Franklin Graham

Billy Graham has prayed or participated in some way at eight presidential inaugurations from Lyndon Johnson's in 1965 to Bill Clinton's. Now I was being asked by the Inaugural Committee to give the invocation in my father's place at the inauguration of George W. Bush. It was January 2001, and with a cold and wet forecast, my father's doctors had asked him not to attend this one due to his health at the time.

I had already been invited to speak at the president's prayer service at Washington National Cathedral the Sunday following the inauguration, but to deliver the invocation at the swearing-in ceremony was another matter. The nation was still licking its electoral wounds and I labored to construct a prayer that would invoke God's power. Millions would be listening.

My wife, Jane, and I arrived at the Capitol at 9 a.m. and were taken to a holding room with other platform participants. A couple of hours later I was seated in a chair placed in the same spot my father had occupied four years earlier. The time for the invocation came and I made my way to the podium. My 433-word prayer acknowledged God's blessing on our country, asked for wisdom and strength for our new president and for healing to political wounds, and dedicated the inaugural ceremony to God.

But it was four words in my closing sentence that would spark a national controversy. I said, "We pray this prayer in the name of the Father, and of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

Little did I know that days later, Alan Dershowitz would write an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in which he took great offense at my "invoking the Lord Jesus Christ" at such an occasion. Others chimed in, including atheist Michael Newdow, who went so far as to file a lawsuit against the United States government and President Bush personally for allowing such a prayer at a public ceremony. Sadly, this debate is raging once again as Barack Obama continues the tradition of having an invocation and benediction at his inauguration.

As a Christian minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I prayed how I had prayed all my life -- in the name of that same Jesus. I would hope that every person invited to offer a prayer at inauguration services would be faithful to their own calling and beliefs and be permitted to pray sincerely and honestly without being subjected to attacks and litigation. Nonetheless, the invitation and opportunity to pray at an inauguration was one of the great honors of my life.

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