Leland W. Ruble
Somehow Rick Warren’s plea for an extra million to continue as an apologist for a primitive dictator known as the Christian God, just seems a bit unrealistic. Saddleback Church, his home away from home, and the place where he spreads his propaganda of god belief, is no different than past members of the clergy who plea for donations whenever they feel financially threatened or in need of more funds to spread their quack religious theology. For instance, an Ohio evangelical pastor Ron Parsley, begged his congregation for 3 million to make up for his church’s lost of $3.1 million in a lawsuit filed by a family who disclosed that their son was spanked at its day-care center, to the extent that his buttocks and legs were covered with welts and abrasions.
Warren blames the lack of funds on the recession etc. What I would like to ask Warren is, how about donating some of the millions you’ve made from the sale of 30 million copies of your book The Purpose Driven Life? Instead of running around the country appearing on talk shows and falsely pretending he knows more about god than most people, he should instead, go to his nearest bank and withdraw a million or so from his personal account and use it to fund his church. Surely there must be one or two members of his congregation aware of Warren’s personal wealth. Or have they all been seduced to the extent that they no longer know how to oppose a preacher who has filled their brains to overflowing with images of an afterlife flitting about in some remote region of the universe?
This is the same preacher who only conceded after being constantly criticized for his anti-homosexual views, to voice opposition to the anti-homosexual legislation being debated in Uganda. The legislation calls for the death penalty of anyone suspected of being a homosexual. He would never have conceded if it wasn’t for pundits like Rachel Maddow and others who criticized and exposed him for his extreme anti-homosexual views. The man is a charlatan. A trickster who has learned how to fleece his flock and feed them the nonsense of a religion based on fairy tales, myth, magic, and mystical gibberish.
Warren has been known to be closely associated with a zealous Uganda pastor known as Martin Ssempa, a radical fundamentalist Christian preacher who resembles to an extent, an African version of Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell. Although neither man called for the death penalty of known homosexuals, their speeches and interviews with the media gave the impression that both men strongly opposed the homosexual agenda, and if they had their way would not stand in the way of severe penalties for homosexuals.
As for Warren asking for more money to spread his nonsensical religious theology, he’s doing what other megachurch evangelists have been doing for decades, duping their congregations into donating to a mystical propaganda predicated on the false insane belief that an invisible sky god has the ability to interfere in their lives. Rick Warren is just another in an assortment of Christian clergy who’ve become successful preachers mainly by exploiting their congregations with a phony mucky-muck religious message that is focused on the irrational, the insane, and the delusional.