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Well, Hanna, I don't think anyone is advocating censoring Warren. He has the same freedom to speak as does every other American, and certainly far more access to public forums. Nor do I think that failing to ask him to give the inaugural prayer would have been equivalent to pretending that evangelicals don't exist, any more than Reagan's failing to invite the late Rebbe Schneerson to give an inaugural prayer was equivalent to pretending that the Lubavitcher Chassidim didn't exist. Or more to Melinda's point, that Obama's failing to ask Christopher Hitchens to give the inaugural antiprayer is equivalent to pretending that atheists exist. Of course they exist. Of course they are free to preach, evangelize (which Hitchens does with particular enthusiasm), organize, and speak in the public square. Go forth. Multiply. Knock yourselves out in the marketplace of theological ideas.
The objection has been to giving an extremist-someone who thinks women who've had abortions were running concentration camps in their wombs, as Katha Pollitt put it so brilliantly in the L.A. Times-the honorary job of saying the nation's prayer over the presidency.
That said, over the course of this discussion, I have somehow talked myself into the other point of view. (Or maybe spending a weekend-long blizzard locked in the house with an energetic 5-year-old has just worn me down, and I'm willing to give in on anything that doesn't involve screechy toys. Is there a special circle of hell for screechy toy manufacturers and for "friends" who give said toys? This is my prayer: Please, God, let it be so!) Giving Rick Warren the temporary job of preacher-in-chief is an entirely symbolic scrap thrown to the right-wing evangelicals. In more important news, Obama appears to be ready to launch a reality-based science policy, to authorize stem-cell research, to lift the global gag rule on family planning services, to roll back Don't Ask Don't Tell, and to take similar actions on truly urgent issues. Warren's prayer won't actually have much particular public effect-except to give Obama his reverse "Sister Souljah" moment and the cover of appearing inclusive. Fine. Fine. Prez-elect, go play with whatever preacher you want to play with. I don't care, so long as I don't have to listen to the screechy toys.
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Obama hasn't banished anyone, Dahlia, and that's what's giving us such agita. (Well, not all of us; Sara has casually lumped pro-lifers like me in with the "anti-gay bigots'' that those who are on the side of tolerance and inclusion must guard against and try to get disinvited.) When Obama ran on bringing together all Americans, did you who are horrified that he's chosen Rick Warren to offer the inaugural benediction think he meant only the right-thinking, left-leaning people you would be perfectly comfortable around—and no figgy pudding for dissidents?
Obama nation is not going to work that way, and his inauguration won't be that kind of party. Warren is not my brand of (Godly) vodka, either, but so what? Noreen, Jim Wallis is my favorite evangelical, too. But when you wish that someone who cared more about poor people than Warren does had been picked instead, whom are you thinking of who "reverse tithes" as he does, keeping 10 percent of what he makes and giving 90 percent to those in need? Did you assume that because he's a conservative evangelical minister, he doesn't care about poor people?
Among those who see Warren as a hater is, of course, Christopher Hitchens, whose umpteenth diatribe hating on believers is thought perfectly fair and funny, just Hitchens being Hitchens hahaha. But directed at any other group of people, Slate wouldn't dream of running even one such screed. And if Obama makes all of us confront our biases, then that's just one more reason I thank God he got elected.
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