Over Obama’s invitation to lead in prayer during the inauguration, here’s the heart of the matter:

The Bible admonishes us to pray for our leaders. I am honored by this opportunity to pray God’s blessing on the office of the President and its current and future inhabitant, asking the Lord to provide wisdom to America’s leaders during this critical time in our nation’s history.”

That should be reason enough for the religious right who, according to Steve Waldman, are upset that Warren “provides some legitimacy to the Obama presidency.” That’s just silly! Obama already has “legitimacy” as our president. Why is the right making the same mistake as the left? He won the election and therefore deserves the respect that we are to give the office and that includes our prayers and the acceptance of his authority.
And that is what Warren is doing. He accepted an invitation graciously given by Obama because is the leader of this country and it is great honor to deliver the invocation at an inauguration. Any pastor should be pleased to come before the nation and the Lord, to ask him to bless Obama, giving him wisdom to lead this nation through such perilous times.
BTW, my Reformation professor, Carl Trueman makes an interesting point about the controversy. (I can attest to how much of a Rachel Maddow fan he is, he blathered on and on about her during class. It was amazing how many times he could work her into the conversation, especially given the nature of the topic — the Reformation doesn’t really lead itself to lefty blathering heads. But what was the most amusing part of his devotion to Maddow was his insistence that she was impartial.)
(Trueman link via Justin Taylor)