So Obama invited Rick Warren to pray at the inaguaration.

But I understand why he did it, and I’m not upset. Here’s why:

Rick Warren has made anti gay and anti choice statements, and he has been on tv urging Californians to ban gay marriage. This is all quite true and a bit distressing. However, this issue of him being chosen to speak at the inauguration is not as black and white as people are trying to make it sound.

1) Rick Warren is conservative…compared to most of the people who are getting very upset at this news. But he’s probably one of the most moderate choices available on the list of leading conservative pastors in the US. I have a feeling a ton of the people yelling about this have absolutely no idea who this guy is, other than that he’s made remarks in support of anti gay and anti choice legislation. They’ve probably never read anything he’s written or heard anything he’s said that isn’t about gayness or abortion. They heard of him for the first time when the news broke, and the news began sensationalizing it to make things sound worse than they really are.
2) The truth about Rick Warren is that he got where he is today by strategically telling people what they want to hear. He’s not a Dobson or a Robertson, or a Falwell or a Phelps. He doesn’t have that fire of a man on a mission from God- the reason why he’s so popular is because everything he says is watered down and generalized, Christian self help books for people who don’t want church to seem like church or the Bible to sound like the Bible (the joke about him is that he wanted to change "Jesus is your personal savior" to "Jesus is your privatized savior" but it didn't test well). His stuff is just vague enough that liberals get suckered in, and just conservative enough that conservatives are willing to throw their support behind him.
3) Obama said he was going to be a bridge builder, unite people, and unfortunately, that means talking to people whose views you disagree with. Like I said, at least Rick Warren can be reasoned with.
4)Rick Warren is currently one of the most influential and popular evangelical leaders in North America. They call him “Pope Rick”. Evangelicals, especially conservative ones, are a scarily strong force in this part of the world, and to succeed at anything in American politics, you do not need them on your side necessarily but you will find it rough going if they hate you. And BOY do they HATE Obama. I am not kidding- my parents church dissolved into open feuding about it during the election. He is going to have a rough four years if he doesn’t at least temper their hatred of him with a vague sop to their interests. This isn’t “selling out with a bait and switch” this is, “they literally think I’m the Anti Christ and I need to do something about that before some Ron Luce inspired teenage nutjob goes on a holy mission to kill me”.
5) He’s not going to be allowed to have Jeremiah Wright speak.
6) Another pastor, Rev. Joseph Lowery, who has more acceptable views (extremely pro gay and anti the Iraq war) has *also* been invited to give the Benediction. Looks to me like Obama’s trying to balance it out by inviting both “sides”.

And my mother thinks Obama “doesn’t understand how the world really works”!