The lineup is coming out, and it seems Rick Warren, leader of California's Saddleback Church, will be delivering the invocation on January 20th when Barack Obama is sworn in as president.
Right Wing Watch is not happy:
As we've pointed out several times before, in 2004 Warren declared that marriage, reproductive choice, and stem cell research were "non-negotiable" issues for Christian voters and has admitted that the main difference between himself and James Dobson is a matter of tone. He criticized Obama's answers at the Faith Forum he hosted before the election and vowed to continue to pressure him to change his views on the issue of reproductive choice. He came out strongly in support of Prop 8, saying "there is no need to change the universal, historical defintion of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population ... This is not a political issue — it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about." He's declared that those who do not believe in God should not be allowed to hold public office.So why has this man been tapped to deliver the invocation at Obama's inaguration?
Why? Because this kind of dog-whistling to the religious right gets politicians reelected. (See, esp., George W. Bush.)
Also in the lineup: Aretha Franklin singing to Obama as he makes his way to the podium, Justice John Paul Stevens swearing in Biden, Chief Justice John G. Roberts administering the oath of office to Obama, and Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma playing a new composition by John Williams.
Full lineup here.