WASHINGTON--If you’re looking for an explanation of President-Elect Barack Obama’s decision to invite conservative evangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration that goes beyond the desire for a kumbaya moment, I’ve got one: The president-elect wants to make Rev. Warren his Booker T. Washington.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, Washington was one of this nation’s most influential Black leaders.
His willingness to try to find common ground with whites who viewed--and treated--Blacks as an inferior race made Washington someone to whom presidents reached out.
Theodore Roosevelt, especially, turned to Washington for advice on “the Negro problem.”
Taking counsel from “the great accommodationist,” as Washington was called, was an act of steam control by the Republican president at a time when the racial divide was undeniably this nation’s most explosive problem.
“In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress,” Washington said in an 1895 speech that established him as a Black leader who was willing to temper the demands of Blacks for racial equality.
Recently, Rev. Warren--who, like most evangelical leaders, disagrees sharply with President-Elect Obama on social issues such as abortion and gay rights--sounded a similar note when he sought to assuage the concerns of those who question why he was asked to give the invocation.
“You don’t have to see eye to eye to walk hand in hand,” he said in a speech to a group of Muslims in California.
With the election of the nation’s first Black president, America’s continuing racial problems will--for a time, at least--be pushed onto the back burner.
A greater threat to the Obama administration will be the cultural warfare that flared up during the election.
Voters in Arizona, Florida and California passed constitutional amendments that banned gay marriage. And in Arkansas, voters passed a ballot measure that makes it illegal for gay couples to adopt children or serve as foster parents.
Rev. Warren actively campaigned for passage of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriages. “We support [it], and if you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Prop 8,” he said in an October e-mail to members of his Saddleback Church in Southern California.
Several months earlier, Mr. Obama had announced his opposition to the California amendment, saying that he supports civil unions for gays and lesbians--though not marriage.
He called the California measure “divisive and discriminatory.”
Theodore Roosevelt believed that Blacks were intellectually inferior to whites and as president did little to protect their civil rights.
Even so, Washington became one of his advisors on matters of race--and a conduit for the few patronage appointments given to Blacks.
In accepting Obama’s invitation to give the invocation at next month’s inaugural, Rev. Warren gives some pressure relief to Mr. Obama, who was backed by just 24 percent of white evangelical voters.
Three-fourths of these Christian conservatives voted for John McCain.
Republicans won’t be able to seriously challenge Mr. Obama in 2012 without the strong backing of the party’s Christian conservative base.
Mr. Obama’s outreach to Rev. Warren threatens to undercut GOP efforts to make Obama the target of any cultural battles.
Just as Roosevelt used Washington to keep Blacks from deserting the Republican Party, Barack Obama’s effort to befriend Rick Warren could prevent evangelicals from massing in opposition to his presidency.
Warren
