minneapolis upside down

"The Holy Hustle" seems an apt name going forward for will be an on-going examination of the myriad variations on that most American of scams, religion. Of course, the focus will be on local manifestations, but this week I take a little side trip since Barack Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration has become such a flash point.

Stylistically and theologically, Rick Warren's antecedent is Billy Graham, a life-long Democrat and anti-segregationist, whose "crusades" in stadiums across America preached a message that was not too overtly political while the Graham himself was a major political figure and a virulent anti-communist demagogue. It was easy to sit through a Graham crusade and not remember much about it, bland and wholesome as it was, but behind the scenes at the White House home of his good friend, Richard Nixon, Graham engaged in mildy anti-Semitic banter with his buddy. Later in his his life, Graham speculated that AIDS was God's punishment on those who it afflicted.

Graham later apologized for those remarks; he always had his finger in the wind and often softened his red-necked fundamentalist views when they threatened his huge popularity or influence. Rick Warren has that tendency sometimes, too, like when he removed the most offensive of the gay bashing language from his website recently.

On the other hand, Billy Graham's son, Franklin, couldn't be better cast as the fallen son who repents so as to take over the family enterprise and fails to be up to the task. It's clear that Franklin just doesn't have the stuff continue his father's "Pastor to the President" shtick going, despite being the chosen one at W's 2001 inauguration. Tellingly, his sister says of Franklin in a 2006 USA Today article, "He didn't get Daddy's gift of diplomacy."

The job of Pastor to the President is open, in other words, and Rick Warren is available, very available.

Like Billy Graham, he is a Southern Baptist. Like Billy Graham, he has successfully and consciously inserted himself into political world without an overt political play.

Further, Warren provides potent and convenient symbolism for Barack Obama--Warren is a balding beefy unattractive white man, with a bad goatee and tent-like bold print shirts, who harbors all sorts of phobias and bigotry but who is basically good, trying be open minded and understanding in this crazy world in which we all live. Men who look like Warren are among the voters that Obama didn't quite reach in 2008, and having Pastor Rick on the podium on the inauguration may well be the opening shot of the 2012 election. If Warren has a few problems with the gays, then so be it. Politics is politics.

And Rick Warren's thinly veiled revulsion at all things non-heterosexual has gotten the attention, but Warren has a lot of other, shall we say, interesting views, many of them, no doubt, divinely inspired.

Click on his website and one is greeted by a manifesto claiming an imperial agenda for the "The Church," wherein it's organizational superiority to both business and government makes it "the greatest force on earth."

It's an inherently political document, wherein he claims the inevitable victory of a mass "Church" movement over the godless, and therefore bankrupt (in every sense of the word), secular institutions that are failing us.

"With God’s authorization, the outcome is guaranteed to be successful," claims Warren, placing himself firmly in the tradition of godly hucksters and the hard Dominionist camp of Pastors who seek a neo-tribal society with clergy exerting ultimate authority over the lives of their followers, a model not unlike that of the most conservative elements of the Catholic church or Islam. Whether in a stiff white collar, a bow tie, a thobe, or a Hawaiian shirt, these boys all seek a world where their--that is God's-- authority is unquestioned and women (and children) know their place

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Warren's homophobia is odious but typical of his flock. I am far more disturbed that Obama would choose Warren as the most prominent religious figure at the inauguration when the Pastor Rick is praying to replace the federal government with "The Church."

In that, politically speaking, he represents a continuation of the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell version of politico-evangelical clap trap, casually dressed and marginally more charitable in his stances on HIV/AIDS and global warming, rather than Billy Graham's less ideological tradition. Where Robertson and Falwell openly desired to influence and infiltrate government and did, now with disastrous results, Warren apparently seeks to establish Religion as a rival to government--as Apple to government's PC.

Warren is not alone, of course. Locally, the Petters' scandal (and bloggers like myself) have led to a discussion of Minnesota Teen Challenge that illuminates the arrogance, delusion, and deceit possible within faith based initiatives. The contradictions inherent within the the anti-secular rhetoric of hard shell religious organizations when taking government money are easily resolved by the missionary zeal. As long as the church is the top, it's all good for religiously inspired poverty johns.

One of Obama's worst tendencies is to support the faith-based bullshit institutionalized under the Bush regime, and it will take a mighty effort to cut religious hucksters off the government teat.

Another bad Obama tendency is to subscribe to Rahm Emanuel nasty insider political tactics, making moves that throw off your demanding allies as well as your enemies, keeping everyone off balance for political advantage.

A third is the insufferable "team of rivals" Lincoln worship that is absolutely useless in modern politics, except as a strategy to get elected or as a way to fill time and space for unimaginative pundits.

Put these three bad tendencies together and you get Rick Warren at the inauguration and an early lesson in how the Obama team works. Don't get me wrong, there are some very good things happening in the transition, but it will be important to maintain a perspective only possible through distance when dealing with the new administration.

Even Rick Warren may need to keep that in mind.

--Loosestrife