Pastor Rick's Evolution

He gives away 90%...

Really? And how often does he pay when he meets people at restaurants? Just how many dinners is he invited to that he can keep so fat?

Who pays when he travels, etc.?

It's as laughable as stating "politicians only earn $140,000 a year" (or "journalists" for that matter), without factoring in any of the multitude factors for how they are compensated handsomely for their power.

Just how do they manage to have chauffeurs (a la Daschle), travel by private jets to go on golfing trips in Scotland, etc.?

I can't seem to afford that on my 100%.

So, good on him he "walks the walk" better than some, but this claim is fairly spurious.

OH JEZUS MARIA SALLY YOU ARE WAY OFF BASE, RICK THE PRICK WAS THE MOST DISGUSTING THING OF THIS WONDERFULL DAY!!
DARLING I HAD TO VOMIT WHEN THIS FAT DUDE APPEARED AND I
MESSED UP MY NEW DRESS!!

Thanks so much for this editorial. It helped me to understand the most surprising aspect of the Inauguration.

Deeper Perception is one of my passions in life, so while I was down at the Mall yesterday, I read Rev. Warren's aura, watching him on the jumbotron.

All I knew then about Rev. Rick Warren was the bad part, his “big victory” in helping to pass California’s Proposition 8.

Approaching the podium, Rev. Rick’s third eye started out in a contracted, righteous, I-know-all-the-answers position. Then it began to expand way bigger, replete with qualities like openness, awe, and a much fuller spiritual connection.

Quickly, pop! Back it went.

Speaking his Invocation, the pastor maintained that rigid, righteous kind of third eye projection. But it often it moved into that bigger version. Then, pop! Back again, into Evangelical Comfort Zone.

By the end of his speech, it had stabilized as big and open and way more graced. Rick’s chakra databank about spiritual connection held that more expanded version for long seconds at a time.
Back home, I read your perspective and understood more about this courageous leader.

I do have bright hopes for this new Era of Responsibility, named yesterday by President Obama. Even Rev. Rick Warren, who used to know it all, grew bigger before my eyes. Personally, I can’t wait to grow bigger, too.

Evangelical? I just was totally uninspired. I thought his comments were pedantic and not well delivered.

BCANDJC:

Do you really believe the nonsense you are slinging here? What makes you think that atheists abandon their beliefs in times of danger or stress? I assure you that we do not pray and do not turn to any god. I had an atheist friend on that plane, and she did not pray to anything. It is typical Christian arrogance to assume that, deep down, we unbelievers actually believe what you do. We do not.

Interesting to read your article and other articles concerning Warren and others who have put their faith in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of mankind. Yes, there are many religions and yes, individuals have the right to choose their god. However, when there are tragedies and help needed, people do not go to their earthly idols for help, it's always the God of Heaven they look to. Has anyone mentioned how many atheists were aboard the airplane that landed in the Hudson River recently? What god were they praying to? There is a large difference in religious people and Christianity. Religious people follow their thoughts, Christians follow Jesus Christ.

Interesting comments here. Most of them illustrate the vitrol and hate that liberals have for anyone who disagrees with them. You know, the supposedly tolerant folks. Also interesting how you find it acceptable to denigrate Christians, but are incensed when someone criticizes those who practice sexual perversion.
Lots of hypocrisy there.

Good article. Obama is a very sophisticated politician who surely knew the reaction his choice would evoke. IMO, all the uproar about Warren is just what Obama needed to start building a bridge to an evangelical political group whose economic interests run pure Democrat yet they vote pure GOP. When he went to Saddleback for the "debate," he knew he was "behind enemy lines" and couldn't convince folks of his positions, but he was there to let them see him as a good person who disagreed with them and not some sort of devil.

And, people can change and people can differ. Note that the contacts with Obama and Etheridge HAVE apparently changed Warren. You want him to be a rational scientific liberal and stop preaching nonsense? Well, don't hold your breath. But, including him told a lot of America that THEY were also a part of the nation that today got a new President of all the people. Obama's ACTIONS will support gays more than any prior President ever has (and if not, THEN is the time to call him out). They (and my fellow atheists) should just get over this fixation with who prayed at the inauguration. Everything isn't about them, nor is it about any one of us.

In the big tent, we don't want to exclude evangelicals -- not all of them are mean spirited and surely not all of them are incapable of changing. You never change anyone by excluding them as if they were non-people. Gays should know that. Atheists should know that. If nothing else, we should have some compassion for the intellectually challenged and welcome a few of their votes to Democratic candidates who will in the long run be a lot more sensitive to gay and atheist concerns than the proudly-homophobic, religion-over-science GOP. :-)

You are right, Miss Quinn, who knows how many epiphanies Mr. Warren will have in the years to come!!
What we know for sure is that his addiction for the bible will continue unless he replaces it with another one (who knows what his previous addiction was before he replaced it with the bible).

Regardless, we are all liable when these characters increase their public exposure. Hopefully it was only an initial stumble.

gamiller1 ,

What???? Might want to reread my comments.

It was probably a good move. The religious right is usually satisfied with sops, and the real work of expanding civic rights can proceed.

