Sen. Dianne Feinstein recently invited Rev. Canon Gary Hall, Dean of the National Cathedral, to open her comments on gun control with a prayer.
Had Sen. Feinstein invited a member of the clergy to open her press conference with a non-partisan prayer, it not only would have been unobjectionable, it would have been commendable. There are so many issues involved in the rash of gun violence that we have witnessed, and so many people of goodwill on all sides, that a prayer asking the Lord for guidance and wisdom would have been much appreciated. But that is not what happened.
What happened was nothing less than the religious exploitation of a serious public policy issue. When Rev. Hall condemned the “terror of the gun lobby,” he politicized the issue just as badly had the NRA invited a clergyman to condemn gun control advocates. There is no place for such rank partisanship by a clergyman on this complicated issue.
