Rick Warren and Gene Robinson: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

[McCamy Taylor]

Yes, I know the title of this journal sounds like a joke. Warren and Robinson, two ministers who have opposing views on gay marriage, joined together by President-elect Barack Obama to help the nation celebrate his inauguration. Have a good laugh. Then, remember what I wrote not too long ago about that famous bit of Bible verse that goes

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatted calf together; and a little child shall lead them.

Isaiah 11:6 American King James Version

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell William Blake’s poetical counterargument to the religious orthodoxy of his day, Isaiah appears as a character, along with Ezekiel. These are not your great grandfather’s Old Testament prophets.

Blake asks Isaiah if he really saw God. The prophet answers.

'I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then perswaded, & remain confirm'd, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.'Then I asked: 'does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?'
He replied: 'All poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing.'

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/blake_ma.html

In case the reader does not catch the message, Blake repeats it later:

“Opposition Is True Friendship”

In the humanist world of William Blake where

“God Appears and God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of Day”
Augeries of Innocence

The wolf does not lie down with the lamb and undergo a species change. The lamb does not become a carnivorous ram. The wolf is still a meat eater. The lamb still likes his veggies. Each remains what it is, but now the two can accept the existence of The Other capitalized.

The truest friend Rev. Rick Warren has ever known may well be Rev. Gene Robinson.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2009/01/14/rick_warren_reaches_out_to_gen.html?wprss=the-trail

Robinson, an openly gay Episcopal bishop, had reacted angrily to the selection of Warren, who opposes gay marriage, calling it a "slap in the face." But then Robinson was selected this week to give the invocation at the inaugural opening ceremony at the Sunday afternoon concert on the Mall.

Here is more from Rev. Gene Robinson, in a December 30 interview about Rick Warren and the invitation to have him appear in an official capacity at the inauguration.

I actually have a lot of respect for Rick Warren; amongst evangelicals, he’s taken a hit for his compassionate response to AIDS, his commitment to alleviating poverty. He’s done some good things. The difficult thing is that he’s said, and continues to affirm, some horrendous things about homosexuality — comparing it to incest, bestiality, that kind of thing. This is not a choice that really represents everyone. This choice was just really, really unfortunate…. I would sit down with Rick Warren this morning if I had the opportunity. I would love to engage him. In some ways he’s a very brave person, but he’s woefully wrong about the issue of homosexuality. He needs to be confronted about the lies he told about gay people to the people of California…. I think he is praying to a God, at least around this issue, that calls upon God’s homosexual children to deny who they are, to deprive themselves of love and intimacy that is permitted every other one of God’s children. He’s praying to a God who calls on me, as a gay man, to change, to submit myself to the power of Jesus so I can be healed of this `infirmity’ of mine.

Opposition is true friendship.

Rev. Gene Robinson is not pulling any punches. He is being true to his nature and his moral convictions. He is either the wolf unashamedly expressing his hunger for love or the lamb unabashedly crying out his fear of homophobia---you pick which side of the allegory suits him best.

In response, Rick Warren does not bristle his fur (if he is assigned the role of wolf) or skitter away (if he gets to be the lamb). Instead, he edges closer. He

issued a statement praising Obama for selecting Robinson, saying the president-elect "has again demonstrated his genuine commitment to bringing all Americans of goodwill together in search of common ground. I applaud his desire to be the president of every citizen."

From the WaPo story above.

The love of members of one’s own gender has gone from being an evil to be snuffed out to a characteristic of “some Americans of goodwill.” I think Rev. Warren is taking very important baby steps. And much of the credit goes to the many concerned people of all sexualities who have expressed their support for gays and lesbians while challenging old fashioned notions about sin, sickness and deviance.

From the Songs of Experience

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
William Blake

Compare this poem to Ezekiel's prediction about the return to Paradise in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.
This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

Off with the fig leaves, Adam and Eve. Be true to yourselves.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

1. Very nice, McCamy.

Beautiful, in fact.

