I don’t like to think about religion. It depresses me that an elaborate and strangely long-lived scam has ensnared so many decent and well-meaning people (which is not to say that no good has come of it).
I have nothing special against Rick Warren: yes, he’s a homophobe who resembles a chunkier Chuck Todd, but at least he doesn’t blame 9/11 on teh ghey or drunkenly masticate David Gregory’s neck and cheeks when he’s on the “Meet the Press”. So it depressed me to read that he said this:
“In 1939, in a stadium much like this, in Munich Germany, they packed it out with young men and women in brown shirts, for a fanatical man standing behind a podium named Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil. And in that stadium, those in brown shirts formed with their bodies a sign that said, in the whole stadium, “Hitler, we are yours.”
And they nearly took the world.
Lenin once said, “give me 100 committed, totally committed men and I’ll change the world.” And, he nearly did.
A few years ago, they took the sayings of Chairman Mao, in China, put them in a little red book, and a group of young people committed them to memory and put it in their minds and they took that nation, the largest nation in the world by storm because they committed to memory the sayings of the Chairman Mao.
When I hear those kinds of stories, I think ‘what would happen if American Christians, if world Christians, if just the Christians in this stadium, followers of Christ, would say ‘Jesus, we are yours’?
I don’t understand modern Christianity. As I’ve said before, Jesus has always seemed like a hippie to me, and I don’t think there’s so much in the New Testament that resembles Mein Kampf. So, seriously, what is up with so many Christian leaders wanting to emulate Hitler, Stalin, Lenin Mao, Genghis Kahn, etc? Is there a simple explanation for this?
Tx Expat
Power, greed, wrath and envy.
Garrigus Carraig
Umm, they would take over a chunk of the world for <100 years, and then get rolled?
It’s an argument for not fixing what ain’t broke.
Tx Expat
@Tx Expat:
That should’ve come with this blockquote:
AnotherBruce
Is there a simple explanation for this?
I don’t know, I’m waiting for the conservative re-write of the Bible to come out so I can give you an answer.
Georgia Pig
Simple, because they’re authoritarian fascists who value power more than righteousness?
DougJ
That should’ve come with this blockquote:
That’s what I thought you were answering anyway.
The Republic of Stupidity
Uhhhh…
They’re bat-shite crazy?
ericblair
Yeah, a charismatic demogogue stands in front of a mass of millions, tells them they’re the Chosen People and by the way those guys over there aren’t, and shows them a nice big book of untested social engineering ideas. What’s the worst that could happen?
Mothra
Doug, have you read Jeff Sharlett’s “The Family”?
aimai
Oh, I thought he was going to accuse Obama being hitler. I don’t know whether to be relieved, or horrified.
But I think the simple answer to this recurring fantasy of muscular and well armed Christianity is that a certain kind of Christian fanatic, like any kind of fanatic, gets off on power. They look at those pictures of Hitler at Nuremberg and they think “hey! that’s really cool!” and “If only it were me!” They never think they will be in the crowd, or under the crowd’s bootheels. I knew tons of boys who talked this way in highschool, when they first read enough military history to get excited about it. They all–to a boy–prided themselves on being able to appreciate Hitler’s “genius” and his “strategies” while lesser mortals worried about the actual death and destruction.
aimai
DougJ
Simple, because they’re authoritarian fascists who value power more than righteousness?
But why Stalin and Hitler? Surely there are some marginally more benign examples: Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Charlemagne?
Wannabe Speechwriter
I’m reminded of something my parish priest said to me:
DougJ
Doug, have you read Jeff Sharlett’s “The Family”?
No, but the link at Kahn is to his article in Harper’s.
Why oh why
Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and Genghis Kahn are very famous, and they were very powerful. Be like them, and you will be famous and powerful.
That’s all there is to it, Christians are just among the first to forget (or not care) what it is exactly that the first four have done. In 500 years, Hitler will be something between Alexander the Great and Napoleon.
Wolfdaughter
OK, I’ll take my own half-assed crack at an explanation.
Rick Warren and many other evangelical Christian leaders are authoritarians. Authoritarians understand other authoritarians but they don’t understand people who aren’t. If the Gospel accounts in the New Testament have any accuracy at all, Jesus was very much NOT authoritarian; in fact, he was a radical egalitarian. The last shall be first, etc., etc. Many stories and statements to this effect. Friends with people at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, women, etc.
