President-elect Barack Obama has tapped Rick Warren to say the prayer at the presidential inauguration on January 20, 2009. Warren is a leader of the religious right. He is: anti-gay, anti-science (believes in "Creationism"), opposed to reproductive freedoms, a biblical literalist, someone desiring political power and influence.
At the same time, Warren has been assiduously cultivating a public image as the warm-hearted nice guy ready to be "America's Pastor." As Frederick Clarkson reminded us, Warren's PR campaign is aided by center-left organizations such as Faith In Public Life (FIPL).
And now Obama's played into Warren's hand and at the same time has ably reminded his quick-to-forgive supporters of his easy decision last year to let Donnie McClurkin spout his anti-gay superstitions on stage at an Obama 2008 fund-raiser.
More skeptical supporters of Obama are wondering why it seems that when you give Barack Obama a stage, he likes to put divisive homophobes on it.
Michelle Goldberg puts the Warren decision in proper context:
[Rick] Warren compares abortion to the Holocaust, gay marriage to pedophilia and incest, and social gospel Christians as “closet Marxists.” He doesn’t believe in evolution. He has won plaudits from some journalists for his honesty in forthrightly admitting that he believes that Jews are going to hell, but even if one sees such candor is a virtue, the underlying conviction hardly qualifies him as an ecumenical peacemaker. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Warren himself described his differences with Dobson as “mainly a matter of tone,” and was unable to come up with a theological issue on which they disagree.
If Democrats collaborate in positioning Warren as the centrist alternative to the religious right, they consign vast numbers of people, including many of the party’s most dedicated supporters, to the fringe. “It does strengthen Warren as kind of a new Billy Graham figure,” says the Reverend Dan Schultz, a United Church of Christ pastor and the founder of the progressive religious blog Street Prophets. That has especial relevance for Warren’s role in Africa, where a very conservative kind of evangelical Christianity is exploding, bringing with it virulently anti-gay politics. “What I have heard is that it will help Warren overseas,” Schultz says of Warren’s role in the inauguration. “He’s big into work in Africa. This will give him a lot of clout over there. Part of the reason this is kind of insulting for me is that Warren has supported some pretty awful people in Africa, including people who think homosexuals should be jailed.”
Take action. Here's how to let President-elect Obama and others know that you oppose Warren delivering the prayer at the inauguration.
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