The Family Research Council declared this afternoon that religious and political critics of Rick Warren are seeking to “silence” all of Christianity by denying this one superficial, controversial, and sectarian pastor the privilege of serving the inaugural invocation for President Obama:
[The Human Rights Campaign’s] desire to exclude Pastor Warren from the inaugural, based upon his religious convictions, proves the validity of the concerns over the homosexual desire to silence the Church.
According to that logic, FRC and Rick Warren are seeking to “silence” the entire Roman Catholic Church, all of Judaism, and all the world’s atheists, by denying them a spot in the invocation.
It’ interesting, the mainline [Christian churches] died. It’ an irrelevant word. The mainline is sidelined. There are more Muslims in America than there are Episcopalians. There’ less than two million of “em. We’ve had a 40 year decline in all the mainline denominations while the independent and charismatic and the evangelicals kept growing and growing.
Warren’s contempt for mainline Christianity may be, by itself, sufficient reason to oppose a role for him in inaugural prayer ceremonies that are intended to unite U.S. religious communities.
Addendum:
Pastor Dan observes:
Nobody likes Warren. The Religious Right think he’s a flake because he’s too liberal, and everybody else thinks he’s a flake because he’s a shallow idiot. From where I’m sitting, as the victim of an extremely expensive and extremely rigorous theological education, Obama could have gotten a better invocation from Stuart Smalley. It would have as much depth, and at least it would be doing a Democrat a favor. …
Mainline Protestant pastors are opinion leaders in their communities, and they tend to appreciate their GLBT friends and not appreciate slick weasels like Rick Warren.
Addendum II:
Focus on the Family avoids FRC’s foot-in-mouth disease.
