I happen to love the new music video of American Prayer – the song is stirring, the imagery is powerful, the many stars it features, including Whoopi Goldberg, Forest Whitaker, Joss Stone, and Herbie Hancock, are warm and engaging. Even those who are not Obama supporters can not help but see the beauty in this.
American Prayer portrays a nation that offers shelter and decency to all, from poor black flood victims in New Orleans, to recent immigrants from south of the border, to Hasidic Jews who look no different than their ancestors 200 years back but have been in America for more than a century. We may differ on policy issues, but it’s hard to imagine most people, whether on the left or on the right, not celebrating this America.
But there are also some disturbing elements to American Prayer which need to be raised if we are to be honest. For starters, one can not tell if Barack Obama is meant to be understood in the video as the answer to our prayers or the one to whom we should pray. Frankly, it looks more like the latter.

Over and over we see one star after another with hands clasped and eyes gazing upward, followed by saintly looking images of the candidate. It’s as if they shot the video based on the Greatest Story Ever Told but simply replaced all the Jesus shots with Obama and made a bunch of singers and actors into the Apostles. That is not good, especially from a bunch of people who are concerned about too much God in the electoral process. They may be correct, but this is hardly better.
And if we are not meant to see Obama as God, American Prayer clearly suggests that his election is certainly God’s will. It’s especially weird given the response to Sarah Palin having suggested that everything from a pipeline in Alaska to the war in Iraq were matters of God’s will, and that she knew what it was. Claiming to know God’s will is just as dangerous when it happens to coincide with our desires as when it does not. Failing to realize that, makes both sides more alike, and more dangerous, than either side would like to admit.
I guess it comes down to how we think of prayer. I love the idea of celebrating prayer as the opportunity to voice our most deeply held hopes and dreams. I think American Prayer does that. But I worry about prayer that seems to already know what God’s answer must be or precisely who God is, right down to His haircut. And I worry about that no matter what the prayer or who offers it.