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Team Obama likes to cite Warren’s work on AIDS in Africa to combat criticism about the controversial pastor. But how does burning condoms in the name of Jesus save lives?
Once hailed by Time magazine as “America’s Pastor,” California mega-church leader and bestselling author of The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren now finds himself on the defensive. President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Warren to deliver the inaugural prayer has generated intense scrutiny of the pastor’s beliefs on social issues, from his vocal support for Prop 8, a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage in California, to his comparison of homosexuality to pedophilia, incest and bestiality. Many of Obama’s supporters have demanded that he withdraw the invitation.
Warren’s defense against charges of intolerance ultimately depends upon his ace card: his heavily publicized crusade against AIDS in Africa. Obama senior advisor David Axelrod cited Warren’s work in Africa as one of “the things on which [Obama and Warren] agree” on the December 28 episode of Meet the Press. Warren may be opposed to gay rights and abortion, the thinking goes, but he tells evangelicals it is their God-given duty to battle one of the greatest pandemics in history. What could be wrong with that?
Ssempa’s stunts have included publishing the names of homosexuals in local newspapers while lobbying for criminal penalties to imprison them.
But since the Warren inauguration controversy erupted, the nature of work against AIDS in Africa has gone unexamined. Warren has not been particularly forthcoming to those who have attempted to look into it. His website contains scant information about the results of his program. However, an investigation into Warren’s involvement in Africa reveals a web of alliances with right-wing clergymen who have sidelined science-based approaches to combating AIDS in favor of abstinence-only education. More disturbingly, Warren’s allies have rolled back key elements of one of the continent’s most successful initiative, the so-called ABC program in Uganda. Stephen Lewis, the United Nations’ special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told the New York Times their activism is “resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred.”
Warren’s man in Uganda is a charismatic pastor named Martin Ssempa. The head of the Makerere Community Church, a rapidly growing congregation, Ssempe enjoys close ties to his country’s First Lady, Janet Museveni, and is a favorite of the Bush White House. In the capitol of Kampala, Ssempa is known for his boisterous crusading. Ssempa’s stunts have included burning condoms in the name of Jesus and arranging the publication of names of homosexuals in cooperative local newspapers while lobbying for criminal penalties to imprison them.
Dr. Helen Epstein, a public health consultant who authored the book, The Invisible Cure: Why We’re Losing The Fight Against AIDS In Africa, met Ssempa in 2005. Epstein told me the preacher seemed gripped by paranoia, warning her of a secret witches coven that met under Lake Victoria. “Ssempa also spoke to me for a very long time about his fear of homosexual men and women,” Epstein said. “He seemed very personally terrified by their presence.”
When Warren unveiled his global AIDS initiative at a 2005 conference at his Saddleback Church, he cast Ssempa as his indispensable sidekick, assigning him to lead a breakout session on abstinence-only education as well as a seminar on AIDS prevention. Later, Ssempa delivered a keynote address, a speech so stirring it “had the audience on the edge of its seats,” according to Warren’s public relations agency. A year later, Ssempa returned to Saddleback Church to lead another seminar on AIDS. By this time, his bond with the Warrens had grown almost familial. “You are my brother, Martin, and I love you,” Rick Warren’s wife, Kay, said to Ssempa from the stage. Her voice trembled with emotion as she spoke and tears ran down her cheeks.
Joining Ssempa at Warren’s church were two key Bush administration officials who controlled the purse strings of the president’s newly minted $15 billion anti-AIDS initiative in Africa, PEPFAR. Ugandan first lady Janet Museveni also appeared through a videotaped address to tout the success of her country’s numerous church-based abstinence programs.
These Bush officials—Randall Tobias, the Department of State’s Global AIDS coordinator, and Claude Allen, the White House’s chief domestic policy advisor—are closely linked to the Christian right. Tobias, the so-called “global AIDS czar,” declared in 2004 that condoms “really have not been very effective," and crusaded against prostitution, until he resigned in 2007 when he was exposed as a regular client of the D.C. Madam’s escort service. Allen, once an aide to the late Senator Jesse Helms, resigned in 2006 after he was arrested for felony thefts from retail stores.
