I'm glad I missed the arguments about Rick Warren's appearance at Obama's Inaugural. It allows me to skip the back and forth and head straight for the conclusion.
You can't change hearts and minds if you aren't willing to engage directly and substantively with the people who oppose your views. Not only is Rick Warren the best-selling evangelical author of all time, he is also among a tiny handful of evangelical leaders who are politically independent.
If not him, who? If not now, when?
As the man says, we need to get back to a point where we can disagree without being disagreeable, and where politics is more about substance than symbolism. Obama is, in his own words, "a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans." This doesn't change that at all. And depending on what he does during his term in office, it might even reinforce it.
If I cannot pray with Rick Warren, I realize, then I am not worthy of being called a Christian. And if I cannot engage him, then I am not worthy of being called a writer. And if we cannot work with Obama to bridge these divides, none of us will be worthy of the great moral cause that this civil rights movement truly is.
I have no problem with Barack Obama asking Reverend Rick to deliver a prayer at the Inauguration. It will have zero--repeat, zero--impact on the policies of the Obama Administration. And it may do some good, especially if it gives pause to all those people who think that I--and the crypto-Muslim Barack Obama--are going to hell...If it causes those folks to give the new President just the slightest credit for appreciating their worldview, if it causes them to give him the benefit of the doubt on controversial stuff like talking to the Iranians or universal health insurance, then it's worth it. If it causes evangelicals to say, "Well, he's not demonizing us, maybe we shouldn't demonize him," it's worth it. If it makes Rush Limbaugh's toxic blather about our next President seem even the slightest bit ridiculous and over-the-top to his idiot legion of ditto heads, it's worth it.
The thing is, Obama is trying to change the nature of public discourse from the raw blast it has been for the past 20 years to something more civil and tolerable. You sense that every time he opens his mouth. He's all for opening doors. I don't know how many of ultra-conservative evangelicals will walk through the door he is opening by having one of their most popular leaders join the inaugural celebration, but I appreciate his inclusive intent. Even if I think there is an insurmountable roadblock to heaven--I'd guess it's about like the relationship between a camel and the eye of a needle--for those who make blanket judgments about which of us is going to hell.
Obama isn't going to cause evangelicals to start loving abortion rights or gay marriage. But what he could maybe accomplish is to help elevate a leader whose primary mission in life isn't defeating and vilifying Democrats. That's all Dobson and Perkins have -- they commodify outrages and liberal hatred, and that's what they sell (at a nice profit). Warren, despite his flaws, devotes more energy to doing good things -- things that secular progressives could even coalition with him on.
Personally, I'd rather see a greater chunk of evangelical money going to fight AIDS than to defeat Democratic candidates. Obama's courtship of Warren could make that happen. Also, if the evangelical leadership shifts, young evangelicals wouldn't grow up hearing how awful Democrats are. Instead, they would grow up hearing how important it is to do good in the world. And without that incessant demonizing, younger evangelicals might eventually drift over to the progressive camp, which is far more consistent with their views on poverty, the environment, etc.
In short, Obama's invitation is extremely ambitious -- FDR or Nixon-level ambitious. He's trying to wedge one of the other side's key coalition groups and assemble a new permanent coalition (or at least one that attracts less incoming fire). With that new coalition in place, the legislative environment for LGBT rights will much more conducive to progress.
And last but certainly not least, could we please get some love for Obama's decision to pair Warren with Rev. Lowery? I mean, c'mon....
Bill O'Reilly's new memoir is titled A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity.
The name comes from something Sister Lurana of St. Brigid's School in Westbury, New York, said to O'Reilly when he was in her third grade class. It stuck, apparently.
Less sticky was the whole catholic lesson on the cardinal sin of pride.
Palin was in church for this. Didn't get up to leave or speak out. Not hardly. Instead she came to the front for a laying on of hands.
The second area whereby God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area. The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It's high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That's what we are waiting for. That's part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the -- you know -- if you look at the Israelites, that's how they work. And that's how they are, even today.
Look -- I would argue that doing work in the community to try to create jobs, to bring people together, to rejuvenate communities that have fallen on hard times, to set up job training programs in areas that had been hard-hit when the steel plants close, that is relevant only in understanding where I'm coming from. Who I believe in. Who I am fighting for, and why I'm in this race.
The question I have for them is -- why would that kind of work be ridiculous? Who are they fighting for? What are they advocating for? Do they think that the lives of those folks who are struggling each and every day, that working with them to try to improve their lives is somehow not relevant to the Presidency? I think that as part of problem, may be why they are out of touch and do not get it, because they haven't spent a lot of time working on behalf of those folks.
This is a good response, but I can think of one better: Community organizers help people help themselves so that government doesn't need to. If you want smaller government, the best way to achieve it would be to support and enable the work of the community organizers. Republicans claim they want smaller government, and then mock the people who can help make that happen.
And speaking of the Corner, many of their writers often go on and on about their catholic faith. But the Catholic Church employs thousands upon thousands of community organizers. And that time Obama spent organizing the South Side? He was working for the catholic church.
I wonder: do the catholics in the Republican Party who laughed last night realize they are laughing at the efforts of their own church? More generally, do the evangelicals who spend their weekends going out into their communities to do "the Lord's work" realize that they were laughing at themselves?
Longer version of Obama here - its a bit stronger in the longer form, but I do wish he would pivot to the "community organizers = churches and smaller government" theme:
UPDATE: Looks like it won't be left to us leftist elitists to take up this charge. Churches all across America - including Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, Baptist, and evangelical - are not happy with what was said last night.
Big story from the Politico. Two weeks ago, Palin sat in church and heard the following:
An illustration of that gap came just two weeks ago, when Palin's church, the Wasilla Bible Church, gave its pulpit over to a figure viewed with deep hostility by many Jewish organizations: David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus.
Palin's pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church's website.
"He's a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism," Kroon said.
Brickner then explained that Jesus and his disciples were themselves Jewish.
"The Jewish community, in particular, has a difficult time understanding this reality," he said.
Brickner's mission has drawn wide criticism from the organized Jewish community, and the Anti-Defamation League accused them in a report of "targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception."
Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.
"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it."
Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner's views to her.
This was two weeks ago.
They made these rules. We never asked for religion to be brought into politics. These are their rules, and they are going to have to live by them.
I can't help but wonder after reading this: what will Joe Lieberman think when he reads this?
