John Shuck's Inaugural Prayer

If Obama had "done the right thing" he would have asked Presbyterian Minister John Shuck to give the Inaugural Prayer and I reprint it for you here:

I offer no prayer to any deity. Those who wish to pray may do so on their own. Instead, I invite us to celebrate and to contemplate the virtues of reason, justice, equality, and compassion that are available to all human beings.

The challenges we face are immense.

May we put away selfishness, greed, and short-sightedness.

May we work together against all forms of tyranny.

May we seek as our highest and our common goal the well-being of future generations.

May we work as tirelessly for the rights of others as for our own.

May we find a way to live within our means, with one another, with our non-human relatives, and with Earth.

And may we discover the courage, intelligence, imagination, and compassion available within us and among us to face the great work that lies ahead.

Obama's choice of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration has profoundly disappointed me. This man is a hate monger who would relegate a whole class of people to Hell. Actually many of the people he speaks of have lived through Hell already - right here and now. His God is not my God and I will not listen to him invoke his deity and superstition on what would have been a joyful celebration and is now a great disappointment. I hope that Mr. Obama does something to redeem himself. He will still be better than Mr. Bush in many ways but not if he continues to pander to the religious right.


The picture on the right shows two homosexuals who were hanged in Iran. There are many on the religious right who would do the same to gays in this country. Just ask Fred Phelps and company. They operate from a wrong - misguided interpretation of scripture.
Our country did not sign the declaration recently sponsored by France in the United Nation asking people to decriminalize homosexuality. In California Ken Starr and the Prop 8 people have just requested that the Supreme court of that state nullify the 18,000 gay marriages that took place there. Thus bastardizing any children and destroying families. This is not right. - It is profoundly wrong. Just as Rick Warren is profoundly wrong in his bigoted ideas. Not my God and I won't pray with him or watch the ceremony where his God was invoked. I think perhaps I shall watch Gandhi instead.

As so many have observed Obama would not have asked a racist to stand up there and give the invocation. Why did he have to choose a hate-monger homophobe. John Shuck would have been a far superior choice. Read his blog at. Shuck and Jive.

Addendum: Grandmère Mimii weighs in at Wounded Bird.


Rev Fred Anderson has Bishop Chan's letter at the Rev's Rumbles and Rants.

John Aravosis of AmericaBlog sez:
There aren't two views on civil rights, unless you mean the right view and the wrong view, the moral view and the immoral view. Obama knows the difference. Obama has lectured his own community on the difference. But now that he's seeking to curry political favor with the bigoted evangelicals, suddenly civil rights is just another policy debate with multiple legitimate points of views. Suddenly, when the color changes to gay, civil rights become relative and humanity negotiable. They aren't.

And here is another take on it. Which links to a forceful explanation of why Obama did it here. Which comes to this conclusion:

Just as it took a fervent anti-communist to open the door to China, it will take a man who takes religion seriously to ever transform evangelicalism into a progressive force for change.
Liberals may not like this decision viscerally but after somber reflection they must give credit to Obama for the political masterstroke here and recognize that, in the end, he made the only choice that could ever serve to advance the liberal agenda on the very issues they are now so up in arms about in regard to Rick Warren.

Richard Cohen weighs in at this article.