During the early 1990s, when many African leaders denied the AIDS epidemic’s existence, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni spoke openly about the importance of safe sex. With the help of local and international non-governmental organizations, he implemented an ambitious program emphasizing abstinence, monogamous relationships, and using condoms as the best ways to prevent the spread of AIDS. He called the program “ABC.” By 2003, Uganda’s AIDS rate plummeted 10 percent. The government’s free distribution of the “C” in ABC—condoms—proved central to the program’s success, according to Avert, an international AIDS charity.
On New Year’s Eve, 1999, Janet Museveni, who had become born-again, convened a massive stadium revival in Kampala to dedicate her country to the “lordship” of Jesus Christ. As midnight approached, the First Lady summoned a local pastor to the stage to anoint the nation. “We renounce idolatry, witchcraft, and Satanism in our land!” he proclaimed.
Two years later, Janet Museveni flew to Washington at the height of a heated congressional debate over PEPFAR. She carried in her hand a prepared message to distribute to Republicans. Abstinence was the golden bullet in her country’s fight against AIDS, she assured conservative lawmakers, denying the empirically proven success of her husband’s condom distribution program. Like magic, the Republican-dominated Congress authorized over $200 million for Uganda, but only for the exclusive promotion of abstinence education. Ssempa soon became the “special representative of the First Lady’s Task Force on AIDS in Uganda,” receiving $40,000 from the PEPFAR pot.
Emboldened by U.S. support, Ssempa took his anti-condom crusade to Makerere University in Kampala, where senior residents of a men’s dormitory promoted safe sex by greeting incoming freshmen with a giant effigy wearing a condom. According to Helen Epstein, one day after she visited the school, Ssempa stormed on to campus, tore the condom from the effigy, grabbed a box of free condoms, and set them ablaze. “I burn these condoms in the name of Jesus!” Ssempa shouted as he prayed over the burning box.
“It was a very controversial time,” Epstein told me. “After the Bush administration authorized PEPFAR, a number of the local evangelical preachers began to get excited about this and get involved in AIDS very rapidly. To try to prove his credentials, Ssempa became increasingly active and vociferous in his antipathy towards condoms.”
By 2005, billboards promoting condom use disappeared from the streets of Kampala, replaced by billboards promoting virginity. “Until recently, all HIV-related billboards were about condoms. Those of us calling for abstinence and faithfulness need billboards too,” Ssempa told the BBC at the time. A 2005 report by Human Rights Watch documented that educational material in Uganda’s secondary schools falsely claiming condoms had microscopic pores that could be penetrated by the HIV virus and noted the sudden nationwide shortage of condoms due to new restrictions imposed by on condom imports.
AIDS activists arrived at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto in 2006 with disturbing news from Uganda. Due at least in part to the chronic condom shortage, HIV infections were on the rise again. The disease rate had spiked to 6.5 percent among rural men, and 8.8 percent among women—a rise of nearly two points in the case of women. “The ‘C’ part [of ABC] is now mainly silent,” said Ugandan AIDS activist Beatrice Ware. As a result, she said, “the success story is unraveling.”
Troubled by what he was witnessing in Africa, Rep. Tom Lantos led the new Democratic-controlled Congress to reform PEPFAR during a reauthorization process in February 2008. Lantos insisted that Congress lift the abstinence-only earmark imposed by Republicans in 2002, and begin to fund family planning elements like free condom distribution. His maneuver infuriated Warren, who immediately boarded a plane for Washington to join Christian right leaders including born-again former Watergate felon Chuck Colson for an emergency press conference on the Capitol lawn. In his speech, Warren claimed that Lantos’ bill would spawn an increase in the sex trafficking of young women. The bill died and PEPFAR was reauthorized in its flawed form. (Days later, Lantos died of cancer after serving for 27 years in Congress.)
With safe sex advocates on the run, Warren and Ssempa trained their sights on another social evil. In August 2007, Ssempa led hundreds of his followers through the streets of Kampala to demand that the government mete out harsh punishments against gays. “Arrest all homos,” read placards. And: “A man cannot marry a man.” Ssempa continued his crusade online, publishing the names of Ugandan gay rights activists on a website he created, along with photos and home addresses. “Homosexual promoters,” he called them, suggesting they intended to seduce Uganda’s children into their lifestyle. Soon afterwards, two of President Yoweri Museveni’s top officials demanded the arrest of the gay activists named by Ssempa. Terrified, the activists immediately into hiding.
