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

He played Moses and Michelangelo, but Americans under 40 are more likely to know Charlton Heston as the conservative activist who walked out on filmmaker Michael Moore.

As Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. is cast as Public Enemy No. 1 by some commentators for his rants against the white establishment, it’s worth remembering that his congregation belongs to a liberal mainline Protestant denomination in America with a long history of offending people.