Posted on 01/05/2009 4:54:34 AM PST by Kaslin
Last August I wrote a column critical of Rick Warren's decision to host a presidential candidate forum at his Saddleback Church.
My reasoning then was that America's crisis is moral ambiguity. I argued that Pastor Warren would only contribute to this ambiguity by hosting candidates with opposing views on issues such as abortion and homosexuality and presenting himself as a neutral moderator.
Only Barack Obama would gain, I felt, being showcased as an acceptable candidate by one of the nation's best known evangelical pastors. If John McCain had wanted to clarify his social conservative credentials, he didn't need to go to Rick Warren's church with Barack Obama to do it.
Evangelicals and other Christians listened as Rick Warren called Obama and McCain "friends" and "patriots" and watched as Warren winced no more than would have Larry King when Sen. Obama said it was above his "pay grade" to consider if and when an unborn child has human rights.
Evangelicals had already been hearing from Warren, and left-leaning pastors like Jim Wallis, that they should broaden their primary concerns beyond sex and abortion.
In retrospect, I cannot prove that I was right. But I think the evidence powerfully supports my claim.
Barack Obama picked up five percentage points of the evangelical vote over what John Kerry received in 2004. Those five percentage points amounted to about a third of Obama's winning vote margin over John McCain.
Sure, the Saddleback Forum alone does not explain this shift. But the legitimacy Obama gained that night certainly didn't hurt.
The largest shift was among 18-29 year old evangelicals. Obama got 32 percent of their vote -- double what John Kerry had gotten.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after the forum, Warren was oblivious to the vulnerability of this group. The Journal reported, "... as for the notion that younger evangelicals are ready for rebellion against their parents' ideals, Mr. Warren cites polls showing that the younger evangelical generation is even more concerned about abortion than the older one." True. But this was only one part of the picture.
In 2007 the Pew Research Center reported that Republican identification among 18-29 year old white evangelicals had dropped from 55 percent in 2005 to 40 percent.
A survey done by Greenburg Quinlan Rosner Research showed that 26 percent of 18-29 year old evangelicals, compared to 9 percent of those over 30, support same-sex marriage.
Now President-elect Obama has invited Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural. The NY Times calls this an "olive branch to conservative Christian evangelicals" and many now call Warren this era's Billy Graham.
An olive branch? Rick Warren helped get Obama elected and our President-Elect understands that there is still evangelical gold to be mined in the pastor from Saddleback Church.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright can explain how Barack Obama uses pastors. Obama sat in his church for 20 years and used his words for the title of his best-selling book, then discarded him when he became a political liability.
Regarding the Billy Graham comparison, it challenges even the most creative imagination to picture the Rev. Graham's ever hosting a forum for political candidates.
In an interview, Barack Obama recalled a previous invitation to Saddleback Church. "...I was invited to Rick Warren's church to speak, despite his awareness that I held views that were entirely contrary to his when it came to gay and lesbian rights, when it came to issues like abortion." I doubt that Billy Graham would see this in the spirit of his own calling to bring the gospel to all who would listen.
Nor would I see the Rev. Graham signing onto the Evangelical Climate Initiative, as has Rick Warren. This gives Christian cover to the left to raise our energy costs to address still-unsubstantiated environmental claims.
But on global warming, Rick Warren and Barack Obama are on the same page. Perhaps these will be the first post-inaugural chips that our new president will call in.
0bama is speaking from the “spirit of lies” (Satan).
1 John 4 (:5-6)
If he truly converts to the Lord, Jesus Christ....the rest will eventually follow. ;-)
I can remember my father being angry at Billy Graham for appearing next to LBJ. Dad said it gave Johnson “christian cover” for his socialist agenda. Rick Warren is, I’m afraid, in the same mold. I’m sure he’s hopeful that his presence will make a positive difference on an otherwise negative situation...just like Billy must have believed. Times don’t change, do they?
Platte River Rick is a tool of the left and doesn’t even know it.
Yeah, LOL.
At the end, though, I liked McCain more than I did at the beginning.
I think McCain tried to win, and I think he probably played his hand as best he could. Even in 2007, it was pretty much expected that this would be a Dem year.
He ran out of money at the end though because he tied himself to matching funds, and that made a big difference.
Also, I think if he didn't support the bailout he would have won. Of course, he supported the bailout because he is a Washintonian.
Now that's a winning attitude. /s
"He ran out of money at the end though because he tied himself to matching funds, and that made a big difference. "
IOW, he was hoisted by his own petard called McCain-Feingold.
What were you saying about people around here at FR being at fault?
You didn't want to see the pundits proved wrong? I did. That's why I got so ticked at the Fifth Columnists here saying don't vote for McCain.
"He ran out of money at the end though because he tied himself to matching funds, and that made a big difference. " . . .IOW, he was hoisted by his own petard called McCain-Feingold.
No. Matching funds for presidential candidates was happening way before McCain-Feingold, and I believe Obama might have been the first candidate not to accept them and hence limit himself on what he could spend. If you are looking for a conspiracy theory, Obama sure got a lot of money candidates do not usually expect to get.
No mention of the pundits in your previous comment - only McCain. So who was it again who was expecting 2008 to be a Dem year?
" If you are looking for a conspiracy theory, Obama sure got a lot of money candidates do not usually expect to get. "
True dat. And where was John McCain while all this was happening?
Pollsters. You think they were wrong?
" I think McCain tried to win, and I think he probably played his hand as best he could. Even in 2007, it was pretty much expected that this would be a Dem year. "
Pollsters are mentioned nowhere in your post, but John McCain is. John McCain is the one who implicitly expected 2008 to be a dem year, whether you understand what you just stated or not.
Whether you realize it or not, you've quite by accident stumbled into the truth of the 2008 election. Any of the Republicans making an honest effort could have beaten Zero. Any of them - Rudy, Mitt, Fred, even The Huckster, could have beaten him, all it would have taken would have been some effort.
Your own words in your own post tell the tale: John McCain, and by extension the Republican leadership, expected 2008 to be a Dem year, and whaddaya know, they were right.
Amazing, these guys can tell the future.
And yet you persist in giving "Fifth columnists" here at FR, which comprises far less than one percent of the voting public, credit for the loss.
actually no I don't rememeber any of that and I'm 51 and saw Graham preach several times as a boy.
do you have any proof?
Graham has always been the benchmark of a gentleman evangelist.
the only blemish he has is being in the room with Nixon when Nixon went on about Jews who were out to get him (some were to be honest)
So you think when I said "it" I meant McCain?
I mean, when have most of the pundits NOT "expected it to be a dem year"? That's a given.
I'm still trying to understand how you give more credit for McCain's defeat to some of us who post here than you give to John McCain himself. That goes a long way to explain it; John McCain deserves none of the credit because he just went along with the herd, "expecting 2008 to be a dem year". Otherwise you wouldn't have mentioned his name, and no one else's, in post number 46.
Now is the "it" in the second sentence referring to OKSooner?
To answer the question, if the context of (almost) all your posts to the thread had been in apology to OKSooner's ineptness and giving others credit for it, yes, it could and probably would be construed that way.
This has been fun, I gotta go.
Keep the fight.
What did Bob Jones use as ammunition against Graham?
Yes you are right, this is true.
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