Rick Warren and Barack Obama

Over at Life Training International, Scott and Serge are commenting about Rev. Rick Warren's endorsement of Democrat Senator Barack Obama. Warren, as an evangelical pastor and writer, is known for his highly successful book The Purpose Driven Life. More recently, he hosted an AIDS conference, inviting Obama and several other noted speakers. Here's Warren's statements about Obama from an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: What did you think of Barack Obama?

WARREN: He’s an amazing man. I think…

BLITZER: Do you think he’s got it? In other words, he’s got that potential like so many other presidential prospects, to be the president of the United States?

WARREN: I think he does.

BLITZER: Because?

WARREN: I think he has good character. I think both Sam Brownback and Barack Obama — the reason I invited them both, first, they’ll tell you the truth. They’re not just going to beat around the bush. They’ll tell you what they believe. And I appreciate that.

Second, they’re men of civility. And I’m so tired of the rudeness we’ve got in our society where people are just mean to each other. We need to return to civility, which says, I treat you with respect even if I violently disagree with you. That we’ve lost the “civil” in civilization.

And though I consider Senator Obama a friend and value our relationship, he's yet to recognize that all human beings have a right to life. That's why, I believe, he's mistakenly voted to allow partial-birth abortion and destructive embryo research. That's regrettable, because in the past we used to discriminate on the basis of skin color and gender, as Senator Obama knows firsthand. Now, however, with elective abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, we discriminate on the basis of size, level of development, location, and dependency. We've simply swapped one form of discrimination for another. I'm hopeful Senator Obama will come to see that.

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