Rick Warren's Blessing and Obama's

The furor over the minister selected to deliver the invocation at the Inaugural is a measure of how the traditional separation of church and state for more than two centuries has broken down in American life over the past eight years.

In decades of acting out his informal role as the "President's pastor," Billy Graham affirmed the values of Christianity without applying them to political issues and without suggesting a state-sponsored religion at the expense of those with other beliefs or none. No President would have welcomed him to the White House if he had.

Now we have Obama defending his choice of Rick Warren on the grounds that the best-selling minister is tolerant of the President-Elect's political views:

"I would note that a couple of years ago, I was invited to Rick Warren's church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion...

"And that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign's been all about: That we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere...where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans."

Barack Obama did not go to Warren's church to discuss politics, but Warren's invitation to offer a blessing at the Inaugural, by his activism on political issues, inevitably is seen as tolerance for if not approval of that commingling of church and state.

The new president has promised Change from what George W. Bush brought to the White House. This, sad to say, looks like more of the same.