Warren, in his effort to dispel criticism, has denied harboring homophobic sentiments. “I could give you a hundred gay friends,” he told MSNBC’s Ann Curry on December 18. “I have always treated them with respect. When they come and want to talk to me, I talk to them.”
But when Uganda’s Anglican bishops threatened to bolt from the Church of England because of its tolerant stance towards homosexuals, Warren parachuted into Kampala to confer international legitimacy on their protest. “The Church of England is wrong and I support the Church of Uganda on the boycott,” Warren proclaimed in March 2008. Declaring homosexuality an unnatural way of life, Warren flatly stated, “We shall not tolerate this aspect [homosexuality in the church] at all.”
Days later, Warren emerged so enthusiastic after a meeting with First Lady Museveni, he announced a plan to make Uganda a “Purpose Driven Nation.” “The future of Christianity is not Europe or North America, but Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” he told a cheering throng at Makerere University. Then, Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi rose and predicted, “Someday, we will have a purpose driven continent!”
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and writing fellow at The Nation Institute, whose book, Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation Books), is forthcoming in Spring 2009. Contact him at maxblumenthal3000@yahoo.com.
Tracy Quan's latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in The Nation as a "deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash." Tracy's debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. A regular columnist for The Guardian, she has written for many publications including Cosmopolitan, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
Joe Mathews is a journalist, an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and a contributing writer at the Los Angeles Times. He previously served as Justice Department reporter for the Wall Street Journal and as a city desk reporter at the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy.
Gerald Posner is the award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism (www.posner.com). Posner lives in Miami Beach with his wife, the author Trisha Posner.
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Amanda Fortini has written for The New Yorker, Slate, Elle, and New York, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles.
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and writing fellow at The Nation Institute, whose book, Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation Books), is forthcoming in Spring 2009. Contact him at maxblumenthal3000@yahoo.com.
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and writing fellow at The Nation Institute, whose book, Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation Books), is forthcoming in Spring 2009. Contact him at maxblumenthal3000@yahoo.com.
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and writing fellow at The Nation Institute, whose book, Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation Books), is forthcoming in Spring 2009. Contact him at maxblumenthal3000@yahoo.com.
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and writing fellow at The Nation Institute, whose book, Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation Books), is forthcoming in Spring 2009. Contact him at maxblumenthal3000@yahoo.com.
A suspicious person would wonder what's behind Max Blumenthal's jihad against Warren. Let me guess. A secular Jew (ck). A liberal with an agenda (ck). A east coast journalist (ck). Gay? (Must inquire further). Well, there.it seems I've answered my own question.
Follow the Money--a fundementalist belief?
What's fascinating is that when one does a google search on abstinence education Africa, you find many sites associated with church causes promoting the concept but few facts.
For the record most of these Christian groups, including Rick Warren's, had nothing to do with HIV for the first twenty years of the epidemic. That neocon icon, Ronald Reagan, couldn't even bring himself to say the word AIDS during his presidency. Twenty million people died and another twenty or so million became infected in this period.
These groups opposed funding of any anti-HIV intervention in the 80's and 90's. Their philosophy, as voiced to me by a missionary in Uganda in 1988, was that those with HIV got what they deserved. When Bush, to his credit, decided to put money into HIV in Africa. These churches, so to speak got religion, and followed the money. The only problem is that they wish to dominate the program with an ineffective HIV education message. Hopefully this will change.
A better educated person might wonder why Banjo1 does not know the real meaning of the word "jihad." The real meaning, not the ire-provoking mainstream media meaning. A less bigoted person might wonder why Banjo1 discounts out of hand the opinions of secular Jews, east coast journalists and gays.
I'm a Ugandan, and I've witnessed all what these guys are claiming.
1- Dr. Martin has helped my nation very much as regards HIV/AIDS prevention. Initially Makerere was a dean of death! lots of our relatives were dying at the university, reason being HIV/AIDS. the spread was so much causal sex, and sex promotions, with out a full knowledge of what sex entails. its not a matter of just sleeping with someone. Sex has ability to reproduce (bear children), it entails much more, emotion, physical and spiritual....
