It's Not All About the Gays. Is It?

Here in the Egg pressroom, we're dividing our time between the two different definitions of "clerical work":  wretched number-crunching on one hand, and care for the deeply troubled on another.  We have scarcely time for either, much less both -- such are the perennial tradeoffs of the pastor's life.

Bottom line:  not much bloggin' going on round these parts.  But we will share with you a nice catch from our friends at GetReligion.  

Barack Obama has invited two controversial clergymen to take part in his inaugural festivities.  Both Rick Warren and Gene Robinson will offer prayers.  Reasonable choices, we suppose, although we ourselves would have considered Walter Kortrey.  (What, you haven't heard of him?  He was our confirmation teacher, and even in old age retains a powerful spiritual presence.  Our point being that you don't need to pick somebody famous for this kind of thing.)  

But blogger Mollie Ziegler makes another point, which is worth hearing:

What I find interesting about the coverage of both of these civil religion picks is how everything focuses on the response in the gay community. When Warren was picked, almost every report focused on the response in the gay community — with a small allowance for a review of offensive things that Warren had said. When Robinson was picked, the early coverage all focused — again — on the response in the gay community.

I’m not saying that this is bad news sense but it is certainly interesting to think about whether either case reflects an accurate overview of the response of the average person who cares about the topic.