We Call on You Lord: Leaked Rick Warren Invocation

(NOTE: Copies of what seemed to be a draft of an inaugural invocation by Pastor Rick Warren arrived in the fax machines of several prominent journalists this morning. This site does not vouch for the authenticity of the draft, although each of the statements does conform to material in Pastor Warren's speeches, interviews, or on his websites.)

O Lord, as we come together on this historic and solemn occasion to inaugurate a president and vice president. We pray, O Lord, for President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph Biden, to whom You have entrusted leadership of this nation at this moment in history.

We pray for their advisors and supporters, particularly their Jewish advisors and supporters, who will surely roast in hell if they do not abandon their refusal to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. Pray for the conversion of Obama chief advisor David Axelrod and his economic wise man Larry Summers, his early supporters Lester Crown and his campaign finance chair Penny Pritzker, for, as the Bible says, there will be a day when there will be a great revival of faith in God through Jesus among the Jewish people. (Romans 11). Obviously, this is a day that we, as believers in Christ, want to pray for! Let the light of Christian salvation come to the Jewish Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel and his family, some of whom survived the German effort to bring them to Christian truth in the last generation.

May all efforts to stop homosexuals from violating the ancient humanitarian institution of marriage succeed as did your will in California in the last election. Attend particularly, O lord, to President Obama's environmental chief Nancy Sutley, and to the man who has worked essentially without sleep for three months to save the American economy from total collapse, Representative Barney Frank. Use the government to bring an end to acts as bad as incest, pedophilia and polygamy, by stamping out homosexuality among the homosexuals, a people evolutionarily unfit, that we may truly become one nation before God. May the First Amendment to the Constitution protect all who want to compare homosexual sex to incest, pedophilia and polygamy from the arrows of hate speech accusations shot by the politically correct.

Change the hearts of the new administration's pro-choice advisors and supporters, including the Justices of the Supreme Court who stand here today with us: Holocaust denier Anthony Kennedy, holocaust denier Ruth Bader Ginzburg, holocaust denier David Souter, holocaust denier Stephen Breyer, and holocaust denier John Paul Stevens, who is about to swear in the Vice-President, in that abortion is a holocaust and the eighteen million or so women who have committed abortion in the thirty-five years since 1973 are thus no better than Nazis.

Bless the women, who have chosen to follow their ambitions into public life, but change the hearts, Lord, of Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton, Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano, United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis from independent lives of their own to submission to their husbands, if any, for I love the King James Version's rendition of Ephesians 5:22 "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands" and of course "Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ if God." 1 Corinthians 11:3. These women have chosen to participate in the public life of the community. Enlighten them as to the requirement that women not speak in church, saving any questions they have about their common life to ask their husbands as they return home.

Now, O Lord, despite the plain language of the Constitution that created this great nation, we dedicate this presidential inaugural ceremony to You. May this be the beginning of a new dawn for America as we humble ourselves before You and acknowledge You alone as our Lord, our Savior and our Redeemer. We pray this in the name of the Father, and of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Comments

[LynnW49]

Awesome. Funny, but in more of a holy sheesh kind of way. Well done in any case.

[WhatsTheRealProblem]

My fears about Reverend Warren may not have anything to do with him. But, my experience of many Evangelical ministers is that there is a tendency to confuse prayer for telling God what is the “right” thing to do in their opinion. I would suggest that Reverend Warren be schooled to keep in mind that he is being asked to invoke the power of God and to pray for the New Administration, for the Health of this Nation, for the Constitution, for people who have lost jobs, for people who are hungry and sick, for our safety and survival, for forgiveness for what we have done in war, etc. If he could avoid hints to God about doing it Reverend Warren’s way, it would be appreciated. Example: when there is a flood some ministers would ask God to smite homosexual people because they caused the flood with a gay pride parade. How do they know this? Perhaps the people killed in the floods hated gays and God is smiting them directly. Both ideas are totally NOT GOD. They are stupid and petty.

Dear God, please do it my way and ask him NOT to do a stupid and petty prayer PLEASE !!!

