Rev. Tony Jones offers some good advice for Rick Warren: if you aspire to be like Billy Graham — a widely respected pastor to the presidents — you have to hold your tongue.
“The evangelical intelligencia liked (not loved) Billy Graham because, though he wasn’t a theologian, he usually spoke carefully (anti-semitic comments in Nixon’s office being the exception that proves the rule. Papa Rick is not nearly as circumspect. He and Billy are probably 98% sympatico, but Rick’s a SoCal dude, and Billy’s a southern gentleman.”
It’s not just temperament. Billy Graham made a choice to avoid, after a certain point, an appearance of partisanship or high profile involvement in culture war issues. As Billy Graham’s biographer, William Martin, put it, “Billy Graham…has been unwilling to draw lines that would alienate other people or rule them out of his circle.
This is a key point. Rick Warren can’t both be beloved pastor-to-the-presidents and a leader of the religious right. Period. He’ll have to decide which it is.
One footnote to Jones’ post: Billy Graham did not start out so circumspect. He was viewed as a Nixon acolyte and felt burned by that association. In later years, he became more circumspect. In that sense, Rick Warren right now is Billy Graham circa 1976, grappling with how his political behavior can hinder his larger spiritual goals.
posted December 22, 2008 at 5:40 pm
What would be the point of being liked by everyone if you couldn’t speak out definitively on issues you feel strongly about? No doubt, feel good preachers are fun to listen to (Joel Olsteen, Martha Williams, etc.)
Perhaps Pastor Warren has no whim to be like Billy Graham. He may be more focused on being Rick Warren. One thing I read in Warren’s ‘Purpose Driven Life’ went something along the lines of God not wanting one to covet talents or abilities one doesn’t have (sorry if I may have misrepresented Warren’s philosophy.) If Warren tried to appease everyone all the time, I for one would be very disappointed.
posted December 22, 2008 at 6:46 pm
This Double Standard drives me nuts!!!
The Pope can take moral stands, but Rick Warren can’t?
Hogwash.
If people of all sides can’t learn to like/respect people they don’t agree with on every issue, our nation is headed for ruin.
VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict said Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.
The Church “should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,” the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration.
“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”
The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality “a deviation, an irregularity, a wound.”
The pope said humanity needed to “listen to the language of creation” to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God’s work.”
posted December 23, 2008 at 9:31 am
Saddleback’s web site has apparently removed the language saying that homosexuals are not welcome there, and when you do a search on “homosexuality” a number of links have been scrubbed. Has Warren caved to public pressure, or is he having a change of heart? Sadly, his associate, Tom Holladay, is still on the site arguing that homosexuality is a sin. Holladay cites The Living Bible as his source, which is a telling misuse (and abuse) of Scripture. The Living Bible inappropriately applies the term “homosexuality” to ancient texts whose authors had no such word and no such concept. How dare Warren and Holladay claim Scriptural authority when they change the text to suit their own prejudices?
posted December 23, 2008 at 9:55 am
Billy Graham, Franklin Graham or Rick Warren has no inherent right to represent the Christians of this nation to the President. They do not represent this Christian and millions of others like me. They represent only a narrow, myopic conservative, theological view. We have no official state position for “Chaplain” for we have a separation of church and state and exalt no one religious belief system over another.
Max Blumenthal has a great column called “Rick Warren’s Double Life” at The Daily Beast I recommend.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-14/how-rick-warren-became-a-media-darling-in-spite-of-himself/p/
posted December 28, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Graham kept his popularity by not doing very much of value as far as I can tell. Maybe some who followed his career will correct me but I don’t see that he accomplished much of anything; some will say he preached but that doesn’t carry water for me unless he made peoples’ lives better. He could have inveighed against bigotry, for decent wages and medical care for all, against the pollution that may kill so many of our children or grandchildren but as far as I can tell he didn’t.
Warren is fighting some battles he should and some he should not but anyway he’s leading a very different life than Graham.
posted December 28, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Or Graham could have argued against pointless war or he could have pointed out taking a walk with him didn’t make GWB particularly Christian (at least in any good sense) or particularly wise. But in my view he just kept sucking up to power.