Progressive Opposition to Rick Warren's Invocation at Inauguration

An undertone of controversy is brewing with regards to Pastor Rick Warren, of the Saddleback church, giving the inaugural invocation as President-elect Obama assumes office on January 20th. Progressive protests range from the nonsensical to the dull-witted, covering every stop of the mindlessness in-between.

Firedog Lake likens Warren to the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,

Firedog Lake-It was a very divisive choice, as Team Obama knew it would be after their Donnie McClurkin experience. "Inclusiveness" does not meaning putting whatever hatemonger you can find onto the program, if it did we'd have the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan delivering the invocation.

From Sarah Posner on The Nation,

The Nation-Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats' religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful.

From the Daily Kos,

The Daily Kos-Rick Warren is offering a prayer at the inauguration of Barack Obama? Was there some reason the transition team couldn't find someone who wasn't a homophobe?

Interesting that most of the opposition to Warren’s appearance is based on the single premise that he is a homophobe hate-monger. The causality of this opinion is due to his support for Prop 8 and his judgment that the act of homosexuality is not natural.

What is glossed over is the work that Warren has done which gained him notoriety prior to the Saddleback Presidential Forum. Warren has led the cause for AIDS relief in Africa, is a staunch religious activist for the elimination of poverty, helping the world’s 3 billion illiterate read and write, bringing vaccines and cures to parts of the world that are infected with curable diseases, etc. Yet despite this, the “Progressives” ridiculously oppose his speaking at the Inauguration based on his resistance to gay-marriage and have labeled him a hate-monger.

Warren also puts his money where his mouth is, "Warren no longer takes a salary from Saddleback Church and has repaid all of his salary from the last 25 years back to the church, due to the success of his book sales. He says he now "reverse tithes", meaning giving away 90% of his income and living off of 10%."

The Collectivists are truly the peak of two-facedness. Liberals and Progressives have long held the self-described monikers of advocates for various social causes and justice. One would think that they could find common ground with Warren for his crusade against those issues that inflict humanity and one‘s they supposedly care for. However, in their condescension and duplicity, all they worry about is that Warren’s appearance will somehow dignify his opposition to homosexuals unions, rather than garner support for his global initiatives against poverty, AIDS, and illiteracy. They would rather undermine the good works of this man through attempts at character assassination and by vilifying him. Their view and ad homenum attacks are a pitiful statement of their inner workings.

Despite this, Warren is not without his baggage though, recently on an interview with Sean Hannity, he used a biblical verse to support Hannity’s idea of killing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then there is his is a support of Al Gore’s initiatives on Global Warming. However these two instances, for me, do nothing to take away form Warren’s attempts to make the world a better place to live. Despite my disagreement with him, if Warren represents a hate-filled, cold-hearted, far Right, non-secular zealot to Progressives and Liberals, than I am happy to be counted in this number with him.

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