Opinion: Four Thoughts on the Rick Warren Invitation Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Three things come to mind regarding the invitation of Protestant evangelist and author Rick Warren to the Presidential Inauguration next month.

1) Who honestly didn't expect this? Did anyone expect the Protestant Christian Obama not to invoke Protestant Christianity at his inauguration, and not to invite one of that community's most prominent speakers and authors? Did your naive mind expect Obama to invite the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association instead? Obama already owns Beacon Street; he needs the rest of the country politically on his side as much as possible in the face of a near-guaranteed theocratic wingnut assault.

2) "Gay Incorporated" barely lost California through an ineffable level of organizational sloth and stupidity. Its ads mostly looked like garbage and it campaigned as if the highly-Protestant Christian, moderately-homophobic African-American community were not going to show up to vote for Obama. Can anyone expect Obama to do anything other than ignore the indignity that the Rick Warren invitation inflicts on the gay community? Gay Americans and gay couples don't deserve the insult of this theocratic, bigoted buffoon on the Inauguration stage but I think a lot of gay political consultants and mainstream gay organizations do deserve the humiliation. (Don't get me started on gay advocacy groups who themselves have endorsed open opponents of gay marriage.) I have read a lot of comparisons of Warren to Hitler, David Duke, etc., but there are a whole lot more people angry now about Warren than were six weeks ago about the Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban in California that Warren aggressively backed.

3) Maybe inflicting a flesh wound on gay politicos' dignity is even a feature for Team Obama. Obama might want not to have a "choice", rather to be compelled politically to help the gay community. It's important in politics that screw-ups be punished, and I suspect that gay political strategists will perceive this indignity from Team Obama as an invitation to improve their organizational effort. It might be better for gay politics for the gay community and its allies to look at Obama as a moderately adversarial figure who needs to be pushed, and Team Obama may be perfectly happy with that dynamic.

4) Warren will probably sell a lot more books in the short term as a result of this appearance, but I suspect that Warren will suffer a loss of core market share because of this in the long term. While Obama will get a chance to have a few more evangelical Protestants listen to him seriously after this appearance, Warren will have to deal with people who want to slap him for sharing the stage again with a very pro-choice, moderately pro-gay president. A lot of evangelical Protestants openly disrespect evangelist Joel Osteen for being too optimistic, gentle and mushy, and some will throw their Rick Warren books into the garbage after this for the same reason. In other words, I think Team Obama tempted Warren into a mistake and Warren bit.

I have been an aggressive and unapologetic supporter of same-sex marriage in multiple fora for a very long time, from before anyone thought that the Massachusetts decision had even a shot of coming to pass, but really: it's important that stupidity in politics be punished. Had I been Obama's consigliere, I'd have probably advised him to extend a similar invitation from the cold-blooded politics of it all.

Byzantine Christmas Hymn in Arabic Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Om Mani Padme Hum, Continued Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

I posted the foregoing music performance and video of a folk-music style of the Om Mani Padme Hum for one reason alone: I found it beautiful.

The Buddhist world in its facets and diversity exceeds my grasp; I don't know how to speak in a sophisticated manner about it. Perhaps I can put that down as an area for "blogger self-improvement."

Mezmur Sung by Mirtinesh Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

This is a continuation of the mezmur videos here at Palimpsest. This particular hymn by Mirtinesh was the first I had heard of the genre, and would be the one I would most like to have translated. Please click the "mezmur" tag below for additional videos.

Divna Ljubojevic, "Hristos Anesti" (Christ Is Risen) Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Palimpsest promised you more Divna, and we deliver.

Patriarch Alexy II of Russia Dies Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

The Age (Melbourne), December 9, 2008:

Patriarch Alexy II, who died on Friday aged 79, will be given a funeral service at the Christ the Saviour cathedral in central Moscow, which he and president Boris Yeltsin helped build in the 1990s.

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Leading the ceremonies will be the man the Church has named its interim leader, or "guardian of the throne," the powerful head of the Church's foreign relations department, Metropolitan Kirill.

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Some experts predicted that if the outspoken Kirill is confirmed as patriarch, he could prove a still more vocal opponent of the West and energetic proponent of religion in Russian life, for example in the education system.

Alexy by contrast has been portrayed even by Russian liberals as a conciliator, although he too shifted with the Putin leadership's more nationalistic tone.

"The only good thing I can say about Patriarch Alexy is the next patriarch will be much worse," commented dissident political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky, who holds posts at the Washington-based Hudson Institute and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

This story is of general interest because while the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople (Istanbul) is "first among equals" among the patriarchs and other hierarchs of the 15 autocephalous (self-ruling AND self-headed) Orthodox churches, the Moscow Patriarchate is the home of a slight majority of the world's Orthodox Christians in communion with Constantinople. During the ups and downs of Orthodox history including most significantly the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, the Church of Russia has claimed to be the "Third Rome" replacing both Rome and the "New Rome" of Constantinople. And with the majority of the world's Orthodox under its jurisdiction, its claim seems pretty reasonable.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have each made an effort to heal the Orthodox-Catholic schism, with significant successes in negotiations with Constantinople under Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew II. But the Church of Russia is outright hostile to Rome as are some of the other autocephalous churches such as the Church of Greece, whose hierarchs sent no delegation to greet the former Pope during his official visit to Greece. Russia views Rome as supporting the growth of Russian Catholicism, and undermining its jurisdiction and influence in Russian life.

The relationship between the Church of Russia and the Russian Federation (and its Soviet predecessors) is quite complex, but it's fair to say that it took a Catholic Pope from Poland to do what the Russian Patriarchate could not or would not do: overthrow Communism. To what extent the Church of Russia was co-opted by the KGB, or is now by its successor in the Russian Federation, is unclear.

Mezmur "#2" from Mirtinesh Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

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Identified as "#2" by YouTube channel Ermias27.