Why is the selection of Rick Warren so surprising?

Sometimes people are taken by surprise when politicians do what they say they're going to do. And that seems to be the case with the furor from the gay community and Proposition 8 opponents over the selection of megapastor Rick Warren to say the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration.

From the beginning of the campaign, Obama said he would seek to reach across divides. What does that mean? What can it mean other that he would on many occasions reach out to Republicans and conservatives? So why should the selection of Warren — who, by the way, is liberal by the standards of the evangelical political mainstream of the past decade — be so surprising? Writer Lee Stranahan, an apparently supporter of gay marriage, stated this quite well recently in the Huffington Post:

I don't understand how anyone who listened to Obama during the campaign would be shocked that Obama lets Warren give the invocation. It's vintage Obama. It does not signal agreement with Warren's political positions, some of which are clearly at odds with Obama's. Warren isn't making policy or even giving a sermon. He's saying a prayer and then possibly dancing later at some inaugural parties. ... Obama said it in the abstract time and again during the campaign. Now he's showing us. Seeing the things that Pastor Rick Warren and Reverend Joseph Lowery (a civil-rights activist saying he benediction) have in common is more important than seeing the things that separate them. America needs to see that. It's a step down the road where a majority of us see the things that straight Americans in love want are the same things that gay Americans in love want, too.

I'm not the biggest fan of Warren, for we come from a different theological framework. But, to his credit, he hasn't been content to follow the "party line" on a host of issues, and he has demonstrated the ability to work with those who disagree with him.

He joined the fight against AIDS well before that was a thing to do among evangelicals. He has expanded the evangelical view of politics beyond the traditional issues of abortion, sex and gambling, and he has been unwilling to adopt the blind militarism present in much of the religious right.

Unlike some on the religious right, Warren has refused to let his political perspective take precedence over his spiritual role; his best-selling books aren't focused on politics, but on living a Christian life. But more importantly in the political context, Warren has been able to practice civility in his endeavors. Not only shouldn't it be surprising that Warren is performing the benediction, he in fact is the obvious choice.