Incite the slaughter of Muslims, imprison the homosexuals, and prosecute any religious or human-rights activists who seek to help the faggots:
That’s been the policy of Nigerian Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola.
Akinola wins praise from U.S. evangelical Rick Warren.
So, when Warren’s wife Kay claims “repentance” for unnamed injustices and seeks inclusion in the HIV/AIDS social-service programs of Orange County, California, naturally the local experts and workers who have battled disease and prejudice for 25 years are a bit suspicious.
“Nigerian Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola captured headlines last year for leading the worldwide revolt of evangelical Anglicans against the ordination of gay bishops in the U.S. by the Episcopal Church.”
yep, that’s the very first thing Warren has to say about Akinola. That’s his top reference. And he follows it later with:
“…willing to point out the inconsistencies, weaknesses and theological drift in Western churches.” and “Akinola has the strength of a lion, useful in confronting Third World fundamentalism and First World relativism”
so let’s see… interfering in the Episcopal Church’s ongoing debate over ordination of gay bishops and importing anti-gay sentiments are worthy of great praise to Warren. Conspiring with rogue congregations to undermine the American church’s heirarchy is admirable to a Purpose Driven mega-church.
And his wife wonders why AIDS organizations are hesitant when her church isn’t willing to stock AIDS kitchens but instead wants immediate access to the families of the AIDS victims.
“Although Saddleback does include those in its sexual addiction recovery program who are trying to, in church parlance, leave the homosexual lifestyle, Warren said she would not steer people in the HIV ministry there UNLESS THEY ASKED TO BE.”
Kay Warren believes “We can never stop the HIV spread with just professionals,”
So what is her solution?
“It was all about “ABC.” “Abstain from sex until marriage, Be faithful to your marriage vows, Use condoms when necessary.”
“If I were going to diagram it,” Warren said, “I’d say, ‘A! B! … little c.””
Yeah, you got that right. Prevent HIV spreading by saying “Abstain from sex until marriage but you can’t get married. And use a condom only if necessary, ya know, like if you’re HIV positive and your legally-married opposite-sex spouse is not”.
I would be very cautious before I let Saddleback anywhere near anyone dealing with HIV and AIDS. Can you imagine the “comfort” they’d bring? I would hate to depend on getting medication or a trip to a doctor from someone who thinks Akinola is admirable. I’d hate to think that somehow my next meal was dependent on my willingness to “recognize my sin”. Not a happy thought.
Indeed, their high praise of Akinola reflects his own ugliness.
This is another way to control gay people, rather than deal with all people whose lives are out of control.
If they were sincere about the marriage thing, they would advocate for EVERYONE to marry and encourage monogamy in everyone.
Not just presumed straight people. Again, I say I am offended by people like the Warrens or any straight person that believes what gay people need is STRAIGHTNESS or a heterosexual to guide them in life.
The Warren’s sudden interest IS suspicious. Is there some government money coming if you claim outreach?
And who would they hire or consider expert in directing how these programs are to work?
Ex gays…those who have renounced being gay and a gay sex life?
Any bets?
Hi, Mike, I’m back. Since my views are very close to Dr. Warren’s I think I understand him. As such, I wanted to give you some assurance that your suspicions while understandable are misplaced. You need to know why Rick Warren is a friend of Peter Akinola. It’s precisely because of Warren’s work fighting AIDS and no he’s not trying to get public money, he’s raising private money. Last November, Warren was invited by the Anglican Communion Network to speak — yes, that Anglican Communion Network. His topic? Fighting AIDS in Africa.
See here:
https://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05313/602997.stm
Rick Warren, the nation’s most influential evangelical mega-church pastor, cuts against stereotype. He dresses as if he shops at Goodwill, doesn’t preach on TV and isn’t of the religious right.
Now that his book, “The Purpose-Driven Life” has sold nearly 25 million copies, Dr. Warren and his wife are giving away 90 percent of their income to efforts to end global poverty and disease. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has backed his plan, declaring Rwanda the first “purpose-driven nation.”
