Posted on 12/31/2006 8:41:18 AM PST by Gamecock
The facade is beginning to peel back from the so-called ministry of Southern California Pastor Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Church" and "The Purpose Driven Life." Unfortunately, many among his ample flock have far too much invested in him, both emotionally and otherwise, to admit their mistakes and cut their losses.
Moreover, he certainly faces no possibility of in-depth scrutiny from the "mainstream media," as his brand of "Christianity" poses little or no threat to their liberal social agenda. Yet to the degree that anyone at all questions Warren as anything less than authentic, his response is thoroughly telling as to his true character, as well as the nature of his "ministry."
Joseph Farah, editor-in-chief of the Internet news site, "World Net Daily," opened a can of worms by calling Warren to account over his fawning praise of the terrorist stronghold of Syria. While there, Warren lauded the brutish dictatorship as "peaceful," claiming that the Islamist government does not officially sanction "extremism of any kind."
When confronted by Farah, an American of Middle Eastern decent who knows too well the history of horror and tragedy faced by persecuted Christians in that region of the world, Warren immediately denied ever making such statements.
Subsequently, Farah offered as evidence a "YouTube" video from Saddleback Church, where Warren is pastor, inarguably proving Farah's statement. So Warren's church simply pulled the video from circulation and continued the denial, being unaware that a copy of the video file had been downloaded and is still in circulation. Warren's follow-up to this inconvenient circumstance is perhaps most telling of all.
In a concurrent set of moves, Warren sent a seemingly conciliatory e-mail to Farah while distributing another to his "flock," in which he characterized Farah's pursuit of the incident as nothing less than "doing Satan's job for him." Throughout this sorry episode, Farah's only error has been to suggest that Warren's disturbing behavior represents some new departure from consistency.
In fact, Warren is actually being entirely consistent. Whether his audience might be Farah himself, Syrian despot Bashar Assad or the Saddleback congregation, Warren tells each exactly what he believes they want to hear.
This pattern is the essence of what Warren is and what has made him so "successful" from a worldly perspective.
For those among his congregation who sincerely want to know the truth, the evidence is ample. Unfortunately, it always has been available, and any present "confusion" merely results from past decisions to ignore that evidence.
For example, his letter to the congregation decrying the "attack" and making his defense by invoking Scripture is barely four paragraphs long. Yet in those four paragraphs, he employs three different "translations" of the Bible. Why, it must be asked, does he not trust any single translation to convey God's message to humanity?
Could it be that he has his own message and agenda to advance, and that he has found it very convenient to utilize different wordings of different passages, not because they better convey God's purpose, but rather his own?
It would be better to ask, could his motivation possibly be anything else?
As Farah has refused to let this indefensible situation simply drop, Warren has responded by taking it to another realm, making personal attacks against Farah in an interview with the magazine, "Christianity Today." But once again, by so doing, Warren succeeds in revealing much more about himself than about his adversary.
Warren, who has not to date been known as any sort of standard bearer for Christian principle in the political arena, decries Farah (whose societal and moral views fall unambiguously on the right) and his ideological allies as part of a wrongful "political" encroachment on the faith.
In contrast, Warren's forays into the political realm prove, not surprisingly, to be decidedly leftist. At a recent conference on the African AIDS epidemic, Warren invited the very liberal Senator Barak Obama (D-Ill.) as a keynote speaker. He justified the inclusion of Obama, who avidly supports abortion and same-sex "marriage," on the grounds that Obama offered a worldly solution to ostensibly curb the spread of the disease through condom usage.
The morally ambiguous message conveyed by the advocacy of condoms, along with their inherent unreliability, make them nothing less than iconic to the abortion industry, which fully understands how much new business they generate. In the face of such pragmatism, one has to wonder what will be next. Perhaps Warren's church will sponsor a "designated driver's ministry" at every bar in its locale.
Appalling though Obama's inclusion in the conference may be, it is nonetheless entirely consistent with Warren's behavior from the beginning.
Leading a megachurch in the culturally disintegrating landscape of Southern California, Warren certainly knows that his prospects of maximizing the "flock" will be greatly enhanced as long as he shows proper deference to the real religion of the area, "political correctness."
In this, his Christian populism movement has proven to be far more palatable to the God-hating secularists of the surrounding communities than such stodgy, old-fashioned and "intolerant" notions as "Thou Shalt Not." And the Warren influence has been predictable wherever it can be found.
If other churches that abide in the Warren philosophy, such as Chicago's gargantuan "Willow Creek," were to truly uphold Christian values among their enormous congregations, they would certainly be a constant "thorn in the side" of their surrounding populace, acculturated into the modernism as those communities certainly are. Yet an amazing degree of compatibility and congeniality exists between the Warren Church model and the social structures of Chicago and Southern California.
