Cathederal for the Inaugural Prayer Service on January 22, 2013. (RNS photo by Donovan Marks/courtesy the Washington National Cathedral.)

President Obama started his second term with a worship service and a challenge to help heal the nation’s divides.

“We find ourselves desperately longing to find common ground, to find a common vision, to be one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for everyone,” said Adam Hamilton, the Kansas City pastor chosen to preach Tuesday at the National Prayer Service at Washington National Cathedral. “In this city and in this room, are the people who can help.”

The inaugural service carried that theme for more than an hour, presenting the nation’s rainbow of faiths and cultures with a bilingual welcome and reading from the Gospel of Matthew, and an imam and Christian and Jewish cantors taking turns calling the congregation to prayer.