Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
 | Rick Warren Saddleback Church Covers Up Extremist Ideology |
The controversy over the plan to have right wing preacher Rick Warren give an official religious invocation to introduce Barack Obama’s Inauguration just grew another kink. It seems that Rick Warren’s church, the Saddleback Church, is engaged in a coverup designed to hide Rick Warren’s extremist ideology.
Soon after it was announced that its leader, Rick Warren, would be giving an invocation at the Inauguration, the Saddleback Church began taking down parts of its web site in an attempt to prevent people from seeing the kind of weird ideas that the church actually preaches. For example, on December 16th, the Saddleback Church web site had a page of questions and answers about its beliefs. Here’s what it looked like then:
Why the coverup if, as Rick Warren claims, truth is eternal? If Rick Warren is happy to preach these weird ideas to people at his church, then how come he isn’t willing to share them all with the rest of us? Come on, preacher Warren - let it shine, let it shine, let it shine! Truth is eternal, online. I discovered this coverup by looking at Google’s cache, and now, thanks to that, I’ve been able to save the page as a PDF, which you can see for yourself here. I’ve put it on the IrregularTimes.com server, where Rick Warren won’t be able to make it disappear.
What really tickles me is that this page is the Saddleback Church’s page of frequently asked questions. It’s right there in the name of the file: faqs_saddleback.asp - FAQs stands for frequently asked questions. But now, this page has been erased. What does that tell us about how Rick Warren and the Saddleback Church feel about questions?
Apparently, there are no frequently asked questions at the Saddleback Church. It’s not the kind of church where questions are appreciated. Rather, it seems that when church members bring up questions, they’re erased.
Actually, its not just the questions that are deleted from the Saddleback Church web site. Rick Warren’s answers to the questions are deleted too. Amongst those answers are the following nuggets:
- If you’re in debt, you shouldn’t stop giving money to the Saddleback Church, because you’re more likely to get out of debt if you give Rick Warren money.
- Stopping embryonic stem cell research is more important than curing grave and fatal illnesses. Rick Warren urges his followers to “speak out against overzealous stem cell research, even though you know it slows down the process of finding a possible cure for someone you love.”
- Jews should convert to Christianity, because the only sin for which we can go to Hell is “rejecting God’s saving solution in his son Jesus Christ.”
- Homosexuality is a sin, and so the Saddleback Church won’t accept homosexual couples as members. Church members ought to confront homosexuals and tell them that they’re sinners.
- Belief in evolution and belief in the Bible are incompatible.
- God gave human beings dominion over dinosaurs, which were around at the birth of human civilization - “Man and dinosaurs lived at the same time.”
- Plesiosaurs might not be extinct at all.
But this isn’t all - there’s a lot more to Rick Warren and Saddleback Church than just this one web page. A further search for other coverup materials seems to be called for.
ALSO AT "IRREGULAR TIMES"
Upcoming Activist Events
Light Up the Night for Equality2008-12-20, various times in Cities Across the Nation, Nationwide
Minneapolis Anti-DOMA Protest
2009-01-10, 12:30pm - 2:00pm in Minneapolis, MN
Senator Obama, STOP GOVERNMENT SPYING at DC Inauguration Parade
2009-01-20, 6:00am - 2:00pm in Washington, DC
Independent Dissent at the DC Inaugural Parade
2009-01-20, 12 Noon - 6 PM in Washington, DC
January 20, 2009 Pro-Constitution Demonstration in Washington, DC
2009-01-20, 12 noon to 6 pm, but you have to get there early! in Washington, DC
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