Hitler, Stalin, and Mao are among history’s big authoritarians. They inspired unthinking loyalty among their followers, submissive authoritarians. Rick Warren wishes he had the power to exercise that type of leadership and inspire that type of loyalty. He still does not in our society, and let’s hope we can stave off people like him and their desires.
BTW, it can be argued that Jesus did inspire unthinking loyalty in his followers, but I’m not sure that’s what he really wanted. But that’s my half-assed interpretation and I sure could be wrong.
beltane
Sully has referred to the mega-church movement as “degenerate” Christianity, and he is absolutely correct in doing so. Just as the heroic, civic minded paganism of classical Rome was replaced by the lurid mystery religions of the late empire, the Christianity that inspired most of the cultural achievements of the West has devolved into a tawdry cult that promises endless material riches to those who demonstrate their salvation by stoning gays.
Georgia Pig
@DougJ: Because Stalin and Hitler controlled minds, while the others were leaders. Read 1984.
danimal
Remember that Warren first attracted attention in the field of church marketing (The Purpose Driven Church). From a marketing perspective, these are all pretty brilliant leaders. Hitler loved a spectacle. Lenin demonstrated the power of word of mouth. Mao personified corporate discipline. And so on.
Good and evil has little to do with good marketing. He’s hoping the local megachurch director of outreach can generate some buzz for his product.
MikeJ
If they really followed Jesus? They’d sell all their possessions, move into a commune and spend their time getting food and healthcare for the poor.
Somehow I don’t think Rick would like it very much.
Mumphrey
Well, when there is a way of living and believing that many people try to follow, the unscrupulous and greedy can take advantage of that.
Christianity in itself is not the problem; the problem is that many people use it for their own ends. I’m a Christian, but I try to follow the teachings of Jesus, not the scumbags like Warren who try to turn their followers into an army.
Your reading of Jesus as a hippie really is more or less right. He was a radical who said things that enraged the rich and mighty. He called people to think more about others than themselves; he called people to forgive each other; he called us to help the lowest and most helpless among us with no thought to what might be in it for us.
This Jesus is as threatening to people like Rick Warren–to say nothing of Pat Robertson or your average Republican “Christian” politician–today as he was to the Roman Empire 2000 years ago. This is the Jesus I try to follow. Lord knows, I often fall short, but too many Christian religious leaders don’t even try. That’s why they spend so much time getting their followers riled up about the homos and the lazy, good for nothing poor losers who just want something for nothing. It’s a lot easier and safer and more profitable to turn people against each other than it is to ask them to love each other and care for each other.
But there are Christians, there are churches, that try to follow Jesus’s teachings, that work to help the helpless with no thought for what’s in it for them. There are those who do a lot of often overlooked and thankless work just because it’s the right thing to do.
beltane
@DougJ: Warren’s dumbass followers have only the barest, if any, idea who Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Charlemagne were. Stalin and Hitler lived recently enough to resonate in the minds of the barely literate.
gnomedad
The logic, as it seems to me, is: there’s nothing wrong with selling your soul to authority, as long as it’s the right authority.
Annie
@Tx Expat:
Yes. And getting rid of gays, outlawing reproductive rights including access to contraceptives, censorship and book banning, ridding higher education of left-wing faculty, putting women back in the home where they belong, indoctrination camps for young children, endless hours of religious broadcasting, etc.
KG
@DougJ: Everyone knows who Hitler, Lenin, and Mao were. If they were to use one of your examples they would have to: (a) learn some history beyond the 20th century; (b) teach that history to the people listening to them; and (c) explain the corollary in a way that actually makes sense. But if they throw out names everyone knows, their listeners will just nod along without asking questions.
And yes, it’s really all about power for them. Most of them aren’t very interested in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. John the Baptist and Paul, now those guys were on to something.
Josh Huaco
“Woe to the Christian church if it would triumph in this world, for then it is not the church that triumphs, but the world.”
-Soren Kierkegaard
freelancer
great post by a skeptic about redrawing the lines on the God vs. no God battlefield:
http://www.amateurscientist.org/2009/12/three-tiers-of-religious-belief.html
I’m sick of the debate between atheists and religious people, and I don’t care if you believe in Jesus, just don’t be a raging hemorrhoid of a lunatic, ok? That’s all I ask.