[Solon]

2. Sounds like Robinson needs to read up some more on Warren...

I actually have a lot of respect for Rick Warren; amongst evangelicals, he’s taken a hit for his compassionate response to AIDS, his commitment to alleviating poverty. He’s done some good things.

Particularly in what he's doing, who he funds, etc. in regards to AIDS and poverty.

[mmonk]

3. The religion of exclusion meets the religion of inclusion.

And Robinson will speak about the "god of our understandings" (as not to use the occasion for politics of the religion of exclusion).

[JerseygirlCT]

13. Yup. He so gets it. nt

[McCamy Taylor]

14. Christianity was never meant to be a State religion. It goes against the whole teaching.

It works much better as a religion of the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, those who are down by law. Much of what people object to when they object to Christianity is actually the will of the State operating through the Church leaders.

Note that whenever the Christian Church becomes more humane, there is a risk of schism. In Latin America, the Liberation Theologists who have helped the poor have drawn the wrath of the Vatican. And the Episcopal Church is divided over the ordination of gays. The state does not want to give up its Opiate for the Masses, especially when religion can transform into a vehicle for liberation, priests making more charismatic, better trained and more trust worthy leaders of revolutionary movements than secular figures.

[JerseygirlCT]

15. I agree that a highly authoritarian structure is pretty opposite to

the goals of the religion. I guess with Christianity we can trace a good part of that back to Rome.

And yes, when religious PTB forget the least among us - the poor, oppressed, etc. things just go right off the rails, don't they?

[skepticscott]

16. I would put it exactly the opposite way

Much of what people object to when they object to Christianity is the will of the church leaders operating through the state. Restrictions on abortion, "conscience laws" for medical practitioners and pharmacists, prayer in schools, teaching of creationism, failure to provide full civil rights for homosexuals, "faith-based" initiatives...the list is almost endless...

[McCamy Taylor]

18. None of that is Christianity. That is economic policy. Christianity was peaceful defiance

of Roman colonialism at a time when Jewish militants were getting their butts kicked. Jesus was the Gandhi of his day---and the wily old Romans co-opted his message and then proceeded to wage crusades to wipe out any Christians who did not practice their imperial form of the religion. They included the most militant passages of the Old Testament in their final form of the Bible so that they could use it as a how to conquer guide. That was one of the reasons Tom Paine objected to the Bible in "Age of Reason" He had no beef with pure religion, just with churches that were allied with governments.

Issues like abortion are about keeping women second class so that their wages are low---good for the capitalists. "Faith based" is to keep the working class undereducated---again to keep a low wage work force for the capitalists. The list of "thou shalt nots" is used to make everyone a criminal become of their human nature, and then the state can pass laws against sex and people become too afraid to speak out against the government for fear that their secrets will be uncovered and they will be targeted for prosecution and condemnation.

The Marxists are quite clear on who religion benefits and who it oppresses. In the US people are fooled because we have no official state religion as they do in many parts of the world. But the right wing keeps trying to change that, so that we will have our own Church of England, the kind that Blake mocked. A church which exists to tell the masses "The king rules because God says he must." That is what they have in Saudi Arabia.

[skepticscott]

21. Did you just dream all of that up?

It’s the only way I can imagine that you could have gotten so much outright nonsense into one post.


None of that is Christianity. That is economic policy.

Prayer in schools and the teaching of creationism are economic policy? Please. Maybe in your neo-Marxist paranoid fantasies, but not in the real world. They may not be expressions of Christianity in the way YOU interpret it, but many, many Christians DO interpret their religion in that way (and they believe in their version of their religion every bit as much as you do). What wisdom enables you to say which is correct?

Jesus was the Gandhi of his day

Hardly. To the extent that the Biblical accounts can be believed, he was an agitator within the Jewish community. He never advocated resistance (non-violent or otherwise) or rebellion against imperial rule, and the Roman authorities took essentially no notice of him until the Jewish elders dropped a dime on him. Even then, the Romans saw no good reason to punish him for anything, let alone execute him. Unlike Gandhi, he showed no interest in bringing about changes in civil government.


and the wily old Romans co-opted his message and then proceeded to wage crusades to wipe out any Christians who did not practice their imperial form of the religion.

