Has Rick Warren taken leave of his senses? That’s what some on the evangelical/political right are wondering after Warren’s claim to CNN’s Larry King that he was never a big proponent of the California amendment to outlaw gay marriage. We brought you all up to speed on all this earlier today.
Gay groups, of course, are livid at Warren’s claim that he never really supported Prop 8. He did. But now conservatives are accusing Warren of “backsliding” on his support of man-woman marriage.
From OneNewsNow, a pseudo-news wire put out by the American Family Association “This man who’s been called the next Billy Graham, who I really respect with all my heart and love what he’s doing in Africa, is falling into a trap that is emblematic of the problem that the entire church is facing in this generation. And that is that we love the applause of men more than we love the work of God and the gospel. Jesus…told us that we are to honor God first, and that we are not to fear men but we’re to fear God.” — Bishop Harry Jackson, a suburban Maryland megachurch pastor and chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition.
Also from OneNewsNow: “Historically when institutions and individuals back away from convictional biblical truth, it is driven primarily by one single factor — and that is the respectability of other people. In other words, much more caring about what other people think about them than what God thinks about them.” — Jim Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in La Mesa.
But there’s more.
Steve Waldman over at Beliefnet is taking issue with Warren’s characterization of Waldman’s characterization of an interview (did you follow that?) where Warren seemed to equate gay marriage with incest and child rape. There’s a whole lot of back-and-forth going on there, but Waldman breaks it all down here.
And if that’s not enough to quench your thirst for all things Warren, Sarah Pulliam over at Christianity Today sat down with Warren to try to sort out all of those gay marriage questions. He says Waldman pulled a fast one on the incest/pedophilia connection: “It made it sound like I was equating homosexuality with pedophilia and incest. I don’t believe it, never have, and never would.”
When someone figures all this out, let me know.
