The Not-So-Right Reverend Rick

I don't really have a problem with Obama asking Reverend Rick to give a prayer at the Inauguration. I am not religious and therefore do not listen to people like Reverend Rick who claim to know who is destined for hell. If all of the people Rick says are going to hell, then heaven is going to be a very boring place.

If it causes evangelicals to say, "Well, he's not demonizing us, maybe we shouldn't demonize him," it's worth it.

Not. Going. To. Happen. Ever.

Can you get Rick to send over some water and donuts? I'm kinda of hungry right now. Thanks.

Exactly. Joe in this post and kathy in the other thread articulated the savvy of this gesture quite insightfully.

Never say never. Obama was never going to be elected, according to some. Minds and hearts can shift in incremental bits. Young evangelicals are part of that shift away from demonization.

I'm kinda pissed at my fellow liberals for bellyaching, actually. See, we're the inclusive ones, not the doctrinaire ones.

Don't worry Joe...there is no heaven to be barred from. We live in a multi dimensional multiverse in which myriad instances of you exist and you will live each and every one of all your possible histories within those universes, just like an electron. There I said it.
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I for one don't recall gays running around demonizing Christians and that didn't seem to stop Christians from demonizing them. This is much ado about nothing, but again, if Obama doesn't come through w/ real policy that might benefit the gay community, they will turn on him big time. I think the tipping point has been reached w/ them, they ain't havin' it anymore.

President Obama's Inauguration will come and it will go. We have bigger fish to fry.

That's about how I view the politics, although as a Buddhist I'd debate even the basic concept of "going" to hell. But not here. Good column. Thanks, Joe.

Mr. Klein, I think there must have been some miscommunication regarding the Jews and hell. Maybe you didn't hear the actual question. Ask Reverend Warren to interpret Romans 11:25-36 for you. If he confirms your damnation, I for one (and maybe you too) would really like to know how he interprets that passage.

Joe first.
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Here's my absolutely sincere, absolutely serious question. You've met these people. Talked to them. People like Rick Warren can't develop an effective business model without a firm grasp of reality. A firm grasp of reality does not permit the idea of "hell." Jews in it, or otherwise. "heaven" or "The Rapture" is also problematic.
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Now if anybody is not a huckster (in this crowd--PastorDan is no huckster, nor are my many episcopalian priest acquaintances), it's Rick Warren. He gives an enormous fraction of his earnings away. He's not in this, as so many of them are, to make money from fomenting people's ignorance.
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So, Joe, my question is, does Rick Warren actually believe in Hell? Does he really believe that God has decided that Jews and other infidels will burn forever? (South Park decided that Mormon was the correct answer.) Heck, does he even believe in forever? There are people studying this. While they're not making much progress, they're trying. Is his (and, again, I'm serious) view really that our understanding of the universe should be driven by illiterate goat herders?
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Does he really believe in Hell? Does he really believe in Heaven? Where the eff does he think those places are?
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For Obama worriers.
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Joe is right. This is cheap at the price. He uses Warren for the invocation. He says I listened to all views, and then he follows his own agenda. There's no downside to this for him politically. And the effect is to drive a wedge (which he wants to do) between the Beatitude Christians, and the Leviticus "Christians."

postxian- If you're going to automatically dismiss the evangelicals as having no redeeming virtue or possibility of being good, how are you better than Jerry Falwell or James Dobson? Really, this isn't that big a deal. Oh, and just BTW, I'm an Evangelical, and I'm fine with abortion, and gay marriage, and I'm (literally) a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Don't lump all Evangelicals into one group, please.

"Savvy gestures" have a way of coming back to bite you.

In the short run this benefits Obama in ways many of the people here outlined. In the long run, setting up someone like Warren to take over Billy Graham's role as sort of "The nation's minister," with all the gravitas that position has, has the possibility of making Warren some kind of ultimate moral authority -- and many of his moral views are, to put it bluntly, repugnant. Why take that risk? Why continue legitimizing and giving moral credibility to someone like Warren, when there are plenty of other religious people out there who aren't so right wing? There are other ways to "bring people together" besides leaving a barrel of gasoline besides the fire of the culture wars, which is exactly what Obama's done here. Maybe this will all work out fine, be a non-event as Joe predicts. But this is not a gimme -- there is a potential downside here, maybe a big one. It's a risk I'd rather Obama, so cautious in every other way, hadn't taken, and the fact that the cautious Obama took it suggests to me he (like Joe) doesn't see it as a risk -- and that worries me.

Inviting Rick Warren to deliver a prayer at his Inauguration does not mean Obama is going to turn Warren into the next Billy Graham Presidential Minister. That, to me, is not a risk. Warren is already a household name--Obama isn't really legitimizing him. We will have far more things to worry about come January 21.

Here's my problem with Rick Warren. It's not so much that he opposes marriage equality and unfettered access to health care for women. It's that the way that he makes those arguments is abusive, demeaning to his opponents, and frequently dishonest. In defending the selection of Obama brought out his "we can disagree without being disagreeable" line. This is a very reasonable bar, under which Rick Warren passes with room to spare, pretty much every time he opens his mouth on conservative social issues.

He was a major proponent of the falsehood that defeat of CA's Prop 8 would have forced clergy people to perform same-sex marriages that they opposed, even though the CA Supreme Court decision that would have been left in place by Prop 8's defeat specfically excludes such an outcome. He went further, suggesting that defeat of Prop 8 would place legal obstructions on his First Amendment right to vocally oppose gay marriage. He equates gay marriage with the prospect of incestuous marriage and pedophilic marriage. His discourse is divisive, not conciliatory, and highly disagreeable. Perhaps marginally less so than Fred Phelps or James Dobson (the latter of which he concedes to having no major theological differences with), but beyond the pale nonetheless.