And exactly what message was that? When he was alive and in the first century after his death, the Romans weren't paying any real attention to him or the new cult, and by the time Christianity was being adopted by Constantine, it had gone through so many convolutions that they wouldn't have had any idea whose message they were co-opting.


They included the most militant passages of the Old Testament in their final form of the Bible so that they could use it as a how to conquer guide.

What passages were these, that the Romans forced into their version of the OT but that were not adopted by the Jews as canonical?


"Faith based" is to keep the working class undereducated---again to keep a low wage work force for the capitalists.

Uh, no…”faith-based” initiatives are designed to illegally funnel public money to support the religious goals of conservative Christianity.


The list of "thou shalt nots" is used to make everyone a criminal become of their human nature, and then the state can pass laws against sex and people become too afraid to speak out against the government for fear that their secrets will be uncovered and they will be targeted for prosecution and condemnation.

That's so far out in paranoid la-la land that I don't even know where to start.


But the right wing keeps trying to change that, so that we will have our own Church of England, the kind that Blake mocked. A church which exists to tell the masses "The king rules because God says he must."

As I said, church leaders trying to use the mechanisms of the state to exercise their will. Not the other way around.

[Zuiderelle]

4. Look at Eve's abs. I had no idea she worked out.

[racaulk]

6. !

:spray:

[Creideiki]

5. First, I'd switch the names, just to match the parallelism

Right now you're equating Warren to Heaven and Robinson to Hell. I'm sure that's not how you're intending things because this is the enlightened DU where we don't equate people to Hell just because they're gay.

I have no problem with sitting down with Warren and opening a dialogue. This isn't going to be a dialogue. This is going to be a monologue. There won't be any discussion, and giving Warren the invocation doesn't make him more likely to engage in that dialogue.

[McCamy Taylor]

7. Read William Blake. The diabolic is a necessary force in his world and is not "bad" in the

the traditional sense. Think of Lucifer as the Rebel Angel in a world in which revolution (American, French, of the mind) is the highest goal

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

Warren is the voice of tradition, seeking to suppress energy and replace the human form with an abstraction. Robinson is the authentic human voice which the official Church may call sinful or "Hellish" but which is necessary in Blake's world if people are to have joy in life.

Blake's message is a kind of Christian kaballism or is similair to eastern nondualism.

[Creideiki]

8. So

you're saying that Lucifer/Warren is an incarnation of Geburah and Robinson of Chesed?

Not seeing it, but, hey, justify things however you want. If Robinson and those of us who are LGBT have to be the rebels so that you can feel comfortable in your own well-deserved privilege, who am I to stop you.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. The official church?

Calls Robinson's voice sinful? If I am not mistaken the man is a bishop of the Episcopal Church. The actual, official Episcopal Chruch...
If you are saying Rick Warren's congregation in OC is more official than the Espiscopal Church, I do not agree.

[leftstreet]

10. The legitimizing of these fundy nutjob groups is a serious issue here.

x(

[McCamy Taylor]

11. You guys are trying to paint things in black and white. That is why you do not "get" William Blake.

"Fundie nutjob" just does not cut it in this discussion, anymore than "limp wristed interior decorated" works, except as examples of a dualism.

The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.

Blake speaks in absolutes, but that is because as an artist he understands that it is the conflict between colors or the dissonance between notes or the contradiction between ideas that creates meaning. "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is the ultimate goal of all mystics. It is the end to war and doubt and hatred--both of others and of the self. Sufi, Christian, Shaman, Buddhist, Kabbalah---all mystical revelation in all these traditions uses the same language. Read "Little Gidding" by T.S. Eliot and it is the same as Rumi which is the same as Lao Tzu.

Look in the spaces between absolutes. In the tension between "yea" and "nay".

These are concepts that are difficult to explain logically, but I will try. All humans have sexuality. The species has a ratio of hetero and homo sexuality. That ratio varies. There are probably survival factors that make hetero preferable----population has plenty of unclaimed territory to expand, people live on farms or ranches where children are workers, infant mortality is high---and factors that make homosexuality preferable----low infant mortality, overpopulation, jobs require high education not unskilled hands, available means of birth control are morally repugnant (like infanticide in ancient Greece and Rome), child rearing is so onerous that it makes the existence of a married priestly class that serves the needs of the community impossible.

