The Church of Liars?
An unnamed aide to Rick Warren has sent out an email defending the liar. I’m sure you’re completely shocked by the news that his valiant defender is also a liar, yes?
The key part of the defence regarding Prop 8:
When Pastor Warren told Larry King that he never campaigned for California’s Proposition 8, he was referring to not participating in the official two-year organized advocacy effort specific to the ballot initiative in that state, based on his focus and leadership on other compassion issues.
Because he’s a pastor, not an activist, in response to inquiries from church members, he issued an email and video message to his congregation days before the election confirming where he and Saddleback Church stood on this issue.
What Warren actually said was that he was not anti-gay and he had not endorsed Prop 8 which is a lie. Warren issued a video statement to his church which recently trained 2400 new members in one day and has an average attendance rate of 22,000 per week wherein he clearly expressed support for Prop 8 and encouraged his followers to do the same. The video is here.
Another lie that Warren has been telling is that he had not compared gay relationships to paedophilia and incest. The key part of the defence on this is:
Rather, he apologized for his comments in an earlier Beliefnet interview expressing his concern about expanding or redefining the definition of marriage beyond a husband-wife relationship, during which he unintentionally and regrettably gave the impression that consensual adult same sex relationships were equivalent to incest or pedophilia.”
In the interview with Steve Waldman of BeliefNet Warren went on a tear about how he opposes expanding marriage expanded to include siblings (incest) and adults paired with children (paedophilia).
Waldman followed up by asking him if he thought those were equivalent to gay people getting married. Warren responded with “Oh, I do”. Here’s the transcript. Exactly how does one unintentionally say something like that? Does he not know what the word equivalent means?
Steve Waldman has also responded to Warren’s lie that he was misled & misquoted by Waldman as well as the rest of us and points out that while Warren had contacted him to clarify some things after the interview he did not clarify his blunt statement that incest, paedophilia & gay relationships were three peas in a pod:
After the interview ran, Warren wrote me a note asking if he could clarify some things he said. I gladly printed those clarifications. Interestingly, though, it was not this gay marriage comment he wanted to clarify. Rather he wanted to be clear that he didn’t believe civil unions were a constitutional right.
Waldman also points out how Warren’s alleged apology to unnamed gay leaders were private & that Warren has yet to publicly apologize for what he said but seems bound and determined to blame it on every one else. Mighty Christian of Warren, eh?
Many of us understood exactly what Rick Warren was saying in the comments you have posted, and do not interpret the remarks in the same way that you have done here.
I suppose we hear what we want, but the fact is that Rick did not partake in the campaign for Proposition 8, and did not contribute to it financially. He also did not appear on any of the committee’s endorsement lists.
What he said is he believed that marriage is between a man and a woman, and he shared that with his congregation. Yes, he did believe Prop 8, in its exact statement, is correct, and he supports the definition of marriage being between a man and woman. That is one viewpoint, and as a pastor he has a right to share tha with his congregation. However, that is vastly different then actively being a part of the campaign.
Finally, many of us knew he was simply giving 3 examples of what he did not consider a marriage. All three were actually in the news cycle at the time. That does not make them equal, or related. Most of us saw the point !
Warren’s aide also claimed in an email reported by Politico, that “for 5,000 years, EVERY culture and EVERY religion has maintained” that marriage is solely to be between one man and one woman.
This is an interesting claim, given that there are religions, e.g. Islam, that even now accept polygamy, and many countries in which it is legal. Moreover, even the Biblical patriarchs were said to have had multiple wives, and some kings of Israel not only had multiple wives, but also concubines. And they all supposedly lived less than 5,000 years ago.
Time for the verifiably untrue statements spewing regularly from Warren and/or his advisors to stop.
I like the fact you titled this article with perhaps the most rhetorical question ever asked. Is there any other sort of church?