Word: saddleback
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...small Pentecostal church in Boston, and he helped make Obama's religious outreach the most extensive and comprehensive yet for a Democratic presidential campaign. He has also been behind some moves that have raised eyebrows, including Obama's participation in last summer's Presidential Forum at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church and, more recently, the selection of the Evangelical author and pastor to deliver the invocation at the Inauguration...
...purpose for your life. "Pastor Rick" took on progressive causes like third-world poverty and sex trafficking, and implored Evangelicals to care about HIV/AIDS. Both Obama and John McCain were comfortable enough with Warren that they agreed to join him for a presidential forum at his Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif...
...Warren himself encourages the confusion about his politics and agenda. When the Saddleback presidential forum was announced in July 2008, the pastor seemed eager to emphasize that he was not an old-school Evangelical leader obsessed with social issues. "There is no Christian religious test," he told TIME in the days before the event, vowing that questions would center on four areas: poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights. On the night of the forum, however, Warren hewed closely to a conservative script, asking the candidates about gay marriage, judges and abortion, and only briefly touching on poverty and climate...
...next day at Saddleback's Sunday services, Warren tried to reclaim his postpartisan reputation, telling his congregants that he would not endorse a presidential candidate nor tell anyone whom he was going to vote for. But that same day, he gave an interview to Naomi Schaeffer Riley of the Wall Street Journal that left very few questions about his leanings. The Democratic Party's new platform calling for a reduction in the abortion rate was, he said, "window dressing" and "too little, too late." When Riley asked Warren about some of Obama's Evangelical supporters, he dismissed the significance...
...Many believe the Obama campaign was naive about Warren's political agenda heading into the Saddleback forum. "They hadn't done their research on Warren," says one progressive religious figure. "Obama wasn't prepared for the Saddleback thing at all, and Warren bushwhacked him." Likewise, Obama's senior staff was not aware of Warren's most recent controversial comments - including his comparison of homosexuality to incest and his belief that the President of Iran should be assassinated - when they signed off on his selection for the Inauguration...