Rick Warren

Rick Warren is attempting to respond to all of the criticism he is receiving for refusing to condemn the proposed law in Uganda that would make some homosexual acts punishable by death - claiming that "it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations" - by trying to change the subject with the following tweet:

Globally last yr 146,000 Christians were put to death because of their faith. No one, except Christians, said anything.

I realize that Twitter is not necessarily conducive to rigorous fact-checking, but it would be nice to get some sense of just where Warren got this figure of 146,000 Christian martyrs.

I've been looking all over trying to find some article or report or anything to back this up and I'm coming up empty.  I'm not saying he's just making this figure up, but he obviously got it from somewhere and it would be nice to know just what his source is for this claim.

Last year, Reader's Digest announced that it was partnering with Rick Warren "to produce an inspirational multimedia platform called The Purpose Driven Connection."  Just a few months later, the magazine announced that the effort had been such a success that it was going to become the model for the future as the magazine.

Well, now a few more months have passed and the project is shutting down:

The Reader's Digest Association is dropping its high-profile joint venture with TV evangelist Rick Warren, due to a lack of subscriptions to the Purpose Driven Connection, The Post has learned.

The magazine will cease publication after the Christmas issue due out in mid-November.

Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church in California and author of the bestselling book "Purpose Driven Life" said that he and RDA will transition the project into a web only venture over the next few months.

RDA, which is operating in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, will cease funding the operation entirely in March 2010 and turn the project over to the Warren’s company.

UPDATE: Warren and Reader's Digest are claiming that they are shutting down the magazine because the website has been so successful:

"Impressive reader feedback has prompted us to focus all our energies on our digital format, so our content can be expanded, international, interactive and free," Warren explained. "The positive response from readers was so overwhelming we didn't want the content to be limited only to Americans who could afford a subscription to a magazine."

...

"Our biggest discovery was learning that people prefer reading our content online rather than in print, because it is more convenient and accessible," said Warren. "Cell phones now allow us to take content everywhere. And, from our viewpoint, an online magazine allows us to minister to people internationally; provide more content and features than we could fit in a print magazine; create interaction and two-way dialogue; and offer it for free.

"So when we heard the feedback and noticed subscriptions to the print magazine lagging behind Internet usage, in spite of strong retail newsstand sales, we jumped at the chance to go all digital," Warren concluded. "Thankfully, Reader's Digest was willing to help us make the transition."

I have to say that I really don't understand what Rick Warren's role is when it comes to politics ... or rather, I don't understand what Rick Warren thinks his role is when it comes to politics because he surfaced recently to insist to USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman that he doesn't get involved in political or policy questions:

Warren has no plans to burst back into politically-fired headlines, however. When politicians call him, he says,

I never get involved in policy. Never. But I'll talk to guys (like Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain and a host more) about their family, their stress and stuff like that....

Most people don't realize, I really have no faith in politics. I'm not a politician. If I thought you could change human hearts by laws, I would but I don't. Law is downstream from culture. By the time you make a law about something, you're reacting, not acting. I'd rather shape the culture.

This has always been Warren's stance, however it hasn't kept him out of hot water. Friday, he took a moment to clarify some of last winter's headline moments.

In December's interview with Steven Waldman of Beliefnet, did he really mean to equate gay marriage with pedophilia and incest? No, he says, he simply blew the question, and the followup, too. He has no such views of gay couples, he just wants to reserve the word "marriage" for the Biblical one-man-one-woman model.

Did he really campaign against gay marriage during the lead up to the Proposition 8 vote that overturned it's legalization in California? That would depend, evidently on how you define "campaign." He preached against it to his congregation but in Warren's opinion that's not campaigning, that's just a pastor sharing Scripture with his flock, even if his comments went worldwide on line.

Warren can claim that he "never gets involved in policy" or politics all he wants, but it won't change the fact that he most certainly does:

The election’s coming just in a couple of weeks, and I hope you’re praying about your vote. One of the propositions, of course, that I want to mention is Proposition 8, which is the proposition that had to be instituted because the courts threw out the will of the people. And a court of four guys actually voted to change a definition of Christian … uh, marriage that has been going for 5,000 years.

Now let me just say this really clearly: we support Proposition 8. And if you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8. I never support a candidate, but on moral issues I come out very clear.

