Here are two more must-reads on the publicity-driven pop-pastor.
Nobody turns a phrase or twists a knife quite like Christopher Hitchens. In a piece at Slate called Shame on You, Rick Warren, Hitchens all but embalms Warren for, among other things, his staged Road to Damascus moment:
And a shame, too, that on Inauguration Day we may also have to stand still—out of respect rather than fear, it is true—and listen to a man who is either a half-witted dupe, a hopeless naif, a cynical tourist who does favors for the powerful, a religious nut bag, a cowardly liar, or perhaps some unappetizing combination of all five. I personally think that the all-five answer is the correct one, because you cannot just find yourself in Syria, smirking into the face of the local despot and being treated like a treasured guest. The thing has to be arranged, and these things take time. So what was the motive?
[ ... ]
But now it’s the sandals of Obama that are being exploited by the same tub-thumper, and one has not merely a right but a duty to object to having as an inaugural auxiliary a man who is a pushover for anti-Semitism, Islamic sectarianism, “rapture” theology, fascist dictatorship, 10th-rate media trade-offs, and last-minute panicky self-censorship all at the same time. Is there nobody in the Obama camp who can see that this is not just a gay issue? And is there no gay figure who can say that Warren is objectionable for reasons that have more to do with decency, democracy, and the Constitution? The televised, Bible-bashing entrepreneur is perhaps the single most unattractive and embarrassing phenomenon that modern American culture has ever produced. It would be nice if we could begin a new era in the absence of this racket and these racketeers, and if enough people can find their voices, we still may be able to do so.
(much more at the link)
Mary Sanchez, in a marvelous commentary at the Kansas City Star called Rick Warren needs to evolve, takes a different tack in taking down the pop-pastor for his self-serving intolerance:
He rejects the theory of evolution, and he believes that to be homosexual is to have embraced a life of sin. Are those mainstream views? If so, there must be two (or more) mutually exclusive versions of “mainstream” in America.
Warren has equated the acceptance of gay marriage with an acceptance of incest and pedophilia. He has argued, “If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest, then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn’t reproduce, and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool.” It would take 40 days and 40 nights to unpack the scientific illiteracy and plain bad faith in that statement.
[ ... ]
I suspect what Warren really fears is that the public will recognize him for what he is: an old-time religionist with old-time beliefs about issues on which American attitudes have, so to speak, evolved. In recent days Warren has said: “I have many gay friends. I’ve eaten dinner in gay homes. No church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church,” referring to his megachurch and the many efforts it has made to aid HIV suffers in Africa.
How is that different from saying, “I have a few black friends, but I still believe in segregation“?
[ ... ]
I hope Warren uses the days left before the inauguration to reflect and pray and usher in a transformation — of his own attitudes toward those whom God has made different from Warren.
Maybe he can surprise us by admitting that his own religious convictions should not be a bar to the civil rights of others who, using their God-given powers of reason, arrive at different beliefs. That would be quite a transformation, perhaps one of biblical proportions.
(emphasis: mine)
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