By Karan Thapar

I wonder if you've noticed how open Americans can be? I'm not talking about candour or forthrightness so much as their talent for baring souls and revealing their innermost thoughts in public. In fact, this is the secret of Oprah Winfrey's show. People say the most incredible things. You and I may feel the same emotions but we would never have the gumption to express them. In America, however, it's not just studio audiences who expose themselves without hesitation. So too do politicians.

I’ve just spent three days in Washington attending the National Prayer Breakfast.  It was my third such visit.  By now I should have grown accustomed to what I saw and heard.  Yet I still can’t help gawk and marvel at how Americans share with strangers what God and faith mean to them.  Can you imagine a gathering of 4000 journalists, businessmen and assorted professionals in Delhi talking about God and the comfort of his presence?  Can you visualise a senior minister (Congress or BJP) admitting how acceptance of faith has changed his life? I doubt it.  Yet that’s precisely what the Prayer Breakfast is all about.

My first visit was in 2002.  John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, was the lead speaker.  In his slow deliberate southern drawl he spoke of the morning he was sworn-in as a senator.  I was mesmerised by the intimacy of his revelation.

“My family had come to Washington to be with me and we all knelt and held hands in prayer.  It was a moment of sharing and of giving ourselves to God.  Only my father, who was elderly, remained seated on a chair.  Suddenly I noticed him struggling.  ‘Dad’ I said, ‘you don’t have to get up.’ And Dad replied : ‘Son, I ain’t strugglin to stand.  I’m strugglin to kneel.  I want to share in your prayer’.”

Ashcroft told the gathering how that night, on the train home, his father died.  The morning’s prayer was virtually the last memory he had of him.  God, he concluded, had taken him back and the thought gave him solace.

The next year Condoleezza Rice was the main speaker.  Describing herself as the daughter and grand daughter of ordained Presbyterian ministers, she spoke of what religion means to her : “It’s hard for me to imagine my life without a strong and active faith.  Faith is what gives me comfort and humility and hope .... even through the darkest hours.  Like many people – here and abroad – I have turned to God and prayer more and more this past year and a half .... Everyone in this room has been blessed, and I am sure we all know that it is dangerous to think about the hand that one has been dealt relative to others if it ends in questioning why someone else has more.  It is, on the other hand, sobering and humbling to think about one’s blessings and to ask why you have been given so much when others have so little.”

But perhaps it’s the speech I heard this year, from Tony Hall, America’s Ambassador to UNICEF, that best explains why the openness of American politicians can win admiration whilst simultaneously leaving one squirming with unease.  After humorously recounting how he stumbled upon religion and how his wife is often incredulous about his faith, Hall spoke about God and his influence.  I can’t imagine any other politician saying what he did :

“My life has really changed. Not only on issues, but the way I think about things. I want to live my life in God, not just a few times a week but everyday. I once heard the most amazing prayer said by a missionary. He said ‘I hope that my weaknesses don’t get in the way of God’s will’. I’ve been saying that prayer ever since I heard it. It’s important that my pride, my weaknesses, my bad habits, don’t get in the way of what God wants me to do. And that’s my prayer."

This sunday, as I reflect on the three Prayer Breakfasts I’ve attended, I’m not sure what to make of the speeches I’ve heard.  Part of me finds their painful transparency laudable but I also can’t help feel they are intrusive.  It’s like being naked.  No doubt it’s how we were meant to be but we’re no longer used to it.  Today, nudity in art is aesthetic, in real life, however, it’s often disconcerting.  But is that because we’ve acquired a false sense of shame?