About the the "Burning of Condoms".. Initially the government had detected that more than a Million NGABO condoms were deffected(http://abstinenceafrica.com/library/index.php?entryid=1780), and they were supposed to be destroyed to protect our people, The government had to destroy them. Dr. Martin helped us alot, he protected our lives by burning those condoms. I WOULD BE A STATISTIC this day if I WERE TO USE THOSE DEADLY CONDOMS.
I urge you to read more and get to the ground.. there many Ugandans in Uganda, who know this, and its a shame that you biased your article, your fellow writers and journalists have written about the matter since 2005 but u're still giving fake information. Which kinda of writer are you? you've to give REAL TRUTH!!!..
There are lots of links to help you...http://www.google.se/search?q=How Fake Condoms Got Onto the Market&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox -a
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
The motivation behind the article is so transparent. Anti-Christian rants don't make for good journalism. There is a larger story here, one that doesn't fit into the pinched space that Mr. Blumenthal has tried to put it in. It would be refreshing to have a voice on religious affairs at the Beast that can find a way to discuss religion and policy in a way that takes into account the larger picture, and in this case, what someone like Warren is actually accomplishing.
Why is it "anti-Christian" to say that abstinance only education, AIDS preveniton programs that eschew condom distribution, etc. don't work?I think that rather than being anti-Christian, it is begin anti extremist/fundamentalist programs and people who decide that because of their beliefs, science and research should be discounted. If we know, based on study, that something works, but we refuse to allow it because of our BELIEFS then we are doing more harm than good. And when a journalist calls that out, we should applaud him. Stop being so scared of the truth that you have to call people names!.
Is this article meant to be serious?
I actually don't even know what to say here. I don't know enough about Warren to have a fixed opinion about this Africa stuff, but this article sure hasn't help inform me. A loose collection of "guilt by association" tales and innuendo. Give us some hard facts... Or does that take too much research and actual hard work?
As an aside... I do wonder what sort of Pastor would keep the left (which I consider myself to be a member of, by the way) happy? If you want a pro-gay, anti-abstinence, non-evangelical... you are pretty much limited Canadian Bishops or maybe someone from New Hampshire. Ok, we get it... you don't like mainstream evangelicals (and plenty of them make me want to puke) but come on! This is meant to be the spiritual part of the inauguration! Get over yourselves and write about something of consequence!
It is out of sheer frustration experienced after reading the previous posts that I feel compelled to comment. It seems that every reader leaves the article only more convinced of his or her position prior to starting. This is not a problem with only this article, but nearly every arguement for or against every topic over the last decade. If you are not willing to be open to arguements from the "other" side, why even click on them at all? Why must every solution be and "either/or" scenario? You don't have to agree with the other side, but you do have to respect the rights to have an opinion. What this world needs is a respectful, open, and honest debate, not paranoia, intolerance and name calling. The other side is always going to exist, so our energies would be best spent learning to live with them instead of squashing them.
On the AIDS issue in particular, I think it is such a serious issue that it requires a multi-faceted solution that touches and influences as many people as possible. For this reason, I would argue that you need BOTH an abstinence program AND a safe sex program. I cannot understand why they must be mutually exclusive. Does one negatively impact the other as it relates to slowing the spread of AIDS? The answer, no matter your religion or political stance, is no. One only impacts the the other from the viewpoint of morality and values, which are themselves subjective and relative in nature.
Are the previous posters kidding (kahawa aside)? Let me guess -- any criticism of a Christian pastor is automatically anit-Christian? Why don't you try responding with intelligent facts, couterpoints or actual discourse? If there are things in the article that are factually incorrect, please state them, I'd like to know. Otherwise it reads as a vert interesting peice and I'm glad someone wrote it.
Kahawa, I think we should all be extremely wary of the work of most East Coast "journalists." I don't know whether he is from the East Coast, but Blumenthal is clearly in league with those elitists. However, by his own words Blumenthal discredits himself as a journalist. This sentence alone is damning: "The bill died and PEPFAR was reauthorized in its flawed form." Regardless of whether one agrees with the meaning of the sentence, it clearly betrays a a bias, something true journalists do their best to avoid.