Who knew that would be such a tall order.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Wasn’t some other crap stain peddling this same line not to long ago?
It’s all part of the return to traditional values. Because of course Rick and his ilk don’t want followers devoted to Jesus. That would be inconvenient, especially when people start re-enacting Jesus gets pissed off at the people hocking stuff in the temple bit.
Rick wants followers devoted to him. The church had all that devotion for a very long time. Then people got sick of being tortured, murdered and exiled because they didn’t believe in that Jesus fella. Meanwhile, Rick’s spiritual ancestors got involved in some serious internal strife over how exactly one should believe in Jesus. So now Rick and the rest of the dumb fucks have to make do with fleecing people who come to them voluntarily and not (for example) because they’ll get their ears chopped off and their eyes gouged out if they don’t.
ericblair
But why Stalin and Hitler? Surely there are some marginally more benign examples: Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Charlemagne?
Caesar: Romans killed Grownup Baby Jesus and had orgies or something. Bad.
Alexander the Great: Rode an elephant or something. Dunno.
Napoleon: French. Short.
Charlemagne: French. Who?
But really, besides Mean Mr Moustache and that Georgian fellow being familiar to even the most cranially inverted of their followers, they were the real trailblazers in the art of mass media propaganda. Yer basic peasant is much more pliant after a really skilful brainwashing.
Leelee for Obama
@MikeJ: This is the truth, not that the Rick Warrens of this world would admit it.
In answer to your question DougJ-the Christianists would be powerful for a time-Lenin/Communism lasted about 70 years, Hitler lasted about 12, Mao’s ideas were not too much in charge after Tianamen? Square. It would be awful, Americans would revolt, they would be overthrown and then another batch of snake-oil salesmen would begin. Nothing here on earth changes much, sad to say. But, Warren is a BS artist of the first water, mainly because he’s trying to ride on both sides of the road.
MikeJ
When he and his manly men were out in the field, all oiled and ready to go hand to hand, Alexander had a very, very close friend in the ranks. There was no DADT in his army.
As far as Warren is concerned, this is obviously much worse than killing joos, since they killed jebus anyway.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Apparently the Hitler, Mao Stalin thing is quite popular among the TalEvan right now. David Coebag said it too.
How long until they’re openly praising Bin Laden. He gets guys to do things they know will result in their deaths. Top that Jesus!
jl
DougJ said:
“I don’t understand modern Christianity.”
What is described in this post is not Christianity. I think it is a blasphemous and heretical extremist religious sect. Unless you want to define ‘modern Christianity’ as such, what you said in the post is not true.
Tx Expat
@Annie:
What’s so frightening to me about Rick Warren and his ilk is the access they have to the levers of power. The man gave the invocation at Obama’s inauguration as a “religious moderate.” What a joke.
That whole “wall of separation between church and state” idea that that DFH Jefferson so believed in is not operative anymore.
Georgia Pig
@beltane: It’s more than just familiarity. Hitler and Stalin were among the first dictators of the modern age of mass indoctrination. Other historical leaders depended more on affinity/tribal groups, systems of nobility, military hierarchy, etc. Hitler and Stalin were direct manipulators of the masses, creating their own particular versions of popular history to define their movements. They were aided in this by the rise of deterministic philosophies of historical movements that became popular in the industrial age in Europe, e.g., Hegel and successors. It’s interesting the similar affection of modern movement christians for apocalyptic fantasies about rapture, end of days, etc., all the crazy-assed shit that’s in the Book of Revelations. It’s eerily similar, for example, to the Thousand Year Reich or the inevitability of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Phoebe
I’m going to take a stab at painting this in the light most favorable to Rick Warren:
Maybe he was trying, in a stupid, ham-handed way, to say something like “if only Lex Luthor would use his immense brain for good! What a world we’d have!” so to speak. As in: “Those guys were horrible and wrong, and they made a huge impact before ultimately failing [said ultimate failure due to their horribleness and wrongness]. Imagine what that kind of dedication and organization could do when put behind something good and right, with God on our side!”
jl
@Phoebe: Warren’s version of the parable of the dishonest servant?