Astoria;

The Women on Faith thread is in the upper-right hand corner of the main page, though I notice it isn't identified as such. The current question is posed by Melissa Etheridge regarding gay relationships, and it leads you to the thread.

CCNL

Looks like you have all the answers here!!! After all, anybody tapped to post here for "On Faith" by the ever conservative Wash. Post must be of the utmost conservative scholarship. So, to you it is FAR worse to be an adulterer than a pedophile? WOW - that really shows your colors. At least adultery is sin between 2 adults, not predatory behavior on children.

How is your stalking going these days?

Of course Warren's "prayer" was isolating -- but what did you expect? Obama got exactly what he wanted. And despite the gay community's universal negative reaction to Obama's selection of Warren (who compares loving, gay and lesbian relationships to incest and pedophilia), Obama chose to have him speak. I am more disappointed in Obama than Warren. The gay community provided tremendous support both in time, and votes to Obama and he -- like so many other politicians -- sells us out at the first opportunity -- and imagine, at his Inauguration! He defended his choice of Warren as his commitment to "create dialogue." Warren doesn't want to dialogue with gays and lesbians. Obama's reasoning is just faulty and speaks to his basic value regarding gays and lesbians. If he wanted dialogue, why not invite David Duke -- he has a perspective on race relations.

Rick's prayer was for everyone and if someone can't handle it, that's too bad.

Thus far, Ms. Quinn, I don't think any of us can read minds - not even President Obama's!

See 130-some and growing number of comments on this column when it appeared on the main page --
consensus not in favor of S.Q.'s smiley thought.

I see no fault with your reasoning gimpi-
I find it a spiritually mature outlook.
Where is this conversation? I didn;t know there was a women on faith section here-

I find the "What else was I missing? A lot," quote very promising. When Kay Warren posted her story of learning about AIDS on your 'Women on Faith' sector of this site, I posted a question, which I took a bit of heat over. I asked her "If you were wrong about AIDS, have you considered what else (gay issues, abortion, and other sexual questions) you might be in error about?"

She never responded, most likely because my question was WAY WAY down the thread, but others did. They suggested I was being unreasonable to suggest that discovering an error in her thinking should lead her to self-reflection, and seemed to feel that it was insulting to suggest that one "blind spot" might be masking others.

I was suprised at the response. My question was not a "got-ya" question. I have discovered blind spots in my own thinking, and when I looked behind them,the flood of things that were hiding there was spectacular. I was curious to see if she had been motivated to do the same soul-search, and if she had, what she had found, and if not, why not.

I'm very pleased to hear that, considering her husband's actions, she most likely has. Getting rid of blind spots and understanding what is hiding in them is hard, but vital work. It really opens you up to people and possibilities that you literally couldn't see before. Earth-shaking is too mild a term the discoveries you make.

I also share President Obama's (as of this moment) view that dialog and attempts to understand opinions that differ from our own is much more productive than the flaming and general rudeness that marks so much of what passes for debate these days. Well done, to both Mr. Obama and Mr. Warren.

The choice is a big blunder- why? Warren is historically and theologically flawed as are most Christian preachers and priests:

To wit: (for those eyes that have not seen)

Jesus was an illiterate Jewish peasant/carpenter/simple preacher man who suffered from hallucinations and who has been characterized anywhere from the Messiah from Nazareth to a mythical character from mythical Nazareth to a mamzer from Nazareth (Professor Bruce Chilton, in his book Rabbi Jesus). Analyses of Jesus’ life by many contemporary NT scholars (e.g. Professors Crossan, Borg and Fredriksen, On Faith panelists) via the NT and related documents have concluded that only about 30% of Jesus' sayings and ways noted in the NT were authentic. The rest being embellishments (e.g. miracles)/hallucinations made/had by the NT authors to impress various Christian, Jewish and Pagan sects.

The 30% of the NT that is "authentic Jesus" like everything in life was borrowed/plagiarized and/or improved from those who came before. In Jesus' case, it was the ways and sayings of the Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, OT, John the Baptizer and possibly the ways and sayings of traveling Greek Cynics. http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php/Works_Cited
For added "pizzazz", Catholic/Christian theologians divided god the singularity into three persons and invented atonement as an added guilt trip for the "pew people" to go along with this trinity of overseers. By doing so, they made god the padre into god the "filicider".

Current crises:

Pedophiliac priests, atonement theology and original sin!!!!

Luther, Calvin, Smith, Henry VIII, Wesley, Roger Williams et al, founders of Christian-based religions, also suffered from the belief in/hallucinations of "pretty wingie thingie" visits and "prophecies" for profits analogous to the myths of Catholicism (resurrections, apparitions, ascensions and immaculate conceptions).

Current crises:

Adulterous preachers, "propheteering/ profiteering" evangelicals (e.g. Rick Warren) and atonement theology.

A superb reminder that pastors, politicians, and ordinary people get pigeonholed when the public gets a hold of them and needs a shorthand way of accepting or dismissing them, ...even though in their real lives, they may actually be changing. If we don't crawl out of our foxholes and get real, start talking, there will only be polarization, not movement.

http://markingtime4now.wordpress.com/