In Defense of Rick Warren

Rick Warren is anti-abortion (though it's hard to imagine that he's as stupidly and closed-mindedly anti-abortion as others). He is also against gay marriage (and very well may be against other issues related to condoning homosexual acts as normative).

Amidst the left-wing uproar of Obama's choice to have Warren deliver the convocation (or some similarly-phrased religious speech-act) at the Inauguration, I have to say to my dear colleagues: you're being idiots.

538 reported the other day about the Republican party's (at least momentary) risk of fading as a national party (with its current ideologies), a compelling and rosy-colored-glasses argument that I hope is true, it says a lot about what "center-right" people actually look like in today's America and helps to confirm the (hopeful) prediction that, having left the anti-government environment of the post-1968 era, we are now entering a government-embracing era (not only due to the deepening depression and Chrysler shutting down for a month) similar to the 1932-1968 situation.

At this moment in time - and not only because all good liberals should be inspired by Aaron Sorkin's extreme liberalism (accepting even disagreement as acceptable), efficient pragmatism, and (dare I say) utopian vision for finding a meeting of the minds - it is crucial (crucial!) to embrace people like Rick Warren underneath Obama's tent.

We must respect the opinions of reasoned people, even those individuals who are convinced of absolute (i.e., often religious) notions of morality that may not change as whimsically as those of us who are the moral relativists the Catholic Church can't stand. But there is a massive difference between Rick Warren and the evangelicals that have been the fiery fuel of the Nixon-Reagan-Bush generation of American politics (under which only Carter and Clinton, Southern democrats, could get elected). For Warren agrees with us on the basic tenet of a moral life: help your fellow man. Unlike others whose platforms may end with anti-homosexual and anti-abortion rhetoric, Warren allows his beliefs about homosexuality and abortion to coexist with his major agenda, an agenda of responding to poverty, to AIDS, to the common task of man.

I imagine that, in the world of Abraham Lincoln, there were two types of preachers in the South. Some of them were fueled by their social conservatism to defend slavery at all costs. Others were convinced that there was a broader message of Jesus: love your neighbor, and they were able to acknowledge that slavery was an inherently anti-divine expression.

I suggest that Rick Warren (on everything?) is an evangelical Joel Roth (on homosexuality, not on the rights of women) - an individual who gets the broader picture while feeling bound to maintain his allegiance to a text - to the cards he was dealt, even when Roth is much more compelling in his argument than those who would bend the law to their own needs. Ideally, we live in a world of Gordon Tuckers, thinkers and acters committed to breaking a broken system so as to fully embrace humanity's collective identity. But the world is slow to change, and Warrens, who refuse to be bogged down in the culturally-divise politics and hate-mongering of the previous generation of evangelical leaders while still clinging to some of the beliefs that became the emblems emblazoned on the flags of those flag-bearers, are the best partners we have.

Obama's self-assuredness in his mandate - and in his safety within the classic American tradition of expanding rights, not contracting them - has allowed him to reach across the aisle that Karl Rove worked so hard to broaden. Obama's reach is Rove's failure; and it is not unimaginable that evangelical voting patterns will begin to change, somewhat, with Rick Warren and his ideological colleagues at their helm, especially if Obama moves to secure the pragmatic centrism of his speech in Denver (on abortion and more). The best outcome would be for this trend to push the Republican party back into the reality of our world, back towards effective governance, secure foreign policy, and legitimate social conservatism. Maybe, then, the Republicans would retain a firm control of the evangelical population, but that both the Republican party and the evangelicals themselves would have moved away from the scary (and damaging) language of this post-Gingrich revolutionary period.

I look forward to hearing what Rick Warren will say on January 20 in Washington, D.C. I find him to be a charismatic and compelling clergy member. And though, in an ideal world, clergy members would all agree with me, I respect their abilities to respect the sacredness of their texts and the irrefutability of their traditions in ways that I cannot. That respect need be but a small matter of dispute between the two sides of what could be a warm peace in the culture wars - for if our understanding of the responsibilty we have to our fellow humans is the same, then our differences are substantively irrelevant.