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Let us pray. Almighty God, our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see exists because of you alone. It all comes from you. It all belongs to you. It all exists for your glory. History is your story. The Scripture tells us, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is One.” And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made.

Mike Gallagher, God bless him, says something in a promo for his show that I profoundly disagree with. In an ideological double-reverse back flip, he joins the liberal howls of protest at Pastor Rick Warren's giving the invocation at President Obama's inauguration. His point seems to be that Pastor Warren is besmirching Christianity by giving aid and comfort to the pro-abortion enemy. The Apostle Paul preached to the Athenians, and Pastor Rick will preach to the Democrats. When Mike asks "Why would Rick Warren participate in this inauguration?" I couldn't help but recall Matthew 9:11, when the Pharisees asked the...

Last August I wrote a column critical of Rick Warren's decision to host a presidential candidate forum at his Saddleback Church. My reasoning then was that America's crisis is moral ambiguity. I argued that Pastor Warren would only contribute to this ambiguity by hosting candidates with opposing views on issues such as abortion and homosexuality and presenting himself as a neutral moderator. Only Barack Obama would gain, I felt, being showcased as an acceptable candidate by one of the nation's best known evangelical pastors. If John McCain had wanted to clarify his social conservative credentials, he didn't need to go...

President-elect Barack Obama's choice of Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation drew one kind of protest. Whether the evangelical pastor offers the prayer in the name of Jesus may draw another. At George W. Bush's 2001 swearing-in, the Revs. Franklin Graham and Kirbyjon Caldwell were criticized for invoking Christ. The distinctly Christian reference at a national civic event offended some, and even prompted a lawsuit. Warren did not answer directly when asked whether he would dedicate his prayer to Jesus. In a statement Tuesday to The Associated Press, Warren would say only that, "I'm a Christian pastor so I...

Barack Obama's decision to have Pastor Rick Warren deliver the invocation at his inauguration next month has provoked anguish among some of his formerly ardent supporters. Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, upbraided the president-elect according to The Politico. "Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans. (W)e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination." Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen accused Obama of condoning a man...

Tis the season of empty gestures! Inaugural pastor Rick Warren rewrote his website so it no longer says gays are poison to his congregation. In fact a whole long lecture about gays was deleted. Here's the old content, via AmericaBlog, via Dave Winer, where Warren explains why gays can't join his church: This was from a website section called "Small Group Questions About Saddleback Church." The above is part of an answer to the question "What does the Bible say about homosexuality?" Also part of the answer, in the original, was a description of homosexuality as "an enormous sin" and...

Rick Warren is in a place he never expected to be: at the center of a culture war. The pastor chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to give the inaugural invocation backed Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in his home state of California. But he did so belatedly, with none of the enthusiasm he brings to fighting AIDS and illiteracy. When other conservative Christians held stadium rallies and raised tens of millions of dollars for the ballot effort, there was no sign of Warren. Neither he nor his wife, Kay, donated any of their considerable fortune to the campaign, according...

The High Cost of Being (and Staying) Cool -- Rick Warren in a Whirlwind Posted: Friday, December 19, 2008 at 5:39 am ET Pastor Rick Warren now stands at ground zero of a whirlwind, and he is likely to be there for some time. The announcement that President-elect Obama had chosen him to deliver the invocation at the inaugural ceremonies on January 20 came with formality but no fanfare. The first headlines speculated that Warren had become "the next Billy Graham" -- for Billy Graham has missed praying at few inaugurations in recent decades. Within hours, however, the story had...