Did anyone read the rest of the Warren interview?

Just posting for the record here, though I still think he was a lousy choice. Carry on.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ostertag/why-gay-marriage-is-the-w_b_152717.html

snip//

Steve Waldman, founder of Belief.net (where you find the most thoughtful exchanges on present day religion), did an extended interview with Warren which has been hyped all over the blogosphere as an example of why we should all be screaming for Obama to disinvite Warren from the inaugural. The quote that got all the attention was when Warren said gay marriage would be on a par with marriage for incest, pedophilia and polygamy. And yes, I think that's off-base. Not up there are the scale of the whole God-sent-his-only-Son-to-die-on-a-cross bit, but weird nonetheless. But let's look the rest of the interview, the parts that didn't get as much attention as that one line:



I have an idea: let's accept equal rights for all. Equal rights are the issue when it comes to national politics. That's Obama's position, and I think he has it right.

And then there's this...

Which brings us back to Rick Warren. Warren is the shiny new star of American evangelicalism. Just one of his many books has sold over 20 million copies. And his books, like his ministry, are all about rallying evangelicals to battle global warming, poverty, and AIDS. He rarely mentions culture war issues like gay marriage. And it is not just talk, he puts his money where his mouth is. As Waldman points out in a blog right here on the Huffington Post,



more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ostertag/why-gay-marriage-is-the-w_b_152717.html

he concentrates on fighting gay marriage. And Warren made a comparison that divorce is like obesity, gay marriage like drug addiction. He can't stop with the offensive comparisons. :grr:

I understand the guy is very offensive, but this article was pretty interesting.

His whole mega-church concept offends me, too. That could be because I'm not religious and they are all over the place in So. TX.

Alliance or Council of Conservative Citizens. You know, the people who claim to be for "equal rights" for everybody, but think the races should be separate. In other words, racists, like Warren is a homophobe.

but I don't think that was his point.
He was admitting weakness that people including himself are prone to pointing at other people rather then their selves. It is what Jesus was countering when he said that we should remove the plank from our eye before worrying about the speck in our neighbor's eye. It's an age old thing and most all are guilty.

Or, at least, laws banning "no fault" divorce? It seems as if he's being very hypocritical here, if he were to actually follow Jesus's teachings on this, he would shut up about Gay Marriage and concentrate on finding ways to eliminate divorce.

he's been living in a bubble. I was happy to hear on hardball that the divisive language on his website has been removed. I'm hoping that he is becoming more educated and realizes that his tone has been divisive and hateful. Hopefully he is waking up....which is a good thing.

baby steps for sure, but still good.

It doesn't make us bad people. He's wrong about gay marriage, and he admits there's a lot of hypocrisy in the larger Evangelical community's obsession with it, and as people keep pointing out he's never remotely made it a central issue in his ministry (he's made "life issues" a much more central part, though).

Some people seem to assume the change of language was weasly. Maybe I'm naive to think his church realized "hey, what we say is really hurting people." But as DU proves, it's not always clear to person A what language hurts person B, even when we have roughly the same ideological outlook.

to fight AIDS and poverty worldwide. That does not make his other actions any less bad. All of these things make for great cover when you are trying to convince people to look within to solve the world's problems, while our leaders are getting away with things like looting the treasury. Please wake the hell up!

Also, chiseling away at human rights can also be part of the strategy as 90% of the population ends up in involuntary economic servitude. Before we know it, we could end up much more like China. I'm not saying this is Obama's strategy, but I sure as hell want to make all of the unquestioning supporters aware of it.

ono AIDS or anything else are true?

http://www.beliefnet.com/News/2005/06/Evangelicals-Embrace-New-Global-Priorities.aspx

snip//

But Warren, who is the pastor of Saddleback Church, a megachurch in Lake Forest, California and the author of the blockbuster book "The Purpose-Driven Life," is diving into the issue of Christian responsibility to combat global poverty.

The move took the form of an open letter campaign to President Bush, launched June 3 by Warren together with heavyweights Billy Graham and British evangelical John Stott and sent to over 150,000 evangelicals nationwide.

"I deeply believe that if we as evangelicals remain silent and do not speak up in defense of the poor, we lose our credibility and our right to witness about God's love for the world," Warren wrote in his appeal for participants in the campaign.


Here's the One campaign letter from 2005:

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2005/06/The-ONE-Campaign-An-Advocacy-Letter-From-Rick-Warren.aspx

Warren: Bush’s ‘Peace Award Was Not About Peace’»

Earlier this week, Pastor Rick Warren presented President Bush with the first International Medal of PEACE from the Global PEACE Coalition for his work on the global HIV/AIDS crisis. During the award ceremony, Warren ignored the obvious irony of presenting a man who started two wars with a peace award. Last night on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, however, co-host Alan Colmes asked Warren to comment on that irony. Warren explained simply that Bush’s “peace award as not about peace”:

COLMES: But to give a peace award to a guy who started two wars…neither of which are completed yet. <…>

WARREN: Well, the Peace Award was not about peace in domestic — or foreign policy.

Sean Hannity, in contrast, failed to see anything wrong with presenting a peace award to Bush. Rather, Hannity suggested that Bush was promoting peace by attempting to “defeat evil.” Watch it: (Video at link.)

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/04/warren-bush-peace/

He has a huge PR machine. It's going to take some time to sort this out.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4694671&mesg_id=4694671

If I'm wrong, I'll make homemade crow pie.

... and that ain't gonna happen.