Is Rick Warren in line to be ‘America’s pastor’?

In many ways, Pastor Rick Warren seems an unlikely choice to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s swearing-in.

The founder of Saddleback, an evangelical megachurch in Orange County, CA, and the author of the best-selling Purpose Driven Life, is an evangelical leader well to the right of the president-elect on issues like abortion, gay rights, stem-cell research and euthanasia, which he described as “nonnegotiable” in 2004.

His public support of California’s Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage, for instance, infuriated gay rights advocates, who challenged his assertion that “this is not a political issue - it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about.”

Yet his involvement in the Jan. 20 ceremony attests to his friendship with Obama and to the president-elect’s commitment to a more inclusive governing style - even as it helps cement Warren’s stature as “America’s pastor” in a post-Billy Graham era.

Certainly, Warren represents a new generation of evangelical leaders, who are trying to expand the conversation beyond so-called ’sin issues’ like abortion and gay marriage, to global poverty, HIV-AIDS and global warming. His views on environmental and social justice issues are more closely aligned with those of Obama.

He will not be the only pastor in the ceremony. The benediction will be given by Rev. Dr. Joseph E. Lowery, dean of the civil rights movement and co-founder with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Nevertheless, gay groups were up in arms.

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[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.”

Tweet This! Share on Facebook

Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter

• Pastor Rick Warren makes national entrance alongside the candidates - August 15, 2008
• Gay bishop joins evangelical pastor in inaugural line-up - January 13, 2009
• Obama pastor part of rabble-rousing tradition - March 19, 2008
• Focus on the Family wins gay marriage ban, loses staff - November 18, 2008
• Muck tracker - Steven Spielberg to produce MLK Jr. biopic - May 19, 2009
• Heston’s journey from left to right - April 8, 2008
• Matt Damon works with One Campaign to raise awareness of poverty - August 25, 2008
• Muckety mover - Greenpeace antics lose relevance - November 18, 2009
• White House adviser Van Jones responds to critics - September 4, 2009
• Muck tracker - eHarmony settles on gay allegation - November 20, 2008