Hell hath no fury like a homosexual seemingly scorned. That seems to be the lesson learned by the media in the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama's announcement that he will have Rick Warren - pastor of the 20,000-member Saddleback megachurch in Lake Forest, California - deliver the invocation at his presidential inauguration next month. Warren is most famous for his bestselling book, "The Purpose-Driven Life," his godly attempt to imitate motivational speaker Tony Robbins, as well as the genuine good works he does in poverty-stricken corners of the world. Lately, however, he's been involved in less benign activities, namely the campaign to pass California's Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment stripping gays of their court-ordered right to marry. Pastor Rick represents the new face of evangelical Christianity in America in that he puts a friendly sheen on homophobia, delivering the requisite line that he supports "equal rights" for everybody and that some of his best friends are gay, he just doesn't want them to have the same rights as heterosexuals. Oh, and legitimizing their "lifestyles," he says, would be akin to accepting bestiality and incest.

Gay activists were understandably angered by this announcement, and they made that anger felt. Joe Solomonese, head of the Human Rights Campaign, the country's most prominent gay rights organization, issued a public letter to Obama calling his decision a "genuine blow to LGBT Americans." The denizens of the Huffington Post have been expressing their rage, and the popular gay blog Queerty went so far as to claim that Obama "spat on the gays." Adorable lesbian Rachel Maddow called it "the first big mistake of his post-election politicking."

Color me not outraged. In part because amidst all the righteous indignation (something that professional gay activists never seem to lack) over Obama's selection of Warren to deliver his inaugural invocation was his simultaneous choice of Joseph Lowery, a black pastor, civil rights leader and, important for the purposes of the controversy du jour, gay civil union supporter, to deliver the benediction, or news that Tammy Baldwin, the only openly-gay Congresswoman, was named an honorary co-chairman of Obama's Inauguration Committee. "I'll leave those who are upset to their calling," Lowery remarked when asked for his views on l'affaire Warren, suggesting that the perpetually-outraged gay Left might want to reconsider their behavior with what they claim their life's work to be. Did the dons of the gay lobby ever stop to question whether Lowery and Baldwin's presence on the dais would similarly upset the Bible-thumpers? Not for nothing did John Gallagher and Chris Bull call the gay movement and the religious right, "Perfect Enemies." More than one person has seriously suggested to me that the Reverend Fred Phelps, he of "God Hates Fags" fame, might actually be a plant on the gay rights lobby's payroll.  

Invocation, benediction, what's the difference? Apparently, a lot. "The person selected to deliver the invocation has the honor of serving as the spiritual representative for the entire nation," writes Leah McElrath Renna. Perhaps I missed it, but there is no "spiritual representative" of our constitutional republic, and Renna does her cause no bit of good by ascribing such official significance upon a private citizen like Warren, a man whom most Americans did not know about until gay rights activists raised such a stink, and upon further investigation sounds like a pretty nice guy not deserving of all the insults heaped upon him. The uproar over Warren has the detriment of confirming one of the worst stereotypes of homosexuals: hysteria. That's because Warren is the lowest common denominator of the socially conservative evangelicals. Up until the Proposition 8 fight, his political involvement extended to such hot-button, "culture war" issues as fighting African AIDS and poverty. Aside from the incest/bestiality slip (which was an effort, however clumsily executed, to make a slippery slope argument rather than a serious attempt at morally equating daughter/dog love to homosexuality) Warren has never really used his high public profile or pulpit to preach hatred of gay people, something that can hardly be said of the long list of Elmer Gantryesque charlatans the GOP has surrounded itself with over the past 30 years. Asked what was a "greater threat to the American family - divorce or gay marriage," Warren answered, "That's a no brainer. Divorce. There's no doubt about it," which makes him far more honest than most politically involved conservative evangelical preachers. Count me as being a member of the pragmatist gay camp (not to be confused with theater, dance or other camps), encapsulated by my friend Chris Crain, who writes, "It is a stroke of political brilliance to recruit a conservative megapastor in support of a president-elect who is arguably the most pro-gay, pro-choice and progressive in our history."

The problem for gay activists is that many Americans agree with Rick Warren when it comes to same-sex love. And these people, numbering in the over 100 million range, are not going to be budged in their views by hectoring activists who call them bigots (even though that's what many of them are). Now, I'm of the firm belief that these debates will be moot in 20 years, when the older generation kicks the bucket and the near-universally gay-accepting Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers take the reins of government. Whatever political victories they feel that they've won from Proposition 8 and the other marriage amendments across the country, the anti-gay forces of reaction in this country are gasping their last breath. The honest ones among them acknowledge this, if not publicly. We will hasten the day of gay equality by engaging respectfully with them and winning over the persuadable ones (many of whom, I bet, are followers of Warren), rather than calling them names.  

In that vein, gays would do well to store their gunpowder for the truly significant legislative battles that will no doubt be fought in the years ahead. Getting rid of the odious and national security-weakening "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" regulation, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and Matthew Shepard hate crimes law will all be possible over the next four years now that we have a Democratic president and Congress committed - at least on paper - to effecting these positive changes. If gays had given Obama some much-needed slack on Rick Warren, perhaps he'd feel a political debt to us when these truly significant issues come up for debate. But how sincere - or politically threatening - will gay complaints about administration foot-dragging on issues that actually affect millions of gay and lesbian people sound in light of the unwarranted outrage that's been generated over the guy who's going to deliver a two-minute reading that no one will remember? Attacking the President-Elect who campaigned as the most pro-gay candidate in American history over an issue as irrelevant as this one, I fear, makes us look like we're crying wolf. And we all know how that fable ended.

