Answers Lived

Every so often, a friend has raised the question: 

“Can Christians pray with Mormons?”

Personally, I’ve never wrestled with this question; long before I ever heard it, I had lived my answer.

Of course I can pray with Uncle Tom, Aunt Sue, my cousins! Yes I call them Christians, yes they know that Jesus is their savior, yes we’ve prayed together, and we’ll continue to do so!

More rarely, I’ve encountered a more controversial question: 

“Can Christians pray with Muslims?”

I’d never wrestled with this one either; I believed that the answer was obvious.

Of course not.

When I first arrived at the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf, I knew nothing of the school’s religious demographic. As you can imagine, I was eager to ask, “How many are Christians? How many are Muslims? Who’s who here?”

On my very first night, while I was helping put the boys to bed, one of the veteran volunteers told me, “We’re going to pray with them now.”

Pray? How? With whom? With all of them? Which ones are the Christians? How can I tell? Is it okay to pray with the Muslims? Am I personally okay praying with the Muslims?

There was no opportunity to ask such questions. 

I just started to pray with them.

All of their prayers resembled my own at their age. All of our prayers ended with big smiles and hugs. 

In the past, it was an exclusively theological question, which entailed a theological answer. Of course not, because I believe ABC, but they believe XYZ, and this means that we pray to different gods, so we cannot pray together.  

Far be it from me to minimize the theological. Certainly, I think that it’s important to ask, “Can an unspecified Christian pray with an unspecified Muslim in any given situation?” 

But the fact of the matter is that I have been forced to ask a different question, a different kind of question: 

Tonight, can I pray with these particular boys -- all of whom I love, all of whom love me? 

Before I knew it, I had lived my answer.

An excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead... 

“I remember when you walked to the pulpit in that shot-up, bloody shirt with that pistol in your belt. And I had a thought as powerful and clear as any revelation. And it was, ‘This has NOTHING to do with Jesus.’ Nothing. Nothing. And I was, and I am, as certain of that as anyone could ever be of any so-called vision. I defer to no one on this. Not to you, not to Paul the Apostle, not to John the Divine.” 

...And neither Paul the Apostle nor John the Divine could convince me that God is unhappy when I  pray with Mahmoud.