There’s an old axiom stating that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than it is to speak and remove all doubt. If you take the above statement and combine it with the ugly truth that some things are not said better late than never, you just get just the tiniest taste of the epic tub of foul-smelling verbal unguent slathered onto us by Rick Warren and the Ugandan Pastor of Death.
Rick Warren is the ambulatory sack of preacher parts who leads the awesome and powerful Saddleback Megachurch. (If I were going to write post apocalyptic fiction, my protagonist would be named Saddleback Megachurch…)
In his capacity as the Megapastor, Warren has maintained his fundamentalist theology while cultivating a more moderate image to the public at large. Eschewing the “Haggard Method” of being a self-loathing gay man who screams at biologists and mashes crystal meth under his tongue, Warren has opted to do things like grow a goatee and wear short sleeves — and, though I could be wrong, I think he was the original bass player for Def Leppard.
Warren has become a powerhouse among Evangelicals with some pretty impressive crossover among moderates. (Also, as a Megapastor, he and four of his colleagues can unite to form Voltron.) Warren was so popular that he was selected by Barack Obama to offer an inaugural prayer. The choice caused an outcry among the members of the progressive left, who would have paced themselves had they known what was to come.
The real trouble starts in Uganda. In October of this year, the Ugandan Parliament plopped out a bill that would criminalize the support of homosexuals as well as make some homosexual acts capital crimes.
One of the bills most vocal supporters has been Pastor Martin Ssempa, the charismatic, condom-burning, homosexual-outing, rabidly misanthropic Ugandan Jesus-slinger. Depending on who you listen to re: Ssempa’s connection with Warren, Ssempa was either just some guy at a Saddleback AIDS conference or an honorary member of the Warren family. (Click that last link to read about Rick Warren's wife, Kay, referring to Ssempa as her brother while "her voice trembled with emotion" and "tears ran down her cheeks.") This being the Year of Our Lord, 2009, in which it is necessary for famous people to grovel after our forgiveness every time anyone they’ve ever met makes a bad decision, a lot of us hoped for an apology, or even a condemnation of the bill, from Pastor Rick. Since the bill was so obviously vile — Uganda is explicitly endorsing killing homosexuals and AIDS sufferers — you’d think it wouldn’t be a problem.
But it was a problem. Mega Rick courageously noted that Ssempa did officially not represent him or his church and that he preferred not to “take sides.” This is the kind of bet-hedging that really makes my dreams take flight.
The message is consistent with the finer traditions of Christian ministry, because if there is anything we all know about the stories of Jesus, it was that he really just kept to himself. The Nazarene wood worker was known far and wide for chatting quietly with his twelve friends and never taking sides.
Jesus was Mister Impartial.
My favorite bible story is the Parable of the Roman Tax Collector Whom Jesus Decided not to Confront Lest He Cause a Scene. Paul’s letter to the Galatians about minding their own damned business was pretty great, too:
“Blessed is he who comes up with his own ideas and then contemplates them privately while not nosing into the affairs of his neighbors or pestering them about whether or not they eat pork.”
But wait! Some keen members of the media have pointed out that apparently Rick Warren does take sides, such as when he supported the measure to repeal same-sex rights in California and compared homosexuals to polygamists and child molesters. But when it came to bills advocating the murder of fagalas, it took Pastor Rick a full two weeks to publish a full and detailed repudiation. Slow, sure. But the delivery was masterful. Rarely has bullet-point damage control been so preachy and homespun. In the face of such a virtuosic response, most folks decided to let the matter drop. And in response to that, I must ask them if they have been exposed to nuclear waste, or are the product of a marriage between siblings.
Let’s be clear on something: It took Rick Warren’s brain nearly two weeks to decide that an actual bill being proposed by an actual country that would kill actual people for being actually gay was worthy of public disapproval. He had to think this over for eleven days — in case it was the wrong thing to say.
While he had his feet up listening to "Let Jesus Take the Wheel" on his Megapastor iPod, the jury was still out — he might have been willing to let it slide!
Let’s just say that if I’m ever choking on a chicken nugget and need the Heimlich, I really don't want Rick Warren to be my only hope. If this Ugandan thing is any indication, I’d die three times over while he decided if bear-hugging me might be misinterpreted as him having caught “the gay”
In his full and final rebuke, Pastor Rick wrote:
"Finally, the freedom to make moral choices, and our right to free expression are gifts endowed by God."
The freedom to not make them, and then make them too late, must come from his PR firm.