In a discussion I once had about how I preferred a moment of silence to a prayer for college assemblies, someone once replied, "Oh, no. Our chaplain's prayers are so general that they couldn't possibly offend anyone." At the time, I accepted that. I wasn't religious, and while I didn't much care for opening prayers, I was neither offended by them nor unable to sit through them.
Now, as a religious person, I take objection to the notion that prayers, or services, or rituals, can be "so general that they don't offend anyone," because I've found myself annoyed by a number of exactly these type of prayers, services and rituals. I think such interfaith efforts have two main premises in their creation. One, that most religions have at their heart the same central truths, and two, that it doesn't matter how these truths are expressed.
I agree with the first assertion, within reason. I absolutely do not agree with the second.
The second statement ignores the fact that people in the world choose different religions because those religions' language and ritual speaks to them and moves them. It also ignores the fact that there are religions that believe that there are proper ways to approach the Gods, that more than intent matters, and that Gods may be offended by improper ritual. It indicates that it doesn't matter if a religious sentiment expressed on behalf of others fits the people involved. All that matters is that a non-offensive religious sentiment is expressed.
This problem -- what I call "interfaith mish-mash" -- manifests in several places: in secular contexts, such as college assemblies, in interfaith churches, and in interfaith rituals. Unsurprisingly, it rarely manifests in religious rituals where everyone shares a religious language. Such religiously homogeneous groups typically share a basic set of language and ritual used in the religious tradition. While there may be dissent about the particulars, most people share the same axioms of faith.
In secular contexts, it is preferable to use secular rituals to bring people together as large groups, and to leave religious rituals to communities of like-minded people to interact with one another and the sacred. In religious settings that are interfaith endeavors, avoiding an interfaith mish-mash requires a courage to craft new rituals and symbols and reshape the old ones in meaningful ways.
Prayers and religious sentiments in strictly secular settings are often used to give an air of gravity to the situation -- to make participants aware of the seriousness of the endeavor. This, however, can be done just as easily by invoking broad concepts appropriate to the gathering, without ever framing it as a prayer. Much of this is proper labeling - an inspiring poem read at the beginning of a secular gathering can be called "Opening Words" instead of an "Opening Prayer". But, too, there is a fundamental difference between a religious opening and a secular one. The religious opening is addressed to someone other than the participants; either in supplication or gratitude. A secular opening is, by its language and framing, clearly intended for the participants, and leaves any speaking to a deity to the individuals.
Rituals in interfaith endeavors often make the unfortunate mistake of merely appropriating the ritual structure of one religion, while completely removing the sentiment originally expressed by that ritual. To take a ritual structure that exists because it has been crafted for a particular purpose -- and then to remove that meaning -- takes a ritual with meaning and history and diminishes it to a shell of the original, often offending those who find real meaning and sacredness in the original.
As an example, I typically attend a Unitarian Universalist (UU) near where I live, and I find that UU services often make this mistake. That is, they frequently borrow ritual forms from other religions, but remove all traces of religious sentiment that might offend those in the church who believe differently. For example, on Easter, our church had an annual flower communion. It was clearly an interfaith adaption of a Christian communion. However, there was very little framing text around the ritual, leaving it quite unclear what the purpose of the ritual was, except to follow the form of a Christian ritual. Some mention was made of the "individualness of all people, like flowers," but no other meaning was offered.
Both my husband and I, who have participated in ritual communion in our respective faiths, found it a meaningless ritual. It wasn't communion with anything in particular, and frankly, having an entire ritual to assert the "uniqueness of each person" is too shallow to be of any use. It was a classic example of what I call UU blandness - so much meaning had been removed from the ritual that it became little more than an elaborate way for members to get a flower to take home. Religious ritual can, and should, be much more than that.
I did some research on UU flower communions, and one of the things I found was a full-text description of the original UU flower communion. I don't know how I would have felt if my church had done that one (which had significantly more talking framing the ritual than ours did), but it at least had more meaning than the bland version I saw. Doing a more meaningful ritual is tricky, because it requires crafting a ritual that affirms the deep, shared values of the people present -- something that requires the creator of the ritual to be extremely familiar with those beliefs. To craft an interfaith ritual with meaning requires creating new symbols and ritual structures -- not merely appropriating old ones into foreign tasks. It is every bit worth it when it works, though.
I still don't think opening prayers are a good idea; I still find a moment of silence more appropriate, although I can still sit through an opening prayer if one is given. But I often find myself wishing that opening prayers were recast into opening words. Even more so, I find myself hoping that interfaith endeavors are crafted with more boldness instead of by merely diluting existing rituals. For when one strips religious ritual so bare of meaning that it is supposedly offensive to none, it becomes tasteless, dry, and useless -- and in so doing, offends those who expect more of religion.