I think that Obama could have achieved much of the positive effect that Klein ascribes to the Warren invitation with a different person.

I think he had to stay away from California. The wounds from Prop 8 are way too raw among an important Obama constituency that worked hard to see him elected to have anyone who spoke or acted on behalf of Prop 8, even earnestly and honestly, be present. Especially considering that Obama's opposition was muted, and that his words were used by proponents of the measure.

But a socially conservative pastor, who isn't so punitive with rhetoric towards opponents, would still have raised some hackles among Obama supporters without bringing on justified screams of outrage.

Mgale -- why do you jump to the conclusion that this one gesture is tantamount to being billy graham's replacement? The problem is not Rick Warren the problem is not taking Obama at this word that he intended to include everyone at the table. Tolerance does not mean including only people who respect everyone it means including people you do not agree with. This propensity for some on the left to have a tizzy fit every time Obama doesn't follow left wing orthodoxy isn't much different than what the right wing was doing. If you want change well that's where it has got to start.

Sorry this is only a big deal, because the media is making it a big deal. Joe, can't you speak about Madoff...he's a bigger issue on our lives than Rick Warren ever will be. I'm another Jew who's going to hell...but at least I'll be in good company.

If it causes evangelicals to say, "Well, he's not demonizing us, maybe we shouldn't demonize him," it's worth it.
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Ha! Ha! You realize you're talking about a group of people whose primary goal is to initiate Armageddon so they can Rapture up to Heaven? (Why do you think all the obsessing over Israel?)
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And I know I'm painting with a broad, broad brush here (sorry, pattonmat), but from where I stand this is what a good chunk of the evangelical population looks like.

Argh. At #15, please insert "Warren," between "the selection of" and "Obama" in first graf. Sorry, thanks.

Just so we're clear Cliff that the left has to watch our own tendency to put people in a box: a good chunk of the population that consider themselves fundamentalists, born-again or evangelicals look like African Americans who by the way drew a great deal of ire from the gay community (who reverted to name calling using the N word without skipping a beat)for their support of prop 8, should Obama distance himself from them as well? -- Just asking?

I see a lot of people apologizing for Obama but the point here is very clear. He knew this would PO the LGBT community and he did it anyway. He really does intend to benefit from pissing off the DFH's in order to gain more credibility with the villagers and, as someone pointed out, the younger not-so-wingnutty evangelicals.

I personally don't care too much about Warren but Obama has just slappped down an important part of his constiuency and he did it with full deliberation.

I didn't say it was "tantamount to being Billy Graham's replacement." But it does set him up to assume that mantle. Why do it? As I said, there are many other people who could have given the invocation who aren't slightly watered-down versions of Pat Robertson, which Warren is. If Obama felt it necessary to "invite him to the table," there are a lot of seats there besides the one at the head. And there are a lot of ways to be "tolerant" without further legitimizing someone like Warren, whose very intolerance is the problem here. Obama had the opportunity to elevate someone in the religious community of more moderate -- and tolerant -- views than Warren to a position of prominence, and he chose not to do that. In my book that's a missed opportunity to move the goalposts on the culture wars a little to the left, and in this particular area Obama won't have many such opportunities -- people like the ever-growing-in-stature Warren will see to that.

I recognize that some of you are consumed with Obama uber alles syndrome, but you're going to have to learn to accept the remote possibility that Obama can f u c k up just like other mortals. When that happens, which I think he might have here (we won't know for years), pointing it out isn't some act of disloyalty. It might even help Obama -- and God knows, he needs the help.

I basically agree, but barack, please, please, please don't be an idiot.

Recommended: N. T. Wright's "Surprised by Hope" - a mainline theologian's reflection on what the New Testament actually says about heaven. You might be surprised.

Rick Warren is a supercessionist exceptionalist: the mantle of "Chosen People" has been shifted, by God's providence (supercession), from Israel to the U S of A, the greatest nation in the history of the world (exceptionalism).

I'm shocked - shocked, I tell you! - that he would be so vulgar as to say out loud in a secularist citadel like Aspen that Jews are going to hell. Christ-killers and f*ggot-lovers already know who they are and where they're going. It's Warren's job to prove himself one of the elect by being big enough to provide (with a smile!) donuts for their journey.

I think Rick Warren is more in the Falwell strain than the Graham strain, not that I'm real fond of either.

Andy: Sorry this is only a big deal, because the media is making it a big deal. No, this is a big deal because people like John Aravosis are apoplectic about it: Markos on Obama and Warren.
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On the other hand, it appears that THE OTHER SIDE ISN'T HAPPY EITHER.
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It pays at moments like this to remember that Warren invited Obama to an AIDS conference at his church, absolutely infuriating many people on the right in the process, including many in his congregation. Obama went, and was received after his talk with a standing ovation.
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Both of these guys push against societal envelopes and, as much as I disagree with Warren's sometimes toxic beliefs, we are all the better for their interest in expanding closed, even rapturous minds.
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Speaking of which - AN OPENLY GAY MAN AS SECRETARY OF THE NAVY?
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BTW, with the Warren thing getting everyone's attention, I think it is worth listening again to the last three minutes of today's press conference, where Obama talks about societal values. Bracing, powerful stuff. (I can't seem to find the video on MSNBC).