By Staff
Forty days and 40 nights. That's a stretch of time of great significance to the Rev. Rick Warren, the influential megachurch pastor whom Barack Obama has chosen to lead the invocation at his presidential inauguration in January.
In his best-selling inspirational manual "The Purpose Driven Life," Warren urges readers to set aside 40-day time periods for reflection, prayer and transformation. Anyone familiar with the bible will understand the significance: Noah got the 40-day rain. Moses got 40 days up on Mount Sinai. David and Goliath's duel was a 40-day challenge. The disciples had 40 days with Jesus following his resurrection.
So maybe it's significant that Warren will pray over Obama's inauguration a few days shy of 40 days after Obama extended the controversial invitation. In the interim, Obama's supporters are being afforded an opportunity to contemplate Warren and what he stands for, and to wonder what on earth their candidate was thinking by associating with the man.
It might be argued that Warren is a mainstream figure – after all, "Purpose" has sold 25 million copies and is the best-selling hardback book in American history, except for the bible. Warren is frequently listed as one of the most influential leaders alive. But he champions a worldview at odds with liberal – some would say, enlightened – opinion. He rejects the theory of evolution, and he believes that to be homosexual is to have embraced a life of sin. Are those mainstream views? If so, there must be two (or more) mutually exclusive versions of "mainstream" in America.
Warren has equated the acceptance of gay marriage with an acceptance of incest and pedophilia. He has argued, "If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest, then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn't reproduce, and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool." It would take 40 days and 40 nights to unpack the scientific illiteracy and plain bad faith in that statement.
One of the reasons so many Obama supporters are outraged by Warren's role in the inauguration is that in the last election campaign, the preacher lent his weighty support to Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative to place a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Warren has said he supported Prop 8 because he fears being charged with hate speech for preaching against homosexuality. That's another argument in bad faith.
Warren can preach whatever he likes in the name of religion. He may face the sting of public backlash, but the First Amendment will always protect his right to preach that homosexuality is sinful. He knows this. I suspect what Warren really fears is that the public will recognize him for what he is: an old-time religionist with old-time beliefs about issues on which American attitudes have, so to speak, evolved.
In recent days Warren has said: "I have many gay friends. I've eaten dinner in gay homes. No church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church," referring to his mega-church and the many efforts it has made to aid HIV suffers in Africa. How is that different from saying, "I have a few black friends, but I still believe in segregation"?
Warren apparently thinks it is fine to burnish his halo with the suffering of AIDS victims, and still reserve the right to call them sinners of the highest order. What Warren is sensing is that many Americans, by casting their ballot for Democrats this year, were casting them against Warren's worldview. They find his views offensive, yes, but also a threat to their own civil rights.
We like a bright line separating church and state. Saddleback enjoys a tax-exempt status. But Warren also used the church to host a presidential political forum with then-dueling candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. And he's obviously in the political mix now. Can a minister retain a tax-free status, a podium at the presidential inauguration, and his bigotry as well?
I hope Warren uses the days left before the inauguration to reflect and pray and usher in a transformation – of his own attitudes toward those whom God has made different from himself. Maybe he can surprise us by admitting that his own religious convictions should not be a bar to the civil rights of others who, using their God-given powers of reason, arrive at different beliefs. That would be quite a transformation, perhaps one of biblical proportions.