Does it really surprise people that prejudice over the "correct" sexuality develops? How many gays and lesbians who hate Rick Warren have mocked him for his weight problem? How many people think that it is ok to make fun of fat people "because they do it to themselves" not realizing that obesity is not necessarily a choice, some people are force fed as children or develop eating disorders because of childhood abuse?

No one is innocent when it comes to saying "My way is the right way and your way is the wrong way." Intellectuals laugh at people who watch Fox. People condemn unwed mothers for not using birth control and forget about the sperm donor--until someone reminds them. Domestic violence is not the same as economic crime, because the woman could leave if she wanted to----that one shows a lack of understanding of the economic powerless of many women with small children, no skill and abusive husbands.

Gay people can not climb onto a cross and say "Look at us. We are innocent. We are being martyred" anymore than the Tutsis of Africa can claim that their victimization by the Hutus of Rwanda gives them permanent martyrdom status. The Tutsis commit war and war crimes, too. Jewish people in Europe suffered horribly under Hitler and yet look at what some of their descendants are cheering om Gaza. No one is all innocent and no one is all bad. Americans fight like rabid hyenas to achieve most martyred status--it is our moral high ground--but that too is vanity. Or attachment. And attachment is the root of all suffering.

[McCamy Taylor]

12. Think like a Buddhist with Blake. No name calling. ACTION!

Forget pigeonholing. What is Blake trying to tell us to do? Do not allow yourself to be paralyzed (that is the tombstone imagery). Act. Be the voice of opposition that is also friendly, because your goal is to liberate all humanity--yourself included. Speak righteously. What is a righteous voice? It comes from the human heart . It expresses human emotion and desire . Human sexual desire is such a basic part of it than when the state tries to enslave people they suppress their sexuality in order to subjugate them. So, by defiantly proclaiming your sexuality you also proclaim the supremacy of the human over the...corporation, the monarchy, the oligarchy, the military, take your pick.

When gays and lesbians feel that they are being told "Hush. Stop talking about Warren. You make the Democrats look bad" Blake would advise them to raise their voices even louder and talk even longer. Because those who are afraid of looking "bad" or "too concerned with sex" or "too extreme for mainstream America" are in need of a friendly opposing voice to help liberate them from their fears.

[skepticscott]

17. Warren's statement begs the question

of exactly what that "common ground" would be in this case. I suspect that he's just trying (disingenuously) to appear warm and fuzzy and inclusive, but the convictions he holds strongly about gays have not been developed overnight or with minimal thought and they are not open to significant (if any) compromise. It's all very well for people to look for things they agree on, but if the only thing that Warren would agree with Robinson on is that homosexuals are human beings who need food and water, the time and effort spent engaging him could probably be better expended elsewhere.

[McCamy Taylor]

19. And if they agree that condemnation of gays should stop? Warren is one of the most

widely known evangelicals in the country. If he changes his views, it makes news. It makes middle America that does not think....think.

I do not believe that this dialogue was ever meant to alter the beliefs of the hard core religious right. However, I do believe that it has caused a lot of people who take for granted that this is the land of the free to actually sit down and question what their own churches say and do and whether their actions are as Christian as they should be. Most Americans are not fundies. Most of them are tolerant. If you polled them, most would want people of every sexuality to be free to live happy lives, and they would disapprove of a Church that minds other people's business. When a bunch of people stand up and proclaim "This Church and this man has hurt us with his intolerance" they notice and they disapprove.

None of this would have happened if Warren had not been invited to speak. If Robinson had been invited instead of Warren from day one, we would have had twenty-four seven coverage of the controversy within the Episcopal Church over Jefferts Schori and Robinson with evangelicals commenting how left wing politics are threatening the structure of the Church by causing schisms. Now, wouldn't you rather hear about schisms on the right than schisms on the left?

[Divine Discontent]

20. kicking for later reading