A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on December 18th, 2008 in Progressive Faith

Candace has an excellent post and a cautionary word to progressives:

All the screaming from liberals and progressives about Warren’s pending prayer on January 20 only serves to make our community look petty and intractable. It’s been said that if you fight something long enough, there is a danger of becoming what you hate. I think we’re getting dangerously close to that with this controversy. What we hate about the religious right is their inability to put their dogma aside and come together on important issues. Pitching a fit over Obama’s invitation to Warren makes our community look just as mean and graceless as Warren’s community looks to us. In fact, our hysterical objections give the religious right a chance to play concern troll and tsk, tsk, at all those liberals who talk about inclusiveness, but get upset when they actually have to practice it.

Yeah. I would simply say it’s childish. “We won the election, so we should get everything we want!” Uh – isn’t that what drove us all crazy about George W. Bush? It’s important to understand that the President is the President even of people who don’t agree with him. So Obama wants to let those on the right know that he isn’t going to shove them into the closet and act as if they didn’t exist.

This is a good thing. For one, it will be much harder for the right to demogogue him when he’s actively including them in what he does. This is not the symbolic photo-op of George W. Bush claiming to work with Ted Kennedy on “No Child Left Behind” and then “forgetting” to fund it. This is Barack Obama choosing which leaders from the right to build and which ones to not build. Warren is far from being a clone of James Dobson. Giving Warren a platfrom from which to speak forces the Religious Right to move to the center. Sure, it will ensure that Warren cannot be demogogued by the left, but – believe me – there is no shortage of intolerant fundamentalists that will gleefully replace Dobson when he goes to meet his Maker.

Barack Obama stands as a transformational character in American history. Simply by being sworn in, he will have begun to redefine race relations in this country. By his willingness to speak to a broad swath of idelogues, he will redefine the vital center – leftward. In doing so, he will redefine the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party. As someone who believes that choice beats non-choice every time, I have to applaud that.

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