On the Obama-Warren Flap

Those interested in the intersection of religion and faith will know about the current uproar over President Elect Barack Obama inviting Saddleback Church Pastor and bestselling author of The Purpose-Driving Live Rick Warren to offer the invocation at his inaguration.  Progressives and gay rights advocates responded with anger and contempt at the news given Warren's alignment with more conservative evangelical traditions in Christianity (Warren's background is Baptist) and some social commitments to match.  Top on the complaint list is Warren's support for California's Prop. 8 that ammended the state constitution mandateing marriage as between one man and one woman and banning gay marriage. Huffington Post columnist Bob Geiger said, "People in the Religious Right will never support Barack Obama or his agenda, so giving a homophobic bigot like Warren such a prominent place on such a special day for our country will do absolutely nothing to gain Obama support from that lot. Meanwhile, he will piss off a lot of his supporters before he even takes office . . ."  Many progressive voices are loudly caling for a withdrawal of this invitation to give the invocation. 

Part of the irony here is that this is not the first Obama-Warren flap.  On World AIDS Day in 2006, Obama particpated in a conference at Warren's church in California.  The focus was on AIDS, but conservatives reacted with anger and contempt (sound familar?) that Warren would sully his pulpit by allowing Obama to speak, particularly because of his pro-choice views.  Conservative talk radio host Kevin McCullough wrote on his blog, "Why would Warren marry the moral equivalency of his pulpit — a sacred piece of honor in evangelical traditions — to the inhumane, sick and sinister evil that Obama has worked for as a legislator?"  However, Warren--who publicly admitted disagreeing with Obama on abortion, said they needed each other to make a powerful difference on HIV/AIDS.  Introducing Senators Obama and Brownback (the other guest speaker that day), Warren said ""I've got two friends here, a Republican and a Democrat. Why? Because you've got to have two wings to fly."   As he began his speech that day, Obama said this: "I want to start by saying how blessed I feel to be a part of today and how grateful I am for your church and your pastor, my friend Rick Warren.  Ever since Rick and Kay visited Africa to see the pain and suffering wrought by AIDS, the Warrens and this church have proved each day that faith is not just something you have, it's something you do.  Their decision to devote their time, their money, and their purpose-driven lives to the greatest health crisis in human history is not one that's always reported on the news or splashed across the front pages, but it is quietly becoming one of the most influential forces in the struggle against HIV and AIDS."  People threw a fit when Bono reached out to Jesse Helms in his work on HIV/AIDS in Africa, but Helms' transformation actually meant thousands of saved lives.  Bono's partially responsible for pushing Warren in a more activist direction, too, and models a way of doing politics that aims at something more, something deeper that political ideology.  It is complex and confusing to those used to black and white politics. 

And that complexity rather than black and white (or red and blue) politics leads me to poin to a second irony.  Obama's said he would do this sort of thing ALL ALONG!  Think of his magnificant speech to the 2004 Democratic convention, a speech that brought him into the lives of me and so many others who support him, voted for him and hope with him for a renewed American and better world.  In that speech, he said, among other similar things, "

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.  Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America." His candidacy was consistant with this, and in defending his choice of Waren (whom Time called the most legitimate successor to Billy Graham as "America's Preacher"), Obama said,

"A couple of years ago I was invited to Rick Warren's church to speak despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion," he said. "Nevertheless I had an opportunity to speak, and that dialogue I think is part of what my campaign's been all about, that we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans."

We ought to rejoice that both Rick Warren and Joseph Lowery, a pastor and Civil Rights hero, will offer prayers at Obama's Inaguaration.  To quote one of them, "it takes two wings to fly."  The reaction shows in part shows that we'd rather entrench, fight, and stall progress on the pressing challenges that face us, that we'd rather dismiss the 'other side' (whichever it is, depending on our personal ideology), rather than seeking to reach out for the sake of actually changing the world.  A wise theologian once said that whenever we draw a line between us and them, Jesus is found with them.  Hard words, and challenging, for those of us who really want something else.  We, with President-elect Obama, believe "it's possible to overcome the politics of division and distraction; that it's possible to overcome the same old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems."

Peace,
Chris

Comments

[sly civilian]

Really? I don't mean to be overly negative, but I can't stand the false equivalence being given to "both sides" of the issue. Nobody is trying to force Warren to be queer or have an abortion, but he is trying very hard to take away those rights from others.

If he's willing to talk about queer love as if it is a crime of abuse, or a woman's right to choose as if it is the Shoah...

For one thing, it makes no sense that a man who believes these things in faith would deign to invoke the spirit of the Living God of behalf of an apostate nation. Either he doesn't really believe those things and uses dangerously explosive rhetoric regardless of who it hurts, or he is willing to sell out deeply held convictions for a chance in the limelight.

For all this talk of one united America...the great compromise state. i don't think Warren much cares if many of us are citizens in that America. The fight against Roe means less autonomy for women, more dead from back-ally abortions, more poverty, more lies and less freedom. The fight against gay marriage means fewer rights, more broken homes, more denials of the right to see our partners in the hospital, no rights to a joint pension, and ultimately more acceptance for violence in our society. We live in a world where young women die rather than be forced to give birth, one in which queer folk are killed for being who they are.

So at last, I don't think you're talking about a unity that has any justice to it. When we as a church talk about unity, it is one where the strong give up their claims to honor the weak. In Warren's unity, in your unity, the weak give up their claims to accede to the strong.

There's no gospel in that, no good news. Just the same old story.