Rev. Danny Fisher

Via Molly De Shong over at Shambhala Sun Space: A really cool new blog devoted to writing and giving Dharma talks has been started by a Sōtō Zen monk named Hoko. It’s called Dharmically Speaking, and you should definitely check it out–especially if you’re a Buddhist teacher or clergyperson.

At a press conference today, President-Elect Barack Obama responded to concerns about the naming of Rick Warren as invocation speaker for the upcoming inauguration. (I posted about it this morning.)

For another perspective, I would point you to a new piece written by Michelle Goldberg for Religion Dispatches:

Feminists and gay people have long feared that the Democrats′ much-vaunted new religious outreach would come at their expense, and the Warren choice seriously exacerbates such anxieties. Both groups have long complained that that their concerns aren′t taken seriously by the broader progressive coalition, a lament that′s gained urgency in the wake of the explosive sexual politics that marked the election. By honoring Warren, Obama is rubbing salt into wounds that have barely begun to heal.

[...]

At this point, then, the best hope may be that the fusillades of outrage get through. Obama is sending a message of respect and conciliation to those who oppose gay rights, women′s rights and secularism more broadly. Ordinarily such a master of empathy, he needs to find a way to make social progressives feel understood and included as well. Insulting your supporters to win the support of your opponents is no way to build unity.

ABC News has a new report about the controversial Wat Pa Luang Ta Bua Temple, a Buddhist monastery in western Thailand where monastics live in seeming harmony with tigers.

The bad news is this: Rick Warren has been chosen to offer the invocation at President-Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration next month. The Rev. Chuck Currie, my colleague in the religion blogosphere, sums up the situation perfectly:

Rick Warren does some really good stuff and there are some areas that I have admired his ability to build bridges between evangelicals and mainline religious and political figures…but he is also very established in the religious right and his position on social issues like gay rights, stem cell research and women’s rights are all out of the mainstream and are very much opposed to the progressive agenda that Obama ran on. I think that he is very much the wrong person to put on the stage with the president that day.

The good news, though, is this: the benediction will be led by the Rev. Joseph Lowery, founder and former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a true-blue spiritual hero. He’s also one of the few guys who hasn’t been afraid to tell George W. Bush exactly what he thinks of him to his face (see below). I think we can count on him to speak truth to power.

The full program, Secrets of the Kung Fu Temple, airs Thursday, December 18th, at 10 p.m. For more information, follow this link.