[Lancey Howard]

Thanks for the heads up on Warren. I have heard of the book, but it never crossed my mind to read it. I simply have never trusted televangelists, and I don’t trust Rick Warren. Fact is, I never heard of Rick Warren until reading about him here at FR a few years back. I guess he’s a California phenomenom? I forget, is he the guy with the “Crystal Cathedral” church?

[Finny]

No, the Chrystal Cathedral was IMO a fun televangelist, Robert Schuller, who started out preaching what seems to me a fairly straightforward and honest Gospel to people at a drive-in theater (very big in the 50s) in Southern California in 1955. He made a ton of dough with a wealthy church and built the Cyrystal Cathedral in Anaheim, which has been plagued with misfortune ever since! Ironic because Asian feng shui I think would take one look at that building and say, "What did you expect?" Robert Schuller was, in my opinion, fine with the Gospel.

Warren is a different animal. He presumes to insert himself into politics all the while making it look as if others had made it happen. A very large contingent of politically active "conservatives" belong to his Saddleback Church in Orange County, so you're talking money. Not that Warren spends it on himself -- on the contrary, he's big on Good Works. I read Purpose Driven Life because fate put it in front of me at a perfect time. I read it expecting to find insight into God. I hadn't yet figured out his church's "conservatives" (for example, national talk show host Hugh Hewitt) of Warren's ilk were in fact statists who mistook themselves for conservatives, with all the smug superior "grown-up" uprightness of liberals.

Sure gave me an appreciation of my King James Bible!