“My goal is to move the American church from self-centeredness to unselfishness,” said Dr. Warren.
“We need to move the church away from that consumerist mentality to really caring about … issues like poverty, disease, illiteracy.”
He will speak Friday at 2 p.m. in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center at the Nov. 10-12 conference of the Anglican Communion Network. Information is at http://www.anglicanhope.org or 866-946-3754.
Episcopal eyebrows were raised about Dr. Warren’s appearance at a conference for Anglicans unhappy with the Episcopal Church’s decision to accept an actively gay bishop. Attending will be eight African and Asian bishops, including Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, who removed all references to communion with the Anglican seat of Canterbury from his province’s constitution.
Organizers say that the conference is for building relationships, not tearing the church apart.
Dr. Warren, a Southern Baptist, has close ties to five of the African bishops. He said they had invited him to speak about his plan to combat AIDS in Africa.
“What I want to do is return evangelicalism to its 19th century roots. Historically every one of the major issues then — women’s rights, abolition of slavery, care for children, child labor — were all evangelical issues,” he said.
He has announced his intention to work with any person of good will to eradicate global scourges such as AIDS and malaria, no matter what they believe about God or condoms.
“Poverty disease and illiteracy are not Christian issues. These are human issues and I will work with anybody who wants to work on them. If here is a homosexual person who disagrees with my views as a Christian, that doesn’t matter. I’ll work with them if they want to work against AIDS,” he said.
Last week in New York, he spoke at the Time Global Health Summit, with leadership from Bill Gates and Ted Turner and Bono.
Eliminating killer plagues such as malaria is both possible and good policy, Dr. Warren said.
“You help people who get sick and they get well, they become your friends,” he said.
Dr. Warren, 51, is a fairly recent convert to the cause. Twenty-five years ago he founded Saddleback Church with seven members in an upscale Los Angeles suburb. Today it has a weekly attendance of 22,000. His first best-seller “The Purpose-Driven Church,” helped create his global network of 400,000 congregations.
When people assume he’s part of the religious right, he corrects them.
“I’m not for the right wing and I’m not for the left wing, I’m for the whole bird,” he said. “If you have a bird with one wing, it never gets off the ground. Diversity is an important part of our government, and it’s necessary.”
He decided early in his ministry to stay off the airwaves.
“I didn’t want to be a celebrity. I don’t like televangelists. I don’t like their style,” he said.
But celebrity came with the staggering sales of “The Purpose-Driven Life,” designed to take readers on a 40-day journey to discover their life’s mission.
It has sold nearly 25 million copies in English alone. In 2003 it became “the fastest selling book of any kind,” in history, said Lynn Garrett, religion editor for Publishers Weekly.
Dr. Warren says that 10 percent of U.S. churches, including 120 in Greater Pittsburgh, have done the “Forty Days of Purpose.”
The book was intended to change readers’ lives, but radically changed its author. In one quarter, he earned $9 million.
The Warrens chose not to change their lifestyle. He repaid every cent his church had paid him. They began “reverse tithing,” living on 10 percent of their income and giving away 90 percent. Mrs. Warren instigated their global mission after reading an article about AIDS orphans. He came on board reluctantly.
On a trip to South Africa, he met dedicated pastors who had no resources as they attempted to respond to unfathomable needs,
After meeting one such pastor, “I burst into tears. I thought, I will give he rest of my life for guys like that who are really trying to do the job,” he said.
Prayer, he said, led him to identify “five global giants” that no one had been able to slay: Spiritual emptiness, ego-centric leadership, extreme poverty, killer epidemics and illiteracy.
He envisioned the church — and here he includes non-Christian religious communities — as a global distribution network that could deliver solutions in villages with no school, no post office, no clinic and no phone service.
