By Jim Brown, OneNewsNow
Evangelical pastor and noted author Rick Warren says he’s hoping an upcoming presidential forum at his church next month will give American voters a more thorough understanding of the “faith, values, character, competence, leadership convictions and worldview” of presumptive presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain.
Both Senators Obama and McCain will be appearing August 16 at Saddleback Church in California to take part in a “Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion” moderated by Pastor Warren, who says he also will be addressing what he calls “pressing issues that are bridging divides in our nation, such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate, and human rights.”
The two-hour forum is co-sponsored by Warren’s Saddleback Church and the liberal social justice group Faith in Public Life, whose board president is Meg Riley, a Unitarian Universalist minister who previously ran the denomination’s homosexual advocacy office. The group’s board members include other theological liberals, among them a pro-abortion Muslim leader and a Jewish rabbi.
Warren says he is not troubled that a left-wing advocacy group will be co-sponsoring the forum at his California church. “Really we just are…co-hosting [the event],” says the pastor. “[T]hey came up with the original idea, but…actually we’re in total control of the format, the program, the questions. It’s at our church; and so it’s not their event, it’s our event.”
The author of The Purpose Driven Life says he does not believe the biblical gospel is compromised when he teams up with non-Christians in efforts to promote the “common good.”
“Now, I don’t happen to agree with Muslims and I don’t happen to agree with Jewish people,” states Warren, “and I don’t even agree with all of the things Catholics believe. But I…can work with them on doing something like stopping AIDS because we all believe sex is for marriage only.”
Warren says although he believes in the separation of church and state, he is not uncomfortable hosting the presidential forum because he does not believe in the separation of church and politics.
Explaining the format for the upcoming forum, Warren notes both the Obama and McCain camps requested that there be no questions from a panel or the audience, but rather from him only. Warren says he plans to focus on issues that political reporters often ignore, including how the candidates view the Constitution. He suggests questions on that topic: “Is it a quote ‘living document’ that can be changed, that can be reinterpreted with each generation as things change? Or is it a truth written in granite that is a standard by which we evaluate everything else, and you don’t change it unless we amend it?”
Unlike the Faith in Public Life-sponsored “Compassion Forum” that aired exclusively on CNN in April, Saddleback Church will provide a live feed to all television networks who wish to cover the August forum.
Interfaith meeting
In conjunction with the presidential forum, Warren plans to convene an interfaith meeting at the church for approximately 30 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders to “discuss cooperation in projects for the common good of all Americans.” Members of Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. Coalition will be flying in to attend the events.
Evangelical pastor Bob DeWaay is author of the book Redefining Christianity and founder of the apologetics ministry Critical Issues Commentary. He says Warren wants the ear and influence of any world leader he can get to back his P.E.A.C.E. plan.
“Some years ago he was already saying that this P.E.A.C.E. plan didn’t need Christians necessarily to work, that Muslims could be part of it, or anybody else — and then he calls the P.E.A.C.E. plan a ‘reformation.’ So how are you going to have a reformation based on working with all the world religions?” DeWaay asks.
“What does that got to do with the Great Commission, or the real Reformation, the authority of Scripture – all of the things that are important to us as evangelical Christians? I don’t see how you can make a reformation based on cooperating world religions.”
DeWaay says Warren is operating under the mistaken notion that uniting all religions to fight problems like AIDS and poverty will “warm people up” to Christianity. According to DeWaay, that is not the gospel God called Christians to preach. However, he admits many Evangelicals still have a strong affinity for Pastor Warren — even though he wants to “reform” the church to focus on social action rather than gospel preaching.
“He’s a very likeable guy on the surface, and I think pastors and Christians think, ‘Well, look at this, if he can get all these people on board and he can build a big church and he’s popular, and maybe if we get on board with that, some of that will rub off. Maybe we’ll learn how to have a bigger church and how to be popular,'” DeWaay contends. “And I’ve been [telling people that] Jesus told us that the world would hate us. Okay, so something’s seriously wrong if we do achieve popularity with the world.'”
(Source: OneNewsNow.com)
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