Rick Warren is the kind of man the Left loved until Obama made him an inauguration speaker in the wake of his support for Prop. 8. He confounded stereotypes, speaking frequently and acting generously on behalf of AIDS patients. He made all the right people mad, breaking with the old guard of the National Association of Evangelicals in 2006 by endorsing an official global warming position for the NAE.
The press saw Warren standing for social justice and the impoverished, but it was not that that earned him credit. Plenty of unsung pastors and churches stand up for the impoverished and sick every day. More important to the press was not what he stood for, but who he stood against. Chuck Colson, James Dobson, and the like.
The New Yorker praised him in 2008 as a new kind of evangelical "presenting a challenge to the religious right." The New York Times gave the "Evangelical Climate Initiative," the evangelical coalition borned of the global-warming argument with NAE, enough ink and paper to undo any evironmental strides the group might have made. Warren, playing the role of the wholesome, reasonable Dorothy to the press' conception of the Christian Coalition's flying monkeys, was named one of Time's 100 most influential in 2005, U.S. News and World Report's Best American Leaders the same year, and No. 6 on Newsweek's "People Who Make America Great" in 2006.
Remember that when the press starts calling him a bigot in light of his support of Prop. 8. They were more than happy to accept his social conservative views as long as he didn't say anything about them and lobbied for global-warming initiatives.
But Warren is no fool, and he won't lie down for unfair treatment. You don't get to be the leader of a church of 20,000 you built from nothing without some P.R. smarts, and he'll be using those smarts as this fight moves forward. He's familiar with the language of the Left due to years of charitable partnerships with our friends of the liberal persuasion, as illustrated by part of a conversation with Ann Curry on "Dateline."
CURRY: Are you homophobic?
WARREN: I don't know any church in America that's done more to help the gay community, particularly with AIDS, than Saddleback. But the hate speech against me is incendiary.
I can't think of another evangelical leader who would have the gumption to call attacks upon him "incendiary hate speech." White evangelicals are by definition incapable of being oppressed, according to the liberal definition. They are the haters; hatred is justified. They are not inclusive; exclusion is justified. Warren challenges that idea. After years of acquaintance with his liberal critics, Warren is not afraid to shame them with their own language. It will be interesting to see if other social conservatives take his lead in the future.