I’ll take the orginal version.
aimai
There are two basic important points about the examples Warren uses:
1) they are all emotionally and politically counterintuitive for his followers. That is–they make memorable examples and provoking topics of conversation because Warren’s followers are primed to reject all information about these men. Ordinarily they serve only as examples of pure evil. While some of them may have a vague idea of who/what Hitler was, or Mao, I doubt very much that the actual content of anything Lenin ever said or did is known by Warren’s followers. Warren chose them because of their shock value. Napoleon, Charlemagne, etc… are so distant in time and anodyne in memory that they simply wouldn’t hold the listener’s attention.
2) All these men are thought of as mastering the emotions and the lives of their followers. Hitler, Mao, Stalin (not Lenin), Pol Pot–these are men who were able to use their power to inspire and control and subvert all former popular institutions–from the family to the state. I think a good argument can be made that both Caesar and Napoleon also restructured much of their own societies (or tried to)–the Napoleonic Code gave us more of modern france than Hitler’s laws give us modern Germany and Caesar tried to change some aspects of Roman society but more or less unsuccessfully, in the end.
These examples are very carefully chosen to reflect Warren’s real interest which is in subverting what he (and other evangelical christians) think is the real problem: a lack of blind, raging, commitment and sacrifice on the part of their followers to their church. Jesus plays the same role for Warren that “the fatherland” played for Hitler–its the ideal for which the individual is asked to sacrifice himself. But the taxes get paid to Hitler. Just so Jesus is the ideal for whom the new Christian shock troops are to sacrifice, tithe, and work–but its Warren who gets the royalties.
aimai
Blue Raven
@jl:
You mean, “What is described in this post is not your form of Christianity.” Rick Warren talks to a god by the same name as the one you talk to. Therefore, he is a Christian. You don’t get to define his type out of your religion by wishing the same way mellower atheists can’t disavow Christopher Hitchens and I as a Celtic pagan have to put up with the bigots and morons in my faith as being fellow travelers.
Dream On
Somebody here had a great quote yesterday:
“I USE JESUS TO FOOL PEOPLE.”
BombIranForChrist
Christianity not a religion, it’s a political power. Always has been. And fascism is the desired outcome of simple-minded politicians, because they think that if everyone would just stop being so complicated and do what the Good Leader says, then all will be well. See Jesus.
Blue Raven
To follow up on myself in an answer to DougJ, it’s not all of modern Christianity. So the way the question was formed is inappropriate. There are many who practice the faith in a way that is nothing like Warren et al. His kind of faith doesn’t care how someone’s won over so long as they mouth the words and obey the rules. Thus their desire to be in charge and their delusions of persecution. Being reminded there are those who don’t agree with them is an affront to their sense of reality.
Georgia Pig
@aimai: What Aimai says. Warren gravitates to those examples because their control, at least in the way commonly perceived, is more profound that just power, which Caesar, Napoleon and the others exemplify. It’s the power to control minds to achieve certain political goals. Doesn’t seem very Christ-like, as his kingdom is not supposed to be of this world but, then again, I’m a pagan with only passing acquaintance with the fella. Maybe he would have dug stadium rallies with the Promise Keepers. Nah.
Sad_Dem
The simple explanation is that Rick Warren is not a true Christian. In the gospels, Jesus decries those who act like Rick Warren. The Bible also wisely consels, by their fruits you shall know them. For Rick Warren to make that speech just shows that he wishes he had the same political, not spiritual, power as the evil dictators he names and that he wishes he had as many Washington politicians taking his calls as does another evil man who pretends to be Christian, Doug Coe. It’s as simple as that.
Dr. Loveless
@Phoebe:
If that’s true, could someone please show him that Star Trek episode where the idiot Federation historian takes over a planet and tries to re-create it as Nazi Germany, only without the bad parts?
arguingwithsignposts
It was called the middle ages.
Jay B.
Of course it’s Christianity. It’s Promise Keepers and Billy Graham revivals. Hell, if you’re a Christian and don’t plot your day according to Jesus’ ferocious righteousness then you really ain’t much of a Christian. You dabble, sure, but really, when it comes down to it, you like the trappings without the commitment. And no matter how you read Jesus’ words, they brim with commitment and asking his followers to reject the comfortable and quotidian aspects of life.
That’s why they’ve resonated for so long. His was a bold and radical revision of the world. And that it was arguably more benign than Hitler’s (such was His luck to have a sketchy historical record, die young AND have literally worshipful hagiographers following him around) hardly makes it a quiet and introspective vision of faith and how to live.
