Ah, wasn't life easy when it was assumed that Billy Graham would give the inaugural prayer?!
Non-political, widely respected, eminent, senior, an establishment figure who could also appeal across generations. Those dulcet Southern tones mixed with the gravitas of a man who had also prayed with everyone from the President of China, you would think, to the piano repair man next door.
Jesus’s name
Since Graham began to do fewer of these, life has not been so easy for those who try to pick inaugural ‘pray-ers’. His son, Franklin, did one marvelous prayer and then was criticised for praying in Jesus’s name, which for any right-thinking person is surely like criticising a Coca-Cola executive for drinking Coca-Cola. In whose name did they expect Franklin Graham to pray? Then, I remember, Rick Warren was criticised for being willing to do it at all, at which he wisely pointed people to 1 Timothy 2.2, where the apostle Paul tells us specifically to pray for those in authority. More recently still, this year in fact, Louie Giglio wisely backed down from his invitation because he believed that his prayer at the inauguration would be used for political capital against him and the portion of the evangelical movement he represents.
