Obama & Warren

Somewhat more than a year ago my cousin, oft-published writer, musician, philosopher, wit and alumnus of the same demented Fundie denomination that so scrambled my early cognitive development, had the idea that we should attend a "reunion" of the 17th Street congregation of this very church.  The 17th Street in question is on the western edge of the Mission District, not far east of Eureka Valley, and just a few blocks away from the heart of the Castro District, all of these locations in San Francisco.  Trusting my older cousin's judgment, and not wanting him to go through such an experience alone, I tagged along.  The congregation that used to meet at 17th Street now meets out at Lake Merced, along Brotherhood Way, in a soulless building, a giant A-frame, with an accompanying, depressing multi-purpose building. It was a foggy, cold day, which is to say: a day in San Francisco. The reunion started out with a Continental breakfast, a long table laden with the usual victuals typical of the denomination's Southern roots: ham, potato salad, fried chicken, strawberry cream pie.  Looking at this array, my cousin said, sotto voce, "What Continent?"  I told you he was a witty guy.

One of the "highlights" of the reunion was a visit to the old 17th Street building, which I remembered dimly from my 1950's youth.  The truth is, unlike my cousin, I never attended this church with any regularity.  I was down the Peninsula, but on occasion my mother would bring her sons up north for a special event, like the Sunday Pat Boone preached there.  What I remembered about the church was the semi-circular auditorium, with its great skylight in the ceiling, the balcony and the cold San Francisco wind forever blowing into the building.  

The building had changed hands.  It was now under the control of the Cornerstone Church, another Fundamentalist church which was to the Fundie church of my youth as National Socialism is to the politics of Nelson Rockefeller.  Our guide was a young fellow with a goatee and righteous attitude who displayed (subtle but nevertheless ill-disguised) contempt at the old congregants on the tour, at the pathetic size of the former 17th Street congregation (maybe 200 souls on a big Sunday), at the old-fashioned look of the joint when they first moved in, at how generally out of it those old alumnae now marooned out at Lake Merced really were.  The skylight had been removed and replaced with a hi-tech lighting array, which was much more conducive to the rock bands featured in the liturgy.  The guitars, drum sets, amps and mikes were all set up on the "stage" (what we might have called the dais back in the old days), in preparation for Sunday's gigs (the reunion was on a Saturday). On Sunday, our guide told us, they really packed 'em in, five or six separate shifts over the course of the morning, all SRO.  They recruited congregants from all over the Bay Area, but he was careful to tell us, turning to face West and pointing toward the Castro with both hands, that they did not recruit from the "gay community."  "We don't kowtow to the gays," he said proudly.  Because I am, in my own way, as much of a smart aleck as my cousin I couldn't stop myself from wondering in a stage whisper, "Who would Jesus kowtow to?"

As I've aged, I realize I've lost touch with a lot of things as they've developed, metastasized, degenerated, whatever you want to call these decadent changes in American society. One of those developments is the huge growth in the size and corporate structure of these Fundie religions, now mostly called Evangelical, I guess.  This thing at 17th Street was not the Old Time Religion of my youth.  If you look at Pastor Rick's website at Saddlebackfamily.com, you'll be astounded at the slick, corporate, PR-driven, New Age look of the place.  It's kind of Dr. Phil meets Elmer Gantry hitched to the Recovery Movement.  Twelve-Step flowing seamlessly into career advancement flowing into Group Identification flowing into complete and utter madness.  This Purpose Driven Life stuff that Warren is selling is snake oil and bullshit.  It has all the trappings of a cult, different from Jim Jones & the People's Temple in the sense that the Kool-Aid they're all drinking is the ambrosia of Warren's megalomania.  The Supreme Leader (the goateed and omentum-paunchy Pastor Rick), with his array of "degrees" from various undistinguished religious "colleges," the enmeshment in all kinds of "ministries," meetings, Singles Groups, Couples Groups, Campuses, onward ad absurdum ad nauseum--like all cults, it's all about a quality of total immersion in a group under the charismatic sway of a Personality of dubious provenance and highly-questionable motivations.

And of course: gays need not apply. The website specifically declares that gays cannot become members.  Never mind this latter-day qualifying and excuse-making about whether Pastor Rick is a homophobe.  You bet your sweet ass he is.  I'm a straight man myself, but I do bear in mind the old adage that it's best to defend the rights of the oppressed in order to ensure the rights of all. Otherwise, when the forces of dark intolerance come for you, there will be no one to champion your rights.  Warren is running the same kind of shop as that creep on 17th Street; it's just that Rick has gone very, very big-time with it. Rick Warren, son of a Baptist preacher in a congregation no doubt very much like the church of my youth, saw that in modern America, slick & corporate packaging sell.  Give the suckers what they want.  Give them quick and easy answers to life's eternal dilemmas (like EST once did), give them high-tech, give them one-stop shopping for all their Recovery Needs.  And give them Hate, some things and some people to be against.  Give all these desperate, yearning people the sense there are people they are better than.  Oldest demagogue's trick in the book.

And Barack fell for it.  He put a guy like that at the top of the playbill.  Sign of the times, I guess.  Well, the guy carries some clout, he's got Visibility, he's Hot, at least for a little while, and in this day and age, that's all that really matters.