Benyamin Cohen, author of My Jesus Year, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy about some of the experiences he had traveling church to church throughout America to write his book.  First, he told us why he thinks he's going to Hell.  Then he spilled the juicy details about Stephen Baldwin's guilty proselytizing pleasure. He described five places you wouldn't expect to see a rabbi's son, himself excluded, of course.  And finally, Cohen told us why even rabbis are now looking to Rick Warren for guidance.  If one week out of this Jesus year isn't enough, go get the other 51!

People often ask me what synagogues can learn from churches. There are obviously many things and, indeed, several books have been written on this topic. One that comes immediately to mind is The Spirituality Of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community, by Ron Wolfson.

Ron works with a fascinating organization called Synagogue 3000, which has a singular mission: to revitalize synagogue life in America. Its efforts cross over into many categories, everything from more inspiring prayer services to ways to attract new congregants. What's more, one of the ways it seeks to learn how to better a synagogue is by looking to churches to see what techniques can be brought back to the Jewish world. For example, a couple of years ago it invited megapastor Rick Warren to give a workshop to a group of rabbis on how they can do better outreach at their synagogues. They videotaped that seminar and you can watch those clips online.

And as it turns out, the organization had serendipitously picked Atlanta (where I live) as the one city where it will focus its efforts this year, holding monthly seminars and workshops with the city's more than forty synagogues. "Jews need to be more quote-unquote evangelical," Wolfson told me. "We need to do a better job of presenting Judaism to our own people. The story doesn't get across that Judaism is a way to find meaning and purpose in your life. And that's another lesson I've learned from the evangelical model."

Rick Warren: Founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CaliforniaI met up with Wolfson for coffee to talk shop about my church visits, and he later invited me to the workshops as an honorary member. One event featured Bernie Marcus, the cofounder of the Home Depot, as the guest speaker. He was the last person I expected to be teaching me about the beauty of synagogue attendance. But there I was. And there he was. Teaching me about the beauty of synagogue attendance.

Marcus was telling a group of about forty rabbis that attracting members to a synagogue was no different than attracting customers to a Home Depot. "You're not giving  people the product they want. It's no different than retail; it's the same thing," he said. "You're in the marketing business; you're selling a product. You're selling religion. It happens to be something that's good for people. But you can't get to them to sell them the religion because you're in the marketing business and you don't realize you're in the marketing business. You have to stop thinking in many respects like a scholar and start thinking like a retailer."

Benyamin Cohen, author of My Jesus Year, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy. This is his parting post.  Want more?  Buy his book!

 

V.S. Naipaul: saw the evangelical train a'coming Evangelical influence in the Unites states is not a secret. Intellectuals like Naipaul identified its ascent in the mid 80's. Of the four living presidents, two are avowedly evangelical. The public sphere is full of leading evangelical personalities, both on the left and right. Evangelical books are some of the biggest sellers in American publishing. Evangelicals have so thoroughly dominated the US that they have now set themselves up for a worldwide expansion and are exporting churches and the myth of intelligent design with considerable gusto (even to Muslims).

Just last week, pastor Rick Warren of California, author of the Purpose Driven Life, and head of the 22,000 strong Saddlebrook Church, held a conversation about religion and values with the two presidential candidates. The event was covered by every major news station. Among pundits and bloggers it was critiqued and evaluated as if it was a proper presidential debate. Barack Obama and John McCain talked about Jesus Christ and abortion and homosexuality; partly in neutral terms, and partly within the context of Christian theology.

Rick Warren, Barack Obama, and John McCain: seek a purpose driven life through jesus We are religiously permissive in the United States and over the last decade the general view has been to let religious people bring religion into the public sphere. For example, Bush introduced the Faith Based Initiative in 2000 without much opposition and Obama recently suggested that he'd be willing to continue it albeit with a overhaul (probably since most of the money in the Bush initiative behaved very racially), and was again met with little opposition.

Having said that, it seems that the days of such permissiveness towards bringing religion into the public sphere might be coming to an end. The Rick Warren debate, in other words, might be a farewell party for American Christianity in the political sphere. To substantiate this assertion I direct your attention to the Pew Forum which recently concluded a survey about Americans' views about religion in politics.

Thomas Jefferson: once said something about keeping religion and government separate It shows that in 1996, 43% of Americans felt that Churches should stay out of politics; today, that number is at 52% and its trending upward. In other words, the more religion gets introduced into the public sphere, the more Americans want it out (the survey notes that conservatives are the ones most changing their views about this, now at levels similar to moderates and liberals).

It seems that religious Americans are remembering again Jefferson's idea that the wall of separation between religion and state exists in order to protect religion. What happens when religion stuffs itself into the political sphere too long? You may want to ask a theocratic state like Iran. Only 1.4% of the population attends the Friday prayer in the Islamic Oligarchy. (This number is actually lower than the Church attendance number in those purportedly hedonistic European nations).