His plan to mobilize that network is called the PEACE Plan. It stands for: Partner with congregations, Equip servant leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick, Educate the next generation.
It depends on finding a “man or woman of peace” in every village, and providing what they need to help their own people.
Over the past two years, he said, 4,500 volunteers from Saddleback field tested basic tools in scores of nations. He calls these School in a Box, Clinic in a Box, Business in a Box, Leadership Training in a Box and Church in a Box.
The Rev. Geoff Chapman, rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sewickley, was present in April when the Warrens announced the PEACE Plan.
“They repeatedly had 3,000 leaders on their feet with standing ovation after standing ovation,” the Rev. Chapman said.
“I thought I was witnessing a shift in evangelical life in the West, that God was right in front of my eyes moving evangelicalism to recapture its heritage in a massive effort to meet human needs in the name of Jesus.”
World Vision, a major relief agency, views Dr. Warren as a partner, not a competitor. “We are ecstatic” about his plan to mobilize churches, said Steve Haas, vice-president.
But Robert Seiple, a past president of World Vision who heads the Institute for Global Engagement, said U.S. evangelicals have a history of “large visions poorly executed.”
A positive sign is that the Rwandan president is on board.
President Kagame “does indeed mean what he says, and talks with a great deal of credibility and commitment. If Rick Warren is tied in with Paul Kagame, I think it has a great chance of success,” Mr. Seiple said.
While the Warrens have their ego problems-those poor dear Mainline, “liberal” churches have been approaching world missions on this basis for more than 100 years-the real news here is the Archbishop Akinola is out to clobber both gay folks and Moslems. This is hardly surprising, and it is not Christian either. What it is, of course, is the classic wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing busy aggrandizing his own community and its prejudices.
“You need to know why Rick Warren is a friend of Peter Akinola.”
It’s always lovely to hear the caring compassionate reasons why someone like Rick Warren is such a dear close friend with those who seek the eradication of the rights and freedoms of gay people around them. It makes it so much easier to accept alliances with truly evil people when you know it comes from a loving place.
Surely the utter destruction of the lives of gay people in Nigeria is a small price to pay for the warm fuzzy feelings that Warren gets from sharing his purpose driven life with Akinola.
It’s been a while since I have been here but you can check the archives of XGW to see what I have said in the past. Regardless of where we might disagree we agree that we should do all that is humanly possible to eradicate AIDS and that noone deserves it. We stand ready to hold out our hand. If you chose to slap it that’s your choice but we will continue to hold it out until someone else grabs it. This is not about “warm fuzzies”, or Christians vs. Muslims vs. everyone else, or gay vs. straight, this is about saving lives. If you reject the good faith efforts where we have common ground there is little hope that ground could be expanded.
Rich when you praise these people rather than condemn their unjust attitudes your extended hand means little. If you want to work on common ground first you need to establish some credibility with repeated acts demonstrating your committment to fairness in general, of which fairness to gays is an essential part. You are untrustworthy as long as you overlook this animus towards gays. If you don’t support treating gays equitably what reason is there to believe you’re sincere about treating people equitably in the fight against AIDS?
Check the archives and you see that I am for equity. The mutual distrust and ignorance between our respective communities hurts your community more than mine. You have to walk before you run. So, if you ask Rick Warren to make progress you need to acknowledge the progress even if it is just a little. If not, moderate evangelicals will give up because we are being shot at constantly by the Religious Right for accomodating.
Furthermore, you want us to speak into our communities like Rick Warren did to the conservative Episcopalians because just as we have no credibility with you, the same holds vice versa. Speaking of credibility I do this (attempting to build mutual respect and knowledge between our communities) not to gain credibility with you but because it is the right thing to do.
My friendly advice is this. Accept the alliance with evangelicals fighting AIDS. This will promote more interaction between us and it is hard to have animus with people that you know and care about. Or, you could keep the wall up and all we will know about you will come from Ex-gay and Religious Right propoganda. Take your pick.