Controversial evangelist Warren asks for civility, humility

His arms outstretched and his head bowed in prayer, the Rev. Rick Warren opened the inauguration of President Barack H. Obama yesterday with an explicitly Christian prayer calling for "a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet."

Warren, 54, an evangelical pastor who has faced a firestorm of criticism from gay rights advocates over his opposition to same-sex marriage, did not refer to the issue, but did allude to fissures in society, asking of God, "As we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes, even when we differ."

The California megachurch pastor and best-selling author is emerging as America's most prominent evangelical, and Obama invited him to give the invocation after speaking at his church in 2006 and then attending a campaign forum there in 2008. Their relationship is interesting, because evangelicals have for the last several decades been closely associated with the Republican Party, but Warren has been the most vocal advocate of broadening the array of public policy issues discussed by evangelicals and lessening the religious movement's alliance with either political party.

Warren spoke for less than five minutes at the start of the inauguration ceremony. The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a longtime civil rights advocate who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered the benediction.

But the focus was on Warren because of the criticism he and Obama have faced since Obama tapped Warren to give the invocation. Warren had supported Proposition 8, which overturned same-sex marriage in California, and compared gay relationships to incest and polygamy.

The controversy did not seem to affect most Americans. A Gallup Poll survey released Monday found that only 9 percent of Americans objected to Obama's choice of Warren.

Warren said Americans are united by "our commitment to freedom, and justice for all." He celebrated the civil rights milestone of the election, saying, "We know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven." And he asked of God, "When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us."

He opened with a citation, in English, of the most important Jewish prayer, the Sh'ma, and with an echo of the opening line of the Koran, calling God "the compassionate and merciful one." But his prayer became clearly Christian toward the end, as he said, "I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life: Yeshua, Isa, Jesús, Jesus," citing the name of Jesus in Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, and English.

"When a president or anyone else invites a Christian minister, particularly an evangelical minister, to pray, you have to expect they might pray in the name of Jesus; that's what they do," said Jeffery L. Sheler, the author of a forthcoming Warren biography, "Prophet of Purpose." "But this was much milder than what Franklin Graham did eight years ago. At least he was trying to be a bit broad by using the Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish. He was trying to be as diverse as his evangelical faith would allow."

Scholars said that by calling Jesus "the one who changed my life," Warren was attempting to be inclusive, acknowledging his faith in Jesus, but not presuming that others share that faith. But he closed with the Lord's Prayer, the central prayer of Christianity, leading those in the crowd who are Christian believers to join in, while others sat silently.

The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said many evangelicals who are particularly concerned about Obama's support for abortion rights would be unhappy that Warren did not in some way call for God to guide Obama.

"There is a tension between pastoral responsibility and public decorum," Mohler said. "I would not have expected him to use his invocation as a political platform, but I would have hoped that he could have included a prayer that the Lord would guide this new president in such a way that he would do that which is right and good."

Diana L. Eck, a professor of comparative religion at Harvard who researches religious diversity as director of the Pluralism Project, said of Warren's prayer, "There was an emphasis on humility, which is a nice note to take, but I frankly didn't find it that moving."

Scholars said the invocation is unlikely to affect the debate over Warren's role in society.

"There's nothing he could have said that would have made some people happier with him," said Nancy T. Ammerman, professor of the sociology of religion at Boston University. "What he has said about gay and lesbian people is still going to stick in the craw of an awful lot of people.

"The way he constructed his prayer was quite inclusive and attempted to convey a lot of the kind of concerns that he's been trying to put before the evangelical community, for the environment, for justice," she said. "His saying the prayer 'in the name of the one who changed my life' is an interesting way of claiming his own relationship to God through a Christian lens, without necessarily doing it in a way that assumes everybody else there is going to share that particular invocation."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.