The tradeoff between true Christian principle and acceptability to the locals is apparently worth the spiritual sacrifice it entails, with expanding parking lots, increasingly lavish facilities and, of course, fuller collection plates bearing witness. Meanwhile, such churches offer ever less of a worthwhile and much-needed alternative to the ailing world around them.
Ultimately, Warren gives conformist Christians, wearied from their ongoing battle with a world that is increasingly hostile to true Christian faith, an apparent "out" by offering a version that the modern world can find more acceptable while remaining in its present spiritual darkness.
Many among Warren's vast following have made the mistake, in light of his "purpose driven" ministering, of presuming, at the heart of the movement, a Christ-driven purpose. Yet as Warren's real character continues to be revealed, it is becoming apparent that members of that following are presuming too much.
(Christopher G. Adamo is a freelance writer and staff writer for the New Media Alliance. He lives in southeastern Wyoming and has been active in local and state politics for many years.)
I read the article at the link. I see nothing where Warren dismissed the islamic conversion as a big "so what", he merely stated that it was a conversion of necessity in prison.
The article looks chopped up, like the author just pulled snippets out of the conversation. It's hard to tell what Warren actually thought about it without seeing the statements on either side of the quote.
Do you have other articles?
I'm sure that's true. My situation is a little different.
Nice effort. Though facts don't seem to make much difference on such threads.
Now, now, you were doing so well, let's not slip back into the game, shall we? :)
There is no denying that you led us on a chase, dangling a carrot, so to speak, laboring to lead us to a certain conclusion. To do that -- to mislead like that -- and then taunt your opposites for having drawn the wrong conclusion, bad form, very bad form. Sort of a really narsty form of deus ex machina.
Ok, i'm really sorry, but i have to call you on this one old friend.
i call BS.
i am that person that you mention.
As i recall, you claimed to have stopped reading the article after this "misrepresentation".
Funny that you're willing to give Warren et al the benefit of the doubt over his 'misstatements', yet not willing to concede that the author you're presently criticising might have made an error. Since you claim to have quit reading the article, you have no idea what was entailed in the rest of the article.
Would you like to discuss Warren's misrepresentation of scripture in order to support the questionable positions he presents in the PDC/PDL?
I'm afraid I can't participate in a book burning as you suggest. My copies have all been trashed already. I must have cost the local church a few hundred dollars in "lost" books just on my own.
BAAAAHAHAHA!
no prob.
A little while back, our church went through the Purpose Driven Church program. It received rave reviews, but I had a weird feeling about the whole thing. Nothing substantive, but the videos and book just seemed to me to be lacking. I remember telling my wife something to the effect that we'll not be too happy if we find Warren is not the pastor we think him to be. I think we are now at that point. More and more, I am finding Warren to be the evangelical for the Oprah generation.
Ping to Quix wanting to stamp out all dissent.
All your churches belong to Warren.
But the game is fun... well, when you have time. ;-)
Yes, I led you on... and on purpose! Sorry, couldn't help it again.
Before any of the Saddleback apologists accuse me of stealing or burning Warren's books, let me state on the record that all I have done is ask people to research. They have done their own burning.
I read the article at the link. I see nothing where Warren dismissed the islamic conversion as a big "so what", he merely stated that it was a conversion of necessity in prison.The article looks chopped up, like the author just pulled snippets out of the conversation. It's hard to tell what Warren actually thought about it without seeing the statements on either side of the quote.
Do you have other articles?
Well, that's your take on it, and mine is that it's not at all ambiguous that that is precisely what he's doing.
No, I don't have "other articles" on it, although I suspect they're out there for the spelunking. I'm not going to do it. If YOU want to, then be my guest. I've made my point, you've disagreed with it, and the readers can make up their own minds.
MY life is too short (FAR too short, at this point) to play those kind of games with y'all.
SOUNDS LIKE a stealing-and-trashing-books-for-Jesus ministry.
What a novel idea.
(Where can I get a new set of sides? Cheap??? :)
Perhaps, not a lot of difference between the two.
Glad that was clarified.
Can't have any misguided impressions on a RW bashing thread.
As I said earlier, as iron sharpens iron, my friend...
i call BS. As i recall, you claimed to have stopped reading the article after this "misrepresentation".
That's not completely true. I eventually read the entire article but I stopped responding to the points after the first point was such a blatant misrepresentation. Anything so blatantly untrue as what that author tried to pass off as fact really comes across as purposely deceitful. After that I lost complete interest in the rest of his points.
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