This is not journalism. This is an extremely one-sided screed that demonstrates Blumethal's wish to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Winlock also points to another obvious problem with this ilk: the near-complete disregard for Christianity, to which the majority of Americans still ascribe belief and from which far more good has come than evil. Blumethal, in fact, tries repeatedly to turn "born again" into an epithet. Laughable.
Max, I shouldn't say this, but if you want to win people to your myopic world view, you need to be a little more subtle than the business end of a barnyard shovel upside the face. People can see past that tactic. Really. From one former journalist to an aspirant, let me tell you that people truly are smarter than you elitists think they are.
This is good reporting, Mr. Blumenthal. Does it fully explicate the underlying, good and sincere intentions of Mr. Warren and a good many evangelicals around the world? No. But, Rick Warren I think does that himself on his website and in a great many other venues. No doubt many good things are happening for members of Saddleback and other congregations around the world as they manifest their beliefs. Your reporting here gives a clear view at some of the very harmful consequences that result from their constant need to find an evil to suppress, or fight, in order to see the good in themselves. This is a very old, tribal and decidedly non-christian habit that should be highlighted at every opportunity. Good work.
How is it Anit-Christian to report facts? I question the emphasis in christianity (and other religions) on sex when clearly SO MUCH senseless needless violence has been perpetrated in the name of religion. Is there a connection between our tendency to supress sex and act violently? This is obviously not a conversation that can be had with someone who is highly invested in their own sexual suppression/repression. But the hippocracy that we see again and again around these issues should give us pause. What instinct is it in us would make us act in so obviously a retarded way? We can easily scoff at African primitivism (sex with virgins will protect you from AIDS?!?) but our own refusal to investigate and uncover reality (no, sex with virgins just reduces the non-infected population AND SPREADS HIV) is just as entrenched and absurd. The question is how can we best perpetuate intelligent ideas when people seem so eager to embrace their own downfall and supression. Education? Can people who see this as a personaly motivated attack on them such as banjo1 and winlock, and those eager to be on the right side with god at the expense (by design?) of their fellows ever loosen their death-grip? Will Batman be able to stop the Riddler in time?
I enjoy how Christians always want us to look at The Larger Picture - which in most cases, is that Religion Kills People.
coloradocynic, your use of elitist as a swear word wears so thin...get over yourself about journalism, this is not a newspaper. the daily beast is a blog site, and does not hold to the same principals. Go back to the WSJ of you want right winged journalism, or NPR if you want fair and balanced. Give me a break and get off this site.
An attack on Christianity? Hardly--Rick Warren doesn't rise to the standard of "Christian." He ~does~ rise to the standard of what passes for evangelicals in the US these days--people interested in the establishment of a theocracy that has their version of Christianity (comes with a real, 17-jewel, self-correcting history)--but that's not nearly so much "rising to the standard" as "floating to the top of the tank."
With their virulent homophobia and what appears to be a fear of sex in general, idiots like Warren and Ssempa are sowing hate, discord, and disease throughout Uganda and here in the US as well. I'm sure that those are Christian values of which Jesus Himself would approve, ne c'est pas?
It frightens me that a journalist who dares to investigate the religious right is instantly labelled "a liberal, gay, east coast, secular Jew with an agenda" by someone who probably doesn't even have a high school diploma (ck). Banjo1, I wish there actually were a hell for you to go to but since there isn't I hope for your sake and the sake of anyone crosses your path that you achieve enlightenment in this, your only, lifetime. Also, it may sound trite - but have we learned nothing form history? Abstinence-only sex education DOES NOT WORK - the research is there to support this. Jesus will not save you from syphilis, gonorrhoea, AIDS or unwanted pregnancies. Only you can be protecting yourself.
As a follower of Christ I resent the way the like of Rick Warren are called Christians. He is another of the fundamentalists who are trashing the world in the name of "their" God. Islam and Christianity has been highjacked by low life thugs.
