What is Rick Warren Thinking NOW?
This is really a shame…
Note, please, the quote attributed to Warren at the end of the article:
Warren predicts that fundamentalism, of all varieties, will be “one of the big enemies of the 21st century.”
“Muslim fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, secular fundamentalism – they’re all motivated by fear. Fear of each other.”
Al Mohler, responding to Warren’s words, gets it right:
I’ve got to tell you, I’ve admired Rick Warren since long before he was a household name, several years before he wrote The Purpose-Driven Church, a considerably-better book than his more recent The Purpose-Driven Life. That said, it is difficult not to be increasingly concerned about some of the things that Rick has said and done more recently. I am hopeful that a Southern Baptist with the immense character and credibility of Al Mohler can be a force to call Rick to some greater level of accountability for irresponsible statements like this one.
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
4 Responses to “What is Rick Warren Thinking NOW?”
I think that the clue for what Warren was saying is found in a paragraph near the end of that Philadelphia Inquirer article:
Last month, he launched the first major evangelical effort to battle AIDS, convening a three-day conference at Saddleback to mobilize American Christians to help AIDS victims and raise money to fight the disease. Part of the battle for Warren is overcoming resistance from evangelicals who view AIDS as strictly a gay disease or even as divine retribution for immoral behavior.
One thing that I’ve realized about how we evangelicals operate is that it is very often out of fear. I think Warren is saying that we feared AIDS, and so we refused to do a whole lot about it. I’ve seen it in a number of ways: We feared liberalism, so we separated from academia and started our own institutions. We feared American culture, so we set up legalistic rules about what we could and could not do. We feared new ideas, so we labeled anything from outside our evangelical tradition as heretical and not worthy of a listen. This may be something that is in your own past, Byron, for you often admit that you were different in your old “fundy days.” As much as we think we’ve progressed as evangelicals, our fundy past still holds onto us in various and subtle ways, and to deny it is to not be honest with ourselves.
Warren is just articulating what we all have said to ourselves on a number of occasions.
Bob Robinson ~ Jan 16, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Well, that may be what he meant, but he sure said it very, very poorly. To lump all “fundamentalisms” together and then to make such a sweeping, dismissive indictment of Christian fundamentalists is just poor, beyond-the-pale judgment. The forum was the wrong forum; the terminology was over-broad; the inferences that could be drawn from it “sure didn’t help”, as Al Mohler put it.
By this definition, one could take the statement “come out from among them, and be separate”, and impute a motive of “fear” to that. I mean, in one sense of the term, I have no difficulty admitting that I fear liberal theology: it is a system of lies built upon a disregard for the truth of the Word of God, and if you want to label a healthy concern that people are not swallowed up by it as “fear”, then so be it. In that respect, though, and using that definition of “fear”, wouldn’t anyone operate with some level of “fear” in their lives?
Doesn’t Kate Michelman operate out of fear that Roe will be overturned? Doesn’t Rick Warren evangelize because he “fears” people going to hell? Pick just about anyone who holds dearly to anything, and I can make the case that that person “fears” something…and so can you.
For Rick to put it as this column quotes it, though, suggests that the primary, driving motive behind those who hold to what might be termed “fundamentalist” beliefs is fear. Sorry, but that is just out of line.
Byron ~ Jan 16, 2006 at 6:11 pm
See my blog post on “Fear and Loathing” dated back on 4/4/05.
Do you not agree?
Bob Robinson ~ Jan 17, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Largely, I suppose.
Byron ~ Jan 17, 2006 at 4:42 pm