Source: The Boston Globe
His arms outstretched and his head bowed in prayer, the Rev. Rick Warren opened the inauguration of President Barack H. Obama yesterday with an explicitly Christian prayer calling for "a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet."
Warren, 54, an evangelical pastor who has faced a firestorm of criticism from gay rights advocates over his opposition to same-sex marriage, did not refer to the issue, but did allude to fissures in society, asking of God, "As we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes, even when we differ."
The California megachurch pastor and best-selling author is emerging as America's most prominent evangelical, and Obama invited him to give the invocation after speaking at his church in 2006 and then attending a campaign forum there in 2008. Their relationship is interesting, because evangelicals have for the last several decades been closely associated with the Republican Party, but Warren has been the most vocal advocate of broadening the array of public policy issues discussed by evangelicals and lessening the religious movement's alliance with either political party.