After weeks of people complaining that openly anti-gay pastor Rick Warren was invited to participate in the Obama inauguration, now I read that openly gay Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson has also been invited. I’m not surprised. The anti-Warren-ites, with their wailing and gnashing of teeth, somehow managed to forget that a major theme of Obama’s political life, especially in his presidential election campaign, has been inclusion. That Obama is not substituting Robinson for Warren is important, and gets to straight what I already wrote on this issue:
So long as whoever has the reins of power is just using that power to shunt dissenters to the side, instead of drawing everyone into the national conversation, we will never make progress. The change is to broaden the conversation, not just to swap out who is talking.
I am especially pleased to see that Robinson is not just an openly gay Christian minister, but also one of the people who irrationally (in my opinion) complained about the choice of Warren, calling it a “slap in the face.” Leave it to someone like Barack Obama to put mortal foes in the Culture Wars up there next to each other, praying to the same God. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, culture warriors.
None of that is to say, however, that I don’t think Robinson is equally as loony as Rick Warren. Here’s a quote from Robinson:
God never gets it wrong. The church often takes a long time to get it right. It is a human institution, but one capable of self-correction.
No, sorry, there is no God, and the church only gets it right after the rest of us drag you kicking and screaming into reality. (Unless you’re a Catholic, in which case you subscribe to a bizarro-world parallel history that inaccurately and inexplicably portrays all good things in the world as being the result of the Roman Catholic Church.)
And, while I enjoy this turn of events, what I wrote before still applies, maybe even moreso:
The real problem is that there is an invocation at all during an inauguration ceremony. The strong, underlying message remains: If you want to be an American, you have to worship God. All other possibilities are subtly omitted and excluded. So Obama could still do more, yes—for instance, he could invite Sam Harris to offer some words during the same portion of the program when Warren speaks—but asking Rick Warren [and Gene Robinson] to give an invocation is not a bad thing.
At least Robinson has the good sense to admit that ”[w]hile [the Bible] is a holy and sacred text to me, it is not for many Americans.” He also says, “I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation.” Which is nice. But maybe he could go all the way and be careful not to be especially religious in his invocation. That would be interesting.