Rick Warren against the Jews, and paths out of extremism
Much has been written recently about Pastor Rick Warren and I don’t want to rehash it all here. While there is much to admire about his life and work, and much to admire about Obama’s inclusive politics, there is a very dangerous thread of intolerance in Warren’s ideology and his popularity should make us wary. His well-publicized homophobia is upsetting, but sadly part-and-parcel with his worldview. His religious chauvinism is less well-publicized, but quite frightening, especially its anti-Jewish leanings. While I don’t believe he hates Jews or gays, I do believe he wants to see them, along with Muslims, Buddhists, and everyone else who has not accepting Christ, vanish from the earth. That he wants to do it by pursuasion and patience, rather than force, is nicer, but doesn’t excuse it. Luckily, there are also plenty of pathways out of extremism and the profile of Warren’s prayer at the inuaguration are making them part of the national dialogue.
The Saddleback Church, Warren’s magachurch in California, changed their FAQ page recently to remove much of the controversial material. Thanks to web archving, however, it is not lost. The following is from a page captured on 12/24/2008, and it should send a chill up the spine of any person who believes in a pluralistic society.
5. What does it mean to be a chosen people?
Question: Our small group met last night and we had a question we thought maybe you would help us clarify. If the Jews are God’s chosen people and they follow the laws as handed down to Moses, yet they do not accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah, how then can they be saved and ensure their place in heaven?Answer: When you think about how those who have a Jewish heritage come to salvation, the best answer is in looking at the first followers of Jesus. The first disciples were all Jewish men, but their salvation came through their relationship with Christ, not their Jewish background. The same is true of the Apostle Paul and every other Jew who came to Christ in the New Testament. The truth of the Bible is, we all come to salvation in the same way … through our faith in Christ.
When God calls the Jews his chosen people it does not mean that they are all automatically chosen for salvation. It means that they were chosen to be the nation that would follow him and teach others what it meant to follow him. That is why Jesus went to the Jewish people first when he came to this earth. Through the Jewish people (Jesus himself was a Jew), he brought the blessing of salvation to the world.
Of course, today there are not as great a number of Jewish believers in Jesus as we would expect. If they are God’s chosen people, why aren’t more choosing faith in him? The Bible tells us in Romans 11 that there will be a day when this will change – a day when there will be a great revival of faith in God through Jesus among the Jewish people. Obviously, this is a day that we, as believers in Christ, want to pray for!
(emphasis added)
Yikes. I believe, as the mystic Rumi wrote, “Sunlight looks slightly different on this wall than it does on that wall. and a lot different on this other one, but it is still one light.”
There are many paths to holiness. Many of them aren’t even religious. Recognizing the shared blessings of the human imagination, recognizing that humanity has thousands of answers to those fundamental questions–what does it meant to be human? how do I live a moral life–is the most precious realization knowledge of each other can give us. We must not merely tolerate other belief systems while we pray for their disappearance–be they Jewish, Christian, Inuit, Muslim, secular humanism, and so on…we must respect them. Respecting a cultural or a belief system does not include praying for that belief system or that culture to vanish in favor of yours. It means listening and learning; it means becoming a student of that system and finding the shared points. Warren does this in his public life, to some extent, but as many of his statements show, he still harbors a hope that all other ideas of the good and just life will vanish in favor of his own.
I believe strongly that God gave us the gift of imagination so that we could find our own paths to goodness, justice, peace, and love in our way, even without a belief in God. To claim a monopoly of righteousness is the hallmark of the fundamentalist, and a idea, I fear, that Pastor Warren embraces, even if he no longer likes to advertise it.
But there are alternatives to the extremism of fundamentalists, be they the militant cult of Hamas or the falsely benign strain of Evangelicals in America.
I’d love to present an alternate view, and call everyone’s attention to the work of Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, author of “You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right:Finding Faith Without Fanaticism,” a former West Bank settler, who works very hard to expand understanding among people. His interview on NPR about Gaza and Bernard Madoff is clear headed and inspiring. I especially like the point he makes about affirming the experiences of those with whom we disagree:
“So, I think the first thing to do is start listening, as much as we insist on talking in these conflicts, and the second is to realize there is always some part of even your most hated enemies’ experience that you can affirm, and when those two things are in place, you can, step by step, begin to return from sanity to a tragic situation.”
Important lessons for a dangerous time. I hope that Pastor Warren is having a change of heart, rather than just a chance of publicity. Time will tell.