Annie
@Tx Expat:
Amen. And, it is scary….Tea baggers wrap themselves in religious indignation and virtue.
arguingwithsignposts
And now the edit is gone? WTF?
scudbucket
@DougJ:
The answer is in your examples: ‘marginally more benign’. Power, for these people, is interesting only when it permits ruthless-righteous-vengeful-ness.
Xanthippas
Admittedly I didn’t follow the link, but based solely on the excerpt it sounds more like a “What if we harnessed that power for good?” kind of deal. But as far as getting people to be suckers for somebody’s ideology, I think he’s more right than he knows.
maya
Jeez, Rick, that mother of all authoritarian regimes, the Catholic Church, has been around for about 200 years now. Why look backwards? Just run for Pope, Rick. I’m sure you have enough cash to close the deal with enough Cardinals and you can command more than a billion people. Mao. Adolph, Joe. Pfeh.
arguingwithsignposts
@maya:
I think you mean 2,000.
jl
@Blue Raven: Point taken, but I think your point misses my point.
DougJ identified the Warren stuff as “modern Christianity” not “this form of” of “this offshoot of” modern Christianity.
So, I stand by my objection. Warren and other Xtianists do not have any claim on being “Christianity” modern or otherwise without qualification, and they should not be granted that that claim by anyone, either Christian or non-Christian.
I also disagree that I do have to admit whatever nonsense is spouted by other people who call themselves Christian as being Christianity. I may make allowances for social convention, and I have to realize that there may be disagreement inside and outside the religious community about who has a proper claim, but I feel free to make my arguments about who has a good claim or a ridiculous claim to being Christian, and I will insist that my arguments not be dismissed simply because some random person decides to call themselves something.
Phoebe
@jl: I ran to Wikipedia to find out what that parable is, and I couldn’t understand the parable at all, unless the interpretation is that the manager is foregoing his commission on the debts, in order to ingratiate himself to the debtors, who are the beneficiaries of that sacrifice. And then I don’t understand its similarity to Rick Warren’s invocation of HS&M.
And hey: I’m not saying I like the idea of what I thought RW might be saying. But it’s not pro HS&M any more than praising Lex Luthor’s brains [and lamenting their misuse] is. I agree with Dr. Loveless @44: Bad idea, even if it kinda means well.
Deschanel
Uh, I have something “special” against Rick Warren. Apparently he refuses to condemn the coming anti-gay witch hunt in Uganda, new laws funded and guided by evangelical Christians in DC, “The Family”. Basically, gay people are about to be put to death there, and their friends and family can be detained indefinitely for not reporting their gay friends and family, turning them in. Asked about this draconian, viciously antigay, anti-human legislation in Uganda, Rick Warren declined to take sides, give an opinion, or say a word against this inhuman witch-hunt in Africa. He said it wasn’t his business to have an opinion as to whether gay people should be put to death if it was determined they’d had a drink before sex. Not his place to comment, he said, about a murderous policy.
Rick Warren is a rotten human being. And no man of God.
jl
@Phoebe: I entertained the idea that there might be common theme at the prompting of another commenter. I was not entirely serious.
There might be common theme since one interpretation of the dishonest servent is that if Jesus’ followers showed as much zeal as the worldly in cheating each othre, they would make more progress.
But there is a passage immediately following the parable that says if a person cannot be trusted in small worldly things then they cannot be trusted in more important spiritual things, which adds further complication.
But I am so at odds with Warren’s brand of (heretical) Christianity, and I think he so misunderstands Jesus’ or any kind of real religious teaching that even if such a benign interpretation were true, it would not salvage the passage.
For example:
“When I hear those kinds of stories, I think ‘what would happen if American Christians, if world Christians, if just the Christians in this stadium, followers of Christ, would say ‘Jesus, we are yours’?”
I think that Warren’s idea of what the phrase ‘Jesus, we are yours’ means has nothing to do with anything in the gospels. They have turned the whole thing into a bargain basement mystery religion, full of juvenile magic.
TaosJohn
Without reading any other comments or anything you’ve written, that would tell me everything’s cool.
kommrade reproductive vigor
The LordBalloon Juice giveth…Liberty60
Hey, maybe he means that they would all give their possessions to the poor, and go around providing free health care to the sick, feeding the hungry, and give comfort and solace to the afflicted, and….
Oh, who am I kidding…
cleek
@Phoebe: is correct.
