The Blog  Not the Religious Left  10:27 AM, Dec 18, 2008 • By
TERRY EASTLAND Widget tooltip Single Page Print Larger Text
Smaller Text Alerts  So the president-elect has asked Rick
Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. It's an
interesting decision. Warren, a Southern Baptist, is pastor of
Saddleback, the evangelical megachurch in Orange County, Ca.
When I was at the church in August for the debate between Obama
and McCain that Warren moderated (and in which Obama did badly),
one of his congregants told me that church members would vote
overwhelmingly for McCain (and it's hard to imagine they
didn't). On issues, Warren is pro-life and against defining
marriage as other than between a man and a woman. But his
agenda, which extends worldwide, also includes items Obama
approves--such as confronting poverty, AIDS, climate change, and
genocide in Darfur. Warren is not your usual religious
conservative, and in fact some years ago declined to assume a
leadership role as such. Obama and Warren do count