Saddleback recants (almost)

Confusing, both because correction was delayed until the raging controversy quieted, and because the original statement was clear. Nonetheless, a Saddleback Church minister reportedly told church members that he never intended to say Baptist women are obligated by scripture to stay in violently abusive relations.

It began on Jan. 8 when Associated Baptist Press (ABP) lit a fire simply by reporting:

Rick Warren, the Southern Baptist megachurch pastor chosen to offer the invocation at President-elect Barack Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration, says the Bible does not permit a woman to divorce a spouse who is abusing her.

Half a year passed before Saddleback Teaching Pastor Tom Holladay, who actually voiced the controversial audio clip, said in a statement to Saddleback Church members that it was all a misunderstanding. According to ABP, he said he was just trying to explain to explain "the difference between an angry exchange between spouses and domestic violence" and:

"We believe that one violent incident is obviously more than enough to demand the need for a separation ... ." And if an abusive spouse refuses to repent and try to change, there eventually comes a point at which he or she has abandoned the marriage and it cannot be saved.

That's a little convoluted but not incomprehensible. Even so, in the course of the audio clip (transcript) he said, “I wish there were a third [reason for divorce] in Scripture, having been involved as a pastor with situations of abuse… There is something in me that wishes there were a Bible verse that says, ‘If they abuse you in this-and-such kind of way, then you have a right to leave them.’”

Momlogic has former Saddleback Church member Sheri Ferber's account of receiving the kind of counsel apparent in the now-deleted audio clip. Momlogic notes that Saddleback has been asked to comment but has failed to do so.

This is of more than passing importance in part because Warren was chosen to give the invocation at Barak Obama's presidential inauguration, in part because Warren has a politically active ministry which includes calling presidential candidates to his Faith Forum and in part because the submission Southern Baptist doctrine requires of women can be dangerous.

The foundations, impact and validity of that submission are a matter of ongoing debate. But the necessity of keeping the vulnerable safe should not be.

Acceptable 'Pastor Rick' steps forward

Acceptable "Pastor Rick" spoke from the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta today, and promised to reappear at President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration tomorrow in Washington, D.C.

In his keynote Martin Luther Kind Day address, Warren said, according to the Associated Press:

Tomorrow when I pray the invocation for my friend, Dr. King and a whole host of witnesses will be shouting. Martin Luther King was a mighty tool in the hand of God. But God isn't through. Justice is a journey and we're getting further and further along.

Controversial Rick Warren, whose views on homosexuality and the role of women in marriage and in the church brought protesters out today, seemed to be absent from the pulpit of the church where King preached from 1960 until he was assassinated in 1968.

Instead there was a man whose voice may have been very much like the one Gustavo Arellano prayed for in the Los Angeles Times opinion piece we wrote about today. For this was a Rick Warren who urged the crowd to follow King's example of service and selflessness.

One with whom Obama can work, but who to play the role of a national unifying voice will have to make changes in style and content back home at Saddleback Church.

Time will tell, don't you think, whether the self-contradictory Rick Warrens the Boston Globe wrote about today will resolve into a man of sweeping compassion with whom the late Dr. King would in fact have been pleased to work.

Be as dedicated as Hitler Youth, Rick Warren exhorted

Bruce Wilson wrote:

On April 17, 2005, at the southern California Anaheim Angels sports stadium thirty thousand Saddleback Church members, more than ever gathered in one spot, assembled to celebrate Saddleback's 25th anniversary and listened as Rick Warren announced his vision for the next 25 years of the church: the P.E.A.C.E. Plan.

Towards the close of his nearly one hour speech, Pastor Warren asked his followers to be as committed to Jesus as the young Nazi men and women who spelled out in mass formation with their bodies the words "Hitler, we are yours," in 1939 at the Munich Stadium, were committed to the Führer of the Third Reich, a major instigator of a World War that claimed 55 million lives. ...

You may purchase the entire audio recording of this Rick Warren presentation from Saddleback Church.

The entire blog entry by Bruce Wilson at Talk To Action.

Christophobia is what, exactly?

Responding to Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren's Sunday screed denying he had compared homosexuality to incest and pedophilia, Frink wrote:

Giving his critics no credit for good faith, Warren began with a false denial of his earlier incendiary assertions and climbed a tree of polemic, concluding that those who took offense at his views were suffering from "Christophobia."

"Christophobia" is an attack word which has been in use for more than a decade.

As William Safire wrote in On Language:

As Christianist, with its evocation of Islamist, gains wider usage as an attack word on what used to be called the religious right, another suffix is being used in counterattack to derogate those who denounce church influence in politics.

''The Catholic scholar George Weigel calls this phenomenon 'Christophobia,''' the columnist Anne Applebaum wrote in The Washington Post.

She noted that he borrowed the word from the American legal scholar, J.H.H. Weiler.

The word was used by Weigel ''after being struck by the European Union's fierce resistance to any mention of the continent's Christian origins in the draft versions of the new, and still unratified, European constitution.''

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