[WhatsTheRealProblem]

Dear President-Elect Obama and Vice President-Elect Biden,

At this most historic Inauguration, I am concerned that the joyful nature of Our Inauguration will be spoiled by the pain of the divide caused by religious groups who have used the power of their tax-exempt organizations to blockade the civil rights of people who are not like them (please notice that I say that the cause is the PAIN….not blaming the people). I know that if we are to come together as a nation, it has to start somewhere. Reverend Warren in his bigotry disguised as godliness is better than some and worse than others. The unchristlike ego we are dealing with is well demonstrated when he accuses anyone who disagrees with his policy on gay rights of being a Christophobe. Perhaps someone should break the news to him before he does the prayer in front of the whole nation that he is not Christ. What is cause for phobia are folks who smile charmingly while denying civil rights. History has shown us what was done to black people because of the twisting of the story of Cain and Abel.

[goldiekins]

Obviously this prayer is not the prayer that will be spoken at the inauguration.

[verdadero]

You are correct. This is not the one we will hear. This is the prayer that Rick will offer at his church every week before and after the nomination. After all this is the prayer he has been offering for the past year, why change it now?

[sammyalbany]

Remember what the Godfather said (he's got "god" in his name, so he must be religious):
"Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer"
Judge not the president by symbolic acts, but judge him by whatever the hell he actually does as president.

[11907281]

Ok, his very first act as president is to have a guy pray over his presidency who thinks gay love is equal to incest and pedophilia, as well as advocating w@r with Ir@n. What a way to start a new job!

[PoliticalAmazon]

He forgot to pray to O'Lord (apparently there is a separate Irish God) for rebellious teenagers to get with the program and shape up because God says in his O'Bible that rebellious teenagers can be executed.

He also forgotto pray to O'Lord for women who do not have an intact hy.men but who are to be married to immediately see a plastic surgeon to reconstruct one because the O'Bible tells us that women who marry without an intact hy.men are to be executed.

He also forgot to pray to O'Lord that women who have been raped immediately commit suicide because the O'Bible dictates that the rapist must marry his victim and keep her for life, providing the victim with decades of more rapes, in the name of God, Amen.

[abeone]

And all those ball game watching sinners on the Sabbath shall be stoned ( and not on beer ) and all the CEO's that put gold as the God they worship, before the Old Testament one, shall be stoned. And all the other 650 laws in the OT that are ignored until one appeals to some religious nut who wants to gain control over everybody. How do I know that all Religions are man made? They all try to subjugate women.I guess Christians have to be good so they won't go to hell. Why not just be good and just and love everybody and treat them as you would like to be treated simply because it is the sensible thing to do. No good decision was ever made out of fear. I give you Bush supporters as a prime example.

[ramsha]

Why BO has this penchant for all the Foul Mouthing pastors is something most people cannot understand. Many people who voted for BO are disappointed for not keeping the church out of the state and government affairs. RW is especially a very opinionated and divisive purveyor of his religion. All this is going to come back and haunt BO someday

[K-Dog76]

ramsha,

had you ever watched an inauguration they have all had invocations, oh well I guess the guys who wrote the separate church and state thing didn't make it clear that it means NO STATE RELIGION and freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

Oh well, Obama's leftist base is cracking already and he isn't even in office yet, fortunately everyone in the center thinks he'll do a good job because he has hundreds of millions of people to look for not the wackjobs on the far left or right...

[0emissions]

Amen!
Please join us after for coffee, tea and squares prepared by our ladies auxiliary.

[quindy]

This is hilarious! How sad that we have religion mixed into inauguration.

[K-Dog76]

quindy,

yes its so sad, every president whose been an inauguration has had religion mixed in... its so wrong to call on a higher power to ask for guidance when you become the most powerful man on earth...

truly horrible

[zeller]

K-Dog76,

Actually, prayers by clergy at inaugurations started in 1933. Which means that only 11 of the past 43 presidents had prayers at their inauguration (12 out of 44 including Obama).

Frankly, it is highly inappropriate to have a sectarian prayer during a secular inauguration because it undercuts the separation of church and state. The pick of Rick Warren demonstrates why it's such a bad idea to have a prayer in the first place since giving a preacher a government­-sponsored pulpit supports Warren's misguided view of the United States as a "Christian nation" with laws (such as those regarding same-sax marriage) based on the Bible.

President Obama should take whatever personal guidance and support he wants from his personal faith, but there's no reason to have it as part of public, government­-sponsored ceremony. Mixing religion and state is what gave us Proposition 8, and is good for neither religion nor the state.

For more information, Wikipedia has a list of inaugural clergy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inaugural_ceremony_prayers_(US_presidential)

[rosiebond007]

This has to be a joke - yes ???

[andvoodoo2]

Yes.

[Clavis]

Watch out, you're not being sufficiently respectful to Christianity!