This is one thing, friends, that all politicians tend to agree on. Both Barack Obama and John McCain, I flat-out asked both of them: what is your definition of marriage? And they both said the same thing — it is the traditional, historic, universal definition of marriage: one man and one woman, for life. And every culture for 5,000 years, and every religion for 5,000 years, has said the definition of marriage is between one man and a woman.

Now here’s an interesting thing: there are about two percent of Americans [who] are homosexual or gay/lesbian people. We should not let two percent of the population determine … to change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years.

This is not even just a Christian issue, it’s a humanitarian and human issue that God created marriage for the purpose of family, love, and procreation.

So I urge you to support Proposition 8, and pass that word on. I’m going to be sending out a note to pastors on what I believe about this. But everybody knows what I believe about it. They heard me at the Civil Forum when I asked both Obama and McCain on their views.

As I noted last week, Rick Warren had been on something of a media rehabilitation tour over the last few days, giving interviews to a variety of outlets, that was set to culminate with an appearance on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos that never materialized:

Pastor Rick Warren abruptly canceled an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” in which he would have had the opportunity to clarify his denial last week that he had ever endorsed California’s anti-gay-marriage ballot measure, when in fact he had done so on videotape.

A Warren aide e-mails the best-selling evangelical pastor’s view on both issues:

“Easter weekend is like the Super Bowl for a megachurch like Saddleback; this year they were expecting upwards of 43,000 to attend 43 service venues and locations offered at 13 separate service times, requiring an intense several weeks of preparation by the pastor and his team.

“I received a call from a Saddleback colleague (Pastor Rick’s chief-of-staff) [Saturday] morning that Dr. Warren awoke ill. He had already preached the first four services, beginning Thursday night (two of the Friday services were taped for broadcast six times over the weekend on the Fox News Channel.) I was informed that he would have to clear his schedule of interviews and preaching appearances yesterday in order to regain his strength to get back in the pulpit on Easter Sunday.

Warren had been coming under fire ever since he tried to claim to Larry King that his support for Proposition 8 and his past anti-gay statements were wildly overblown; assertions that didn’t fool or change the minds of anyone and ended up just bringing back the very issue he was trying to downplay.

Undoubtedly, questions over just what is Warren’s actual position on this issue was going to come up during his interview with Stephanopoulos, which would have just generated even more coverage and so it look like Warren just decided to cancel in order to avoid the whole thing.  

At the heart of Warren’s problem is his apparent desire to be all things to all people, as Amy Sullivan succulently explained it:

Warren's other habit is to do his best to agree with whomever he's speaking to. I suspect it comes partly from his pastoral experience, but even more from a desire to prove that he's not one of "those" evangelicals. He wears Hawaiian shirts. He has an easy laugh. He hugs people. A lot. If James Dobson is the Grinch, Rick Warren wants to be Mr. Rogers.

It's why when he's talking to Larry King, Warren mentions his gay friends and says he "never once even gave an endorsement in the two years Prop 8 was going." And when he's talking to Sean Hannity, Warren voices his agreement when the FOX host advocates assassinating the president of Iran. And when he sits down with the Wall St. Journal, he gets downright snarky about Democrats and religious liberals.

When it comes to gay marriage, Warren dearly wants to be a Southern Baptist who believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman--but also a man whose gay friends understand he's not intolerant. He appears to have missed the fact that the gap between those two impulses is what the debate over gay marriage is all about. That's not surprising, though, since as I wrote earlier this year, Warren also "wants to be both the universally admired pastor who speaks to the nation and the influential leader who mobilizes religious conservatives for political ends. But those are two inherently conflicting roles, and he cannot be both, no matter how hard he tries."

The dilemma he has created for himself can be pretty well summed up by this Washington Times article from over the weekend noting that while Warren initially angered liberals with his anti-gay stances and statements, he’s now angered the Religious Right by trying to back away from those very statements:

Evangelical leaders say they are bewildered and stunned by the Rev. Rick Warren's apparent turnaround on gay marriage after the famous California pastor said earlier this week that he was not a proponent of California's Proposition 8.

…

"I was extremely troubled by the way he appeared to be so anxious to distance himself from the same-sex issue and to make clear he was not an 'activist' and that he'd only addressed the issue in a very minor way," said the Rev. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said his denial is "absolutely baffling."

"Whether he supports Proposition 8 now, after the fact, is overshadowed by the bizarre claim that he did not say what the evidence so clearly proves he said."