Religion and the secular world constantly mix, sometimes in questionable ways. These days, we have become so used to this mixing that we rarely stop to question where one ends and the other begins. I know this one will sting a little, but stay with me.
Some years ago, I was MCing an event and I skipped the prayer and went straight into the salutations. I had barely got through the opening when someone from the audience stopped me and said, “We cannot start this important event without prayer.”
I pretended I had simply forgotten.
“Ah, yes, the prayer,” I said, as though somebody had just reminded me that I had forgotten my own name.
We prayed and continued with the programme.
But the incident got me thinking about something we rarely question. Who decided that we should pray in the first place, and who decided which God we were going to pray to?
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against prayer. People pray because of their faith, and I respect that. I am one of them. What I find interesting, however, is how prayer has become almost mandatory at events that have nothing to do with religion.
I have attended enough corporate events, conferences, workshops and launches to know that this is the modus operandi. The MC welcomes everyone, goes through the salutations, and then comes the prayer. Sometimes there is even a person specifically assigned to pray.
In most cases, it is obvious that it will be a Christian prayer, and quite often, if not always, a Pentecostal one. That is despite the fact that the room can contain Catholics, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Muslims, Rastafarians, people from other faiths and people who do not believe in God at all.
Nobody normally asks. We simply assume that everyone is comfortable with the prayer because Christianity happens to be the dominant religion in the country.
That assumption is probably worth questioning.
Imagine being the only Muslim in a room and suddenly everyone is asked to participate in a Christian prayer. Or being an atheist and finding yourself expected to bow your head while someone prays to a God you do not believe in. Surely, you may choose to remain quiet out of respect, but that does not necessarily mean you wanted to participate.
Sometimes I think we have turned prayer into a box we tick before getting on with the real business. What’s funny to me is that we pray for wisdom, integrity, honesty and guidance, then when the meeting starts, we immediately get into the very things we supposedly asked God to help us avoid.
Perhaps we need to make a distinction between religious and secular spaces. If you are attending a church event, pray. If you are at a mosque, pray. If you are attending a religious conference, prayer is obviously part of the programme. Nobody would be confused or offended.
But if you are opening a corporate conference or a business meeting, why is prayer automatically part of the programme?
I believe a secular gathering should be able to exist without borrowing a religious ritual simply because that is what we have always done. You can welcome people, acknowledge the purpose of the meeting and get on with the business at hand. If the organisers want a moment of reflection, there is nothing stopping people from having one privately, according to their own beliefs.
That, to me, seems more respectful in a room where everyone does not worship the same God, follow the same religion, let alone believe in God at all.
The irony is that we have become so accustomed to starting everything with prayer that questioning the practice can sound sacrilegious.
But perhaps let us be sober and ask why we pray at a meeting that was never religious in the first place.
And if we are going to pray anyway, who exactly gets to decide which religion’s prayer should be said, and which God we should pray to?
