Warren No Hate-Monger

December 30, 2008

President-elect Obama has not betrayed his faithful constituents by selecting Pastor Rick Warren to offer the prayer at his inauguration—he has affirmed them. This would include both my yellow-dog Democrat activist sister-in-law and most of my African-American preacher friends here in New Orleans.

Warren has directed thousands of dollars to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the years since Hurricane Katrina. His work among those afflicted with HIV is well known. These are only two of his many efforts to alleviate suffering in the world.

Warren’s evident concern for the physical suffering of people, together with his purpose-driven approach to Christian spirituality, has earned him the respect of millions of people from all religious and political affiliations, including President-elect Barack Obama.

Obama’s decision to ask Warren to offer the prayer at his inauguration indicates the breadth of Obama’s vision and the depth of his perception of American life and culture.

Protests about this choice by the new president issue, not so much from Warren’s sermons, which are characterized by love, as from a deep-seated bias against religious truth in general and traditional Christianity in particular.

Warren is convinced that the claims of Christianity are true. Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. He seeks to persuade others to follow Jesus as Lord.

Really believing in Jesus as the Savior is Warren’s chief religious conviction and, for his detractors, his fundamental offense. It is no longer politically correct to believe any exclusive religious claims. Faith itself must be seen as guesswork in our brave new world, not something you get worked up about. In the new thinking, “intolerance” is defined as believing anything to the exclusion of anything else.

Religious faith itself is the culprit in this new thinking, and Rick Warren—and the rest of us who believe the exclusive claims of Jesus--are jihadists.

Those who protest Warren’s selection think they have identified the Enemy, but they’ve got the wrong man.

Passionate faith centered in love does not threaten, but actually promotes, a better world, as illustrated by Warren’s behavior. The real enemy is any faith—or no faith—separated from love as its key imperative.

The obligation of true faith in God is not the elimination of other faiths but the love of neighbor, family, and even one’s enemies. True faith loves those who disagree and seeks their good, not their ruin. True faith seeks to make peace, not war, to bind up rather than to wound.

We should not fear passionate faith that is full of conviction and seeks to persuade others to believe. Such faith is the source of our greatest philanthropy and a building block for our finest future on this planet.

The real enemy is the end of faith, the disappearance of religious conviction, when love no longer has compelling force or divine obligation. If you think the secularists will rescue the wounded and hurting, you did not live through Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The vast majority of the volunteers who came to our rescue by the thousands were driven by passionate faith focused in love.

We have a new president with deep religious convictions. His inauguration is enhanced, and his vision clarified, by Warren’s offering the prayer.