The tale of two inaugural prayers by Robinson and Warren -- they were worlds apart.

The inaugural prayers delivered by Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson and evangelical pastor Rick Warren couldn't have been more different. They highlight the gulf between evangelicals, orthodox Christians of all strips and the liberal wing of mainline protestantism which is spinning off into the orbit of universalism.

Robinson prayed at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18; an invitation extended, I suspect, in response to homosexual outrage over the invitation of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inaugural ceremony on the 20th.

Their prayers highlight two irreconcilable two worldviews. If nothing else it highlights why religious liberals like Robinson confuse the uninformed about what Christianity actually is.

Robinson begins with "O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will …" What is that? For Christians, God isn't a figment of our imaginations or understandings. He has clearly revealed Himself to us in the Scriptures. There aren't multiple God's. There is the one God who reveals Himself in the persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Robinson then, typically delivers a political exposition in the form a prayer:

"Bless us with tears — for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

"Bless us with anger — at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

"Bless us with discomfort — at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

"Bless us with patience — and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

"Bless us with humility — open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

"Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance — replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger..."

He couldn't help but inject the homosexual controversy into his remarks.

Warren on the other hand delivered a prayer consonant with Christian sensibilities found in past national prayer proclamations and statements.

He prayed to God as Father and acknowledges He is supreme and sovereign, merciful and loving, and just.

Almighty God, our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see exists because of you alone. It all comes from you. It all belongs to you. It all exists for your glory.

History is your story. The Scripture tells us, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is One.” And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made.

He draws on the need for individual and corporate forgiveness and our ultimate accountability to God.

Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans, united not by race, or religion, or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all. When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us. When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us. And 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.

Help us to share, to serve and to seek the common good of all. May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet. And may we never forget that one day all nations and all people will stand accountable before you. We now commit our new president and his wife, Michelle and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.

And Warren closes praying as Jesus taught Christians to pray -- in the name of Jesus and according to the Lord's prayer.

I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life, Yeshua, Isa, Jesus [Spanish pronunciation], Jesus, who taught us to pray:

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen."

Robinson's prayer exemplifies the confusion among people who claim to be Christian but really don't believe it anymore.

Obama caves in. Funny way to bring people together by inviting most divisive religious figure in Protestantism.

Barack Obama announced that he was inviting practicing homosexual Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson to pray at an inaugural event at the Lincoln Memorial. This was no doubt a response to attacks on him for inviting evangelical pastor Rick Warren to speak at his inaugural ceremony. Warren incurred the wrath of homosexual activists for having the tumidity to support traditional marriage efforts in California.

Robinson is facilitating a split within the Episcopal by thumbing his nose at basic Christian morality through his homosexual behavior which will no doubt lead to the eventual disintegration of the Episcopal Church in America.

Robinson issued a statement expressing his “great honor to be there representing the Episcopal Church, the people of New Hampshire, and all of us in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.” Here he's rubbing the noses of people of New Hampshire and the Episcopal Church who don't agree with his views or behavior in the dirt by saying he represents them.

And of course he took at a shot at religious conservatives and orthodox believers who value the Christian heritage our nation and culture when he told the New York Times that “he had been reading inaugural prayers through history and was ‘horrified’ at how ‘specifically and aggressively Christian they were.’”

Bishop Robinson said, “I am very clear that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture or anything like that. The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.”

Obama, I suspect, wants to be the president of all Americans and he recognizes that America doesn't reflect the leftist values of portions of his political constituency. For daring to stray too far from liberal "orthodoxy" even symbolically he's getting hammered from the left.

As Pat Buchanan observed around Election Day, Barack Obama will end up at war with significant portions of his own party or the American people. His attempts to walk that fine line before he's even inaugurated is increasingly difficult.