Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration has been controversial, to say the least. People of all religious and political persuasions have voiced opinions since the announcement, and more commentary appears every day.
The biggest reaction has been from Obama supporters, who are offended by this choice. Many are upset because Warren opposes gay marriage, and liberals see this as Obama lending support to homophobia. An Episcopal bishop, John Bryson Chane, writes:
Rick Warren has been rightly praised for his efforts to deepen the engagement of evangelical Christians with impoverished Africans. He is to be lauded for putting the AIDS epidemic and global warming on the political agenda of the Christian right. Yet such compassion toward some of God’s people does not justify the repression of others.
Susan Jacoby, an avowed atheist, finds Warren “anti-intellectual,” and Anthea Butler at Religion Dispatches thinks Warren has “little theological content. He’s marshmallow-lite when it comes to Christianity.”
Renita Weems, at Progressive Revival, is upset with Obama for making this choice:
And so Obama begins his presidency like presidents before him, placating religious conservatives, in this case the New Right…I know progressive Christians are supposed to be won over by the fact that Rick Warren is allegedly the face of a kinder, gentler generation of Evangelicals. But we’re not. Warren is as against women’s equality, against gay rights, anti-choice, and anti-stem cell research as the old Right he fancies himself to replace.
For all the strong voices against him, there are those who support this decision from both sides of the aisle. Dr. John Mark Reynolds writes at On Faith that the class to which Obama belongs is very isolated:
President-elect Obama understands the cultural prejudices and blind spots of his class, because his biography has always made him a bit of an outsider to that class. He knows most Americans are religious, most religious are Christians, and most Christians sympathize with Warren’s views, even if they don’t agree with him on every theological detail.
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield also thinks Warren was a going choice, and writes that “Obama’s choice affirms that faith matters and that it should be bigger than any one dogma, doctrine or creed.” Alan Wolfe sees this choice as inclusive, but also as a shrew political move: “How many evangelical preachers will be able to demonize Obama once Mr. Evangelical himself has blessed him?”
While other issues have arisen—Deepak Chopra thinks that there’s no room for religion in the ceremony at all, Steve Waldman wonders how Christian the prayer Warren gives will be, and Robert Parham questions what the move from Jeremiah Wright to Rick Warren signifies for Obama as an individual and for the country as a whole—it is Tony Jones at The New Christians who makes a point that we should all be thinking about: the real story is not about Rick Warren, but about how big this story has become. Indeed, there has been relatively little coverage of the choice of civil rights hero Reverend Joseph E. Lowery to give the benediction, as Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite notes.
Perhaps what we should take away from all of this is that, regardless of where we stand, E. J. Dionne Jr. is right in saying that this choice is risky for both Obama and Warren:
…[L]iberals also need to come to terms with what it means to build a durable majority. Doing so requires not just easy gestures but hard ones. Here’s a prayer that this one will be worth the risks it entails.