I hadn’t meant to write anything about Rick Warren. Really, what’s to say other than it’s depressing to have a homophobe on the national stage at the inauguration of a candidate who has brought hope to so many? Hope to the homophobic was not what all those gay and lesbian Obama volunteers had in mind, I’m sure.

Barack Obama may be a master politician, but he’s shown himself a bit greener when it comes to religion, that dangerous third rail of modern political life. Oddly, his secular humanist mother who married two Muslims taught him a lot about what I think of as Christian values. He turns the other cheek. He refuses to lie about his enemies. He cares for the poor. He embraces strangers.

But here’s the point I think he doesn’t get: in religion, unlike politics, you can’t just slice it down the middle and find consensus. The religious right knows this for sure. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright knows this. Martin Luther King, Jr., knew this. In his Notes from a Birmingham Jail, he reserves his worst anger for “moderate” ministers who said he was too impatient about the need for racial justice; they, after all, were white. Sometimes, we need to stand up for justice. Discrimination against all those who are not confessing heterosexuals has driven much of American politics (and church life) for the past decade, and it shouldn’t be ignored.

So Obama the politician embraces Rick Warren, who loves the poor and seems racially tolerant but has a couple of blind spots (Unconditional opposition to abortion in addition to disapproval of gay marriage.) And Obama seems to understand that this decision, like many, is controversial but not why: there may be other homophobes and even racists on the podium when Obama is sworn in, but none of them will invoke the Almighty.

Imagine if Obama had picked an openly racist evangelist to deliver a prayer at his inaugural. After all, racists are part of America, too. But as a person of color, Obama understands how deeply insensitive that would be. Regrettably, he doesn’t seem to have picked up that people of color also run the gamut from straight to lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual, and that they, of all people, do not need to be told they are damned. Or prayed over by someone who thinks they are.

I grew up in what I think of as the Eisenhower era of religion. God was good, and God was Christian but generic Protestant. Having endured countless public prayers in my Georgia childhood, I can’t remember one of them. Then, in 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that prayer in public schools, even nondenominational, was unconstitutional, and this ignited enduring controversy. Interestingly, the school prayer decision coincided with the election of our first Catholic president, something deemed an expansion of religious tolerance. The Constitution may say that there can be no religious test for holding office, but it’s often been up to the courts to insist upon it. Freedom from religion extends even, the judiciary has ruled, to high school football games, where players were juiced up in the locker room by misogynist and homophobic coaches only to get blessed over the public address system on the field. http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=12727

If you believe as I do that there is a sacred realm, we might treat it with greater respect. When we invoke the Divine, we should not be casual. Or partisan. Or trivial. Or self-indulgent. But reverent. If Obama wants someone besides the Reverend Joseph Lowery to pray at his inauguration, he should recognize the power he is invoking, not only on himself but on us all. Otherwise, he’s playing with a force he doesn’t fully understand. Like those Pentecostal snake handlers, he might get bitten.

Christmas is upon us (for me it always sneaks up while I’m otherwise engaged) but the snow on the cold, cold ground here in New York makes me want to ignore the attendant chores and curl up with a good book, like the one I just finished, Chris Hedges’ I Don’t Believe in Atheists, and one I haven’t gotten to, Rita Nakashima Brock’s and Rebecca Ann Parker’s Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of this World for Crucifixion and Empire. The latter came to my attention in a blog from Beacon Press that Brock wrote: Putting Hussein in Christmas, in which she points out the multicultural aspects of the New Testament story, including its Jewish and Zoroastrian symbolism.
http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2008/12/putting-hussein.html Brock urges Obama to use his middle name at his swearing in as an acknowledgement of his much-attacked Muslim heritage and a nod to one of the world’s great religions. She points out that a Daily Kos poll has confirmed her opinion that he should and that it’s important that he do so. You can still vote at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/30/114641/68/379/666783

The last eight years have been filled with enough religious antipathy to last a lifetime. I do believe that, at least sometimes, the lamb can lie down with the lion. But let’s acknowledge who’s who. In the spirit of reaching out, I’d be comforted if our President-elect would first seek those who have taken such a beating from religious fundamentalists (and, if you read Hedges, that includes the “new” atheists). A rabbi and an imam side by side would send a better signal. Or, since Obama seems to favor Harvard, we could have Diane Eck or Peter Gomes, religious scholars who cross a number of categories.

As for me, I regret that Allen Ginsburg is no longer around to lead a few ohms, so I’ll stick with the Reinhold Niebuhr prayer that has been adapted by Alcoholics Anonymous:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

That’s a demanding standard, but it’s change we can believe in.

May your holidays be blessed.

Now that Congress has balked at bailing out the Big Three automakers, their CEOs have all gone back to Detroit, not in a Ford Expedition or a Chevy Suburban or in a Lincoln Navigator, one of which would hold them all, but on their individual jets. Even President-elect Obama expressed surprise that they came only with their hands out and without a plan. He said he hoped they’d work something up before they come back.

Read more »

The California cognitive scientist George Lakoff http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/08/25_lakoff.shtml has urged Democrats to resist Republican attempts to influence policy by “framing” it in language that obscures its true nature—death tax rather than inheritance tax, entitlement programs rather than veterans’ benefits and social security, and, of course, “pro-life” to cover a whole lot of issues that are less than life-enhancing to many sentient beings.

Democrats attempted this with some success, but most of the time, the Democratic problem has been a lack of imagination and courage. As Team Obama gears up for a new beginning, here are some of my ideas for them:

Read more »

Tuesday’s election still fills me with awe, and not just for Barack Obama. The American electorate is wiser than I dared hope. Even John McCain, who ran a shoddy campaign, delivered a concession speech that was generous and inspiring. Sarah Palin has flown back to Alaska with new respect, I would hope, for the power of community organizing.

I spent the week prior to the election in a place I’d never known existed—Northeast Philadelphia—with a marvelous group of people, most of whom were volunteers.

Read more »