Rev. Sharon E. Watkins has been selected by President-elect Barack Obama to deliver the sermon at the national prayer service held the day after the inauguration.
Rev. Watkins will be the first woman ever selected to lead the service. She is the president and general minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Rev. Watkins was elected to the post in 2005, the first woman ever chosen to lead a mainline Protestant denomination.
Rev. Watkins is not well known nationally. She came to the attention of Barack Obama at a meeting he held during the campaign last summer to introduce himself to diverse group of ministers. Rev. Watkins was asked to give the closing prayer.
Linda Douglass, the chief spokeswoman for the inaugural committee, said the choice of Rev. Watkins was not an attempt to alleviate critics of Obama’s decision to have Rev. Rick Warren give the invocation at the inauguration---which caused an uproar among some of Obamas supporters.
“She was chosen before the inaugural program was even announced,” Ms. Douglass said of Rev. Watkins. “Her appeal is that she delivers a message of unity and inclusivity and tolerance and hope, and those are all central themes we’ve heard from the president-elect.”
Rev. Watkins has spoken out against torture and the war in Iraq of course, but as church president she has yet to take a position on same-sex marriage. The Disciples are not unified on the issue, like many Protestant churches. As a congregational church, each church is free to set its own policies.
Rev. Watkins said in a NYtime telephone interview that the church in Bartlesville, Okla., where she served as minister before becoming president, could not reach a consensus on whether to allow gay union ceremonies and decided to hold off on a decision.
“We really emphasize the responsibility as well as the freedom of individuals within the church to study Scripture to prayerfully pursue their own spiritual journey,” Rev. Watkins said. “That means we end up being incredibly diverse politically, theologically and socially."
“Coming out of that context, the kind of message I want to reflect on is the deeper unity we have as a human family,” she said of the sermon she planned to deliver at the National Cathedral.
The sermon should be around 10 to 15 minutes and will not be vetted by the Obama team, Rev. Watkins said. She added that she would preach in a way that was authentic to her Christian tradition but did not exclude people of other faiths. The prayer service will be held on Jan. 21 at the Washington National Cathedral.
Posted by Rev. Geraldine Huckman, on 21-01-2009 16:23,
Thank you for the article naming the Reverend Doctor Sharon Watkins to preach at the National Prayer Service. I hope your editorial board will take a moment to reflect and instruct staff writers about women with titles. Your article named the Reverend Doctor, Rev. Sharon E. Watkins, in the opening sentence and then referred to her as Ms. Watkins in the rest of the article. Accurate nomenclature is important in publications and I am certain your staff did not intend any harm. A bit of grammar review is in order. thank you, Rev. Huckman
Christian Web News - Jesus has a way of getting right to the point, doesn't He? There was certainly no mincing of words, He came right out and said, "why are you fearful?" and then went on to say, "O you of little faith." You don't have to read between the lines to see what He was saying, they had little faith.
Christian Web News - Galatians 3:13-14. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree''), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