Warren is just wishing people would rise up and follow Jesus with the same fervor that they followed tyrants.
i can’t help but think there’s a little bit of envy there: why won’t the easily-led follow my lead ?!
Notorious P.A.T.
buuut hee duz suprt laz at ipt zm 2 dth en ioe oihpw oaixoius saoupel sl w! oahios! ihowphodc;z jhnai[peujoitjhnti’;yiop
mistersnrub
DeLillo said it in Mao II, “The future belongs to crowds.” Lather, rinse, repeat.
Mrs. Peel
What’s REALLY depressing is that it gets more apparent on a daily basis is that the only reason this blog exists is to parse Sullivan’s latest articles.
Time to find someone with more originality than a link and “me too” posted after it.
0whole1
> Is there a simple explanation for this?
Maybe “Everything would be fine if only people did what we told them to do.”
A la “Republican Gemorrah”.
ksmiami
The older I get the more I really can’t understand or even stand religion at all except as a nod to old cultures like the Jews and the Chinese buddhist way of life. It’s like I have some kind of brain block that afflicted me even in Catholic school, where I just immediately sniffed it out as all sorts of bs and delusion. Pimps for Jesus or Allah or who the f ever… I guess. Maybe too I have lived most of my life as a witness to the fact that if people just minded their own business, cared for others and made the world a little better, they wouldn’t need to waste time in church, or buy self help books. I mean I would be stunned if any of the Balloon Juicers actually shelled out money for a book called “The “Purpose Driven Life.” Really? They actually suckered all sorts of people to buy a book with that title? Tell you what read about how most of the people on this planet live and then Get your own damn Purpose and do something good before you die. Okay…
sorry for the rant, but I am sick of having bad policies written, or buildings blown up because of totally outdated religious teachings – it kind of makes me crazy.
gwangung
@Mrs. Peel:
Yet another stupid troll in a succession of stupid troll.
Put some thought into it next time.
Church Lady
DougJ, I’ve never seen where you have stated your religious beliefs, although I may just have missed it. My guess is that you are an atheist, or agnostic at best. If either of these suppostitions hold true, and you do not believe in God, or in Jesus Christ as your savior, how in the world would you expect to understand Christianity, much less “modern Christianity”?
This isn’t meant as snark. I just don’t know why you would claim to be perplexed by something of which you have absolutely no belief. I don’t understand Islam, but I credit that to the fact that I do not know anything about the religion, nor do I believe in Allah, nor do I care about either. Rather than saying you don’t understand it, why not just say you think it’s bullshit and then ignore it?
Martin
Sure. The older you get the more of yourself you’ve invested in this faith thing. What happens when you’re 60 and the space aliens show up and demonstrate that the Bible was all bullshit? You’ve now just committed your entire life to a fairy tale. How pathetic would you feel then?
So, the ones that have the big chip stack need to keep raising the bet, need to keep working harder to prove that they didn’t walk down a pointless path. That’s why climate change and evolution are so fucking scary to them. What if we’re right and the earth isn’t 6,000 years old? What then?
YankeeApologist
@Church Lady
Whoa. I don’t mean to be divisive, but that whole “You have to be part of an ideology to understand said ideology” thing? Logically, that dog just won’t hunt.
I don’t understand how the Germans in the late Thirties allowed National Socialism to swallow their country, leading to untold destruction and the genocide of a race, except only dimly through reading historical texts and getting some sense of context. I know they were poor, and dealing with lots of inflation and looking for someone to blame. Does that justify Hitler and his band of Jew-killing maniacs? No, not really.
I don’t have to have been a Nazi to realize that putting a stop to that bad craziness was Priority Number One to virtually every developed country at that time in history.
So, using that logic as basis for our current discussion, being outside of the Christian mindset seems to place one in the ideal position to view it and get a true sense for what it’s all about. I was Christian as a younger man, and even wanted to be a priest in my middle school days. Then, I read the Bible – really read it, and realized how much contradiction there was in those pages, and realized it wasn’t for me.
I’m not denigrating everyone who chooses to be Christian. But most of the leaders of the various branches of Jesus fans all seem to agree that the gays are evil and going to hell, that women don’t particularly have final say over their bodies and what goes on in them, and that other religions are patently wrong on a basic conceptual level. If there’s so many Christians that “try to follow Jesus’s words, not the Church’s, and hey, my best friend is gay!”, then why is this still coming from the top down?
