Posted on Tue, Dec. 30, 2008

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Choosing Warren reflects tolerance

Whether you believe that God hears and heeds human prayers, or does not, or deny that a god exists at all, Rick Warren is going to pray on behalf of all of us and our nation on Jan. 20.

Barack Obama's choice of Warren to deliver the ritual inauguration prayer has distressed a fair number of people on both sides of the ideological chasm that threatens and demeans our democracy.

They need to chill.

It is, after all, only one prayer, a supplication that, while very important, is neither a rewriting of the Constitution nor a revision of the testaments.

Obama's selection of Warren is, however, a powerful and public demonstration of a virtue increasingly absent in our world -- tolerance.

Like compromise, tolerance has been distorted into disrepute among the minority of Americans for whom narrow issues are litmus tests applied to every act and utterance by anyone, particularly public figures.

Tolerance, for too many of them, is a sign of weakness, a demonstration of unacceptable wavering from their chosen True Path.

Warren, some of that minority shout, is opposed to gay marriage and therefore must not be allowed to pray on behalf of all of us. And Obama is to be condemned for legitimizing Warren's view by giving him the lectern.

Warren, others shout, is insufficiently conservative in his preachings because, in their view, he trades evangelical rigor for a New Age philosophy of problem solving and inclusion and therefore must not be allowed to pray on our behalf. And Obama must be demonized for adding to Warren's prominence.

They miss the point of Obama's carefully calculated choice.

Like most thoughtful acquaintances, Obama and Warren agree on many things and disagree on many. But for each of them, the potential good that can flow when influential people are willing to act upon areas of agreement is a more useful example for society than a stubborn emphasis on areas of disagreement.

Being tolerant of those differences does not require either man to abandon his principles on points where they disagree, but it does require them to be respectful of each other.

In recent decades, America's ability to resolve nagging problems has been retarded by too much insistence on ideological absolutism and the lack of respect that grows in it.

The entrenchment of single-issue politics has been enabled, perversely enough, by the multiplicity of sophisticated methods of communication and organization. Any idea or belief can become the core around which an interest group or lobbying effort coalesces. That establishes the group's leaders as spokespeople whose identities, egos and even incomes are harnessed to the organization's one-dimensional interests.

Given the cacophony of competing ideas in our wired world, the way for those leaders to be heard is to stay narrowly on message no matter what else is at stake, and to shout at every opportunity -- styles not conducive to tolerance.

Until our politics and other aspects of public life rebuild a more accepting culture, we will struggle to get things done in a time when much that needs to be accomplished requires broad cooperation and reasonable compromise.

Perhaps pastor Warren's few minutes at the center of public life can be another example of the possibilities of that cultural change.

Davis Merritt is a former editor of The Eagle. Reach him at dmerritt9@cox.net.

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