As if an abstract concept like "Christianity" deserves any more respect than an abstract concept like "blue" or "cheese".

Or "marriage", for that matter...

[nannagal]

" I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Christians are not like your Christ." Mohammed K. "Mahatma" Ghandi.

[toffekins]

O Lord, we are gathered today to swear in our new President, Barack Obama. We pray that you bless him and our great nation as we face the huge challenges of the next four years. We ask you to grant us the grace to unite behind him as one people, regardless of our different ideologies and beliefs. Lord, we ask you to heal the bitter divisions in our society, and the ravages of war and injustice around the world. Grant us the generosity not only to extend a helping hand to the underprivileged of our society, but also the starving and suffering millions beyond our shores. Lord, we pray that you may bless our President with the wisdom to make just and noble decisions for the greater good of all, and for the advancement of global peace and stability. O Lord, you have abundantly blessed this nation from its inception, and have steadfastly protected us from harm, even during the darkest hours of our history. We look to you once more, and trust in your great providence, to continue watching over our President and our country as we, with great faith and hope, embrace a new dawn of American history. We pray this in your most holy name, Amen.

[daffey]

Wow, that was a powerful prayer. Well said.

[christopherflynn]

Well said, but 'lord' should be replaced by "Humanist persona"..­.

[aguilla112]

Thank you. A real, heartfelt prayer. Awesome

[CanadianinCleveland]

Linda, you hit the nail on the head with this post!
Its pathetic that Pastor Warren.. .. is even present at the inaugural ceremonies­... so much for separation of church and State.....

[K-Dog76]

Canadian,

I'm going to start sounding like a broken record.... an invocation has nothing to do with the separation of church and state. The separation of church and state means that there can be no state mandated religion. So much for understanding the constituti­on... every president has been sworn in on a religious text (aka the Bible, but but it could be the Koran, Talmud etc depending on the president's religion, which he is free to choose, I suppose an atheist can swear in on a folded flag)

I'm sure things north of the great lakes are so much different and better, that you decided to come to Cleveland because you hate the way we do things. Oh wait, I get your argument, you don't have one...

[Dolmance]

Look, by definition this man is a crackpot. But he's a relatively benign crackpots, and having him do the invocation is part of a strategy to make all the crackpots out there less noxious. I mean, religious fanatics aren't about to go away, so it's important that the next Democratic President does this - preparing the battlefield for 2012 and beyond.

The US is a democracy. And in a democracy, ignoring the crackpot is folly.

[K-Dog76]

Dolmance,

Very well said. That's why I come to Huffington Post, because it would be folly if I ignored it...

[fixedriddle]

This is a false letter because Warren would not end a prayer like that. As an evangelical Christian, he would pray or ask in Jesus' name not that of "the Father, of the Son, and the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

Whoever put this 'prayer' out there is just misleading people about who Rick Warren really is.

It is unfortunate that so many people do not understand Christianity as the Bible shows us. I can say this person who wrote this letter does not.

[daffey]

Obviously it is an attempt at jabbing at Warren, and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Anyone half familiar with Evangelical Christianity (where most opponents of Evangelical Christianity seldom bother to educate themselves), would know there are a host of clues showing this is not real. So I hope no one is looking at this and thinking Warren is going to say this. Just look at the line ‘despite the plain language of the Constituti­on...’ If that isn’t a give away, I don’t know what is.

[HotheadPaisen]

Obviously many people do not understand satire either.

I agree with you that following the bible makes if very hard to understand christianity. Why can't I eat a porkchop again?

[daffey]

Who said you can't? That's not Christianity. That's Jewish dietary restrictions. Go ask them. : )

[storm999]

It's amazing that the only clue Fixedriddle found that this is a spoof letter was the conclusion. I guess everything else rang true to him. For the record, the Rick Warren's interpretation of the Bible is flawed. Nothing is more absurd than the way certain Evangelicals claim to know the "true" way to read the Bible. It's especially galling that most of these folks have studied neither Hebrew nor Greek nor Church history.

It's because I am a Christian that I find Rick Warren such an offensive pratt.

[Spinsterina]

Anyone who thinks the Bible is the inspired Word of God eventually comes to believe their own interpretation is "correct" and the only true way. But when they approach the Bible with an open mind, seeking historical truths, try to go back to the original texts to find the "real truth" they risk loosing faith and becoming non-believers when they see how implausible it all is.

Pulling the curtain back from the Wizard does not inspire deeper faith in the Wizard. It sheds light on the humanity of our fellows.