The statistics on the rising rate of HIV/AIDS infections in Africa and Asia are readily available on many websites. The blunt fact of the mater is that the majority of these cases on those continents are not contracted through homosexual contact, but through heterosexual contact. I don't see many of these Christian cursaders pointing out that particular fact. Seems that way too many Christians still persist in seeing HIV/AIDS as a 'gay' disease. Rick Warren and Ssempa and anybody else who preaches abstinence only are wrong. I live in a city where, for the last thirty years or so, sex eudcation has been abstinence-only. This city has, for the same period, ranked in the top five US cities for teen pregnancy, low birthweight babies, and teen STD and HIV/AIDS infections. Abstinence and monogamous relationships are probably both scientifically and morally the best way to prevent these problems, but are also the least likely to actually succeed in practice.
Many Christians don't have the sense God gave a turnip. They pick and choose which portions of the Bible they want to apply literally and which portions they don't consider relevant. The Bible calls for the segreation of menstruating women, the shunning of psoriasis patients, and for all persons who live in cities to take a wooden shvel and go a specified number of feet from the city walls, there to dig a hole in which to evacuate their bowels, and then to cover that up and return to the city. (Check Deuteronomy) If a Christian is going to take the Bible as the absolute LITERAL Word of God, and declare that every rule and injuection must be followed to the precise letter, then he cannot pick and choose which portions of the Bible are literal and which portions are metaphorical and which portions are no longer relevant. A literal, legalistic interpretation of the Bible should not take into consideration the fact that modern medicine and indoor plumbing render these injuctions irrelevant, but I don't see these anit-gay Christian crusaders carrying shovels.
Banjo1.
I hear Anne Coulter needs a booking agent...
Save the east coast BS for your call in to Limbaugh.
As always Mr Blumenthal hits the on the head.....Christians like Warren should be called out for the BS they spew, fighting AIDS means condoms, family planning, sex education etc, but of course this does not fit into the 19th century thinking of the Christian Right Wing so they dabble in some mediocre AIDS work and then burn condoms.....
Just becuase you dont liek Warren does NOT make you ANTI Christian. Just ANTI IDIOT.
Jesus would be appaled @ Today's Mega Chruch, Hatefull, Pro War, Pro Big Business, anti Sceince Christians....
brilliant reporting. thanks for getting this info out there.
i also must disagree with some of the previous comments. while you clearly oppose the practices of warren and his counterparts, you are still respectful of their personal religious choices. i don't think i will ever understand how a religion "based on love and compassion" could engage in such utterly hateful practices, not to mention ignore empirical and obvious facts.
fine if you want to put up some billboards about abstinence - that will help save lives as well, but why would it be necessary to entirely eliminate any method which helps? i don't see any "evil secular liberals" asking to completely abolish abstinence education ~in conjunction with~ condom supply.
So wait a minute. Is this article trying to say that because Rick Warren supports abstinence education over condoms, his concern for eliminating AIDS is discredited?
That's rubbish. If I never have sex until I marry someone who also has never had sex, then I will not get AIDS through sex. Period, end of story. My children will not have AIDS, and in a generation or two, AIDS would be all but eliminated, if you couple abstinence education with a rigorous clean needle program.
Condoms break, Not having sex is foolproof. Set aside the fact that sex is an amazing thing that no one wants to give up, and it would seem to me that Mr. Warren has found a better solution.
Believing as I do in separation of Church and State, I do not believe there even should be an 'inaugural prayer' or that any religion should be represented at a government function.
The more I read about Rick Warren the more I believe I am right. Separation of church and state is there precisely to keep a self-loathing, hypocritical, lunatic religious nut like Warren away from the levers of power.
Mr. Blumenthal's article is very informative.
EXCELLENT, MAX. THANK YOU FOR BRINGING THIS TO LIGHT. (may the defensive nonsense by melissa etheridge and the obama team begin).
As a pastor myself, I would like to say thank you for pointing out some of the damage that is being done by Warren and his kind. I think that it is obvious for all to see that Rick Warren is no longer a person who can call himself a minister (which, by definition requires loving all people and judging no one) but is rather a politician. Warren is simply a man with a tremendous constituency to appease in order to stay in power, and to appease them, he engages in that most traditional of Evangelical practices; hating anything that he does not understand.
I think that finderj put it best here, you cannot interpret the Bible in a literal sense, unless you want to interpret ALL of it in such a way. And Warren does not appear to be shoveling in any of the pictures I have seen...
Thank you.
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