What's the Matter With Rick Warren? "picking Warren is a slap in the face to progressive ministers"

What's the Matter With Rick Warren?
By Sarah Posner
The Nation
December 17, 2008

There was no doubt that Obama, like every president before him, would pick a Christian minister to perform this sacred duty. But Obama had thousands of clergy to choose from, and the choice of Warren is not only a slap in the face to progressive ministers toiling on the front lines of advocacy and service but a bow to the continuing influence of the religious right in American politics. Warren vocally opposes gay marriage, does not believe in evolution, has compared abortion to the Holocaust and backed the assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Warren has done a masterful job at marketing himself as a "new" kind of evangelical with a "broader agenda" than just fighting abortion rights and gay marriage. He dispatches members of his congregation to Africa to perform AIDS relief and has positioned himself as a great crusader for bringing his "purpose-driven" pabulum to the world.
Beneath the sheep's clothing lurks a culture warrior wolf. After the Saddleback forum, he told the Wall Street Journal that the only difference between him and James Dobson was that of "tone." After insisting that his agenda was "broad," and holding himself out as an impartial arbiter of the forum, he declared that voting for a "Holocaust denier" (i.e., someone who is pro-choice) is a "deal-breaker" for many evangelicals. Obama was pressured to talk about "abortion reduction," but Warren likens such rhetoric likening it to Schindler's List: an attempt to save some lives but not end a "holocaust."

In the world of the "broader agenda" evangelicals, when liberals advocate for gay marriage, they're stoking the culture wars; when a "broader agenda" evangelical crusades against it, he's merely upholding biblical standards. In that tradition, Warren in October implored his followers to vote for Proposition 8 because "there are about 2 percent of Americans are homosexual, gay, lesbian people. We should not let 2 percent of the population...change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years." Warren called opposition to gay marriage a "humanitarian issue" because "God created marriage for the purpose of family, love and procreation."

Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats' religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama's religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people's comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081229/posner?rel=hp_currently

Some people are really getting off on this.

I bet you couldn't just wait to post this. It'll make you so popular.

Funny how DU'ers ignore every other facet of the Inauguration that IS aligned with progressive ideals.

to those what brung him can taint something so beautiful so quickly.

i've slept on it and i feel even more strongly about it today.

an epic FAIL.

...

have there been? Everything I have seen has been center-right, at best.

Nobody bothered to tell me we are about to crown a new God.

"Funny how DU'ers ignore every other facet of the Inauguration that IS aligned with progressive ideals."

And which facets of the Inauguration activities do you think should be aligned with right-wing reactionary ideals?

Such activities don't represent changes we can believe in.

i saw this one last night, thanks for posting it.

The only way the bible is acceptable to modern society is because people ignore or remain ignorant of large sections of it. If you are a progressive minister you can only be one by ignoring or disagreeing with the bad things the bible advocates and embracing the good.

Isn't that what Obama is doing with Rick Warren?

Here's a picture of Obama, a Bible, AND Dick Cheney:



That was when he swore in to the Senate. One can only imagine what greater horrors await at this Inauguration.

Robertson was (very legitimately) trashed here for pushing this same crap regarding Chavez, but I guess Warren gets a free pass in the eyes of many...

Lowery is one of those preachers and he's on the roster.

This is a slap in the face to the GLBT movement and their friends and supporters on the left primarily, whether or not that was intended (which I doubt).

I yearn for the day that the President says "no thanks" to having a "holy man" of any stripe officiating at the swearing-in. That said, I firmly believe that Obama will accomplish much more good than harm. This move was basically just throwing a bone to Americans of faith, trying to make good on his promise to be a president for all Americans, rather than just those that voted for him. Unity is a good thing, especially at a time like this.