It’s the same with the Jihadists who distort the Qu’ran to the point of unrecognizability, blow themselves up for dubious gains to the cause, and give your typical Muslim a very, VERY bad name.
So, how are those of us who see these things and find them abhorrent supposed to call it “bullshit” and walk away? Isn’t that what the good Herr and Frau did back in ’38?
Martin
Tell that to the gays. Just ignore the fact that you’re being denied rights because your rights are more important to step on than the rights of shellfish.
Call us when atheists are telling Protestants they can’t get married.
PanAmerican
Because the Southern Evangelical Church is the last institutional bastion of Jim Crow?
Jebediah
And Chuckie is a dead ringer for Murray Hewitt.
“Murray? Present. Bret?”
arguingwithsignposts
@Church Lady:
Speaking as someone who spent time in protestant evangelicalism (fundamentalism, even), with a half of an MDiv. before I gave up the b.s., I’ll just say STFU, because you have NO idea what you’re talking about. Cue: don’t go to the sausage factory if you want to eat sausage ever again.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mrs. Peel:
Cocern troll is concerned. duly noted.
Batocchio
Hey, Genghis Khan was actually pretty religiously tolerant for his era – more so than the theocrats.
Warren, like Huckabee, can seem affable enough at a glance – if you’re the right race, sexual orientation, etc. Their actual views are more extreme than the image they’re shilling.
TenguPhule
One does not need to set themselves on fire to realize that it would be a bad idea.
Et TU Brutus?
Fosterites, baby, Fosterites ( yeah, OK, you didn’t read the book, once a “cult classic of the counterculture”, and Heinlien was a an old fascist bastard, but he sure had some things to say about religion in ‘Merica, I think he would have recognized Mssr. Warren and his peers for what they are). Onward Ho to the Theocracy!
Nylund
You have to realize that there are actually two Jesus’ in the Bible. There was the one that was most likely the real one (if he was real), who was pretty angry, threw tables and cursed out everyone for being hell-bound sinners, talked of turning father against son in his name, the coming of armageddon, and was overall a pretty frightening zealot obsessed with moral purity and the end of the world.
Then,there is the Jesus parts written by other people decades after the guy’s death that portrays him as this really nice sweet giving guy that just wants to help everyone, especially the poor. This Jesus was way more popular with the people and got a lot more converts.
Your “hippie” comment references the 2nd Jesus, but the first one is in the Bible too and its that first one Warren is alluding to in this quote. Pick up a Bible and start reading around Mathew 10:34 for a glimpse at the angry Jesus.
West of the Cascades
How do people who rail against “Christianity” fit Christian denominations that actively support gay marriage, social justice ministries, or poverty relief ministries, into a “monolithic Christianity” worldview? Unfortunately fundamentalist Christians who shout the loudest distract from the fact that there are myriad denominations and individual churches and believers who act nothing like the “American Christians” Rick Warren talks about. In truth, there is no such single group — although he would like to think there is, because there’s financial profit in him for it.
My church, the UCC (United Church of Christ), at the denominational level, advocates marriage equality. An ordained UCC minister in the church (Barry Lynn) runs Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Another UCC minister (Jeremiah Wright) has the courage to say “God damn America” because America ought to be damned for what it’s done to slaves and their descendants. The UCC wrote a letter to the Ugandan government opposing the anti-homosexuality bill. The UCC has about 1.1 million members — not that many, but still a substantial number of Christians who don’t think like the fundies who are the public face (and, I submit, a perversion) of Christianity.
I love Jesus because he was a subversive hippie living light on the world (he had a very small carbon footprint and doesn’t seem to have contributed to any first century housing bubble), with the radical notion that you should love your neighbor, even your enemies, and spend your life caring for the poor and the sick and the widows and the orphans. My faith then motivates me to be compassionate and caring and work to protect the world and people that (I believe) God was responsible for creating — ironically, I’ve become far more liberal politically the more I try to practice the strain of Christianity I believe in. Basically, the way I read the Gospels, I can’t find the Jesus that the Rick Warrens and Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells claim they believe in.
And it saddens me that the multi-faceted nature of Christianity (and the believers who disagree, often vehemently, with the overtly politicized Christianity of the right wing) gets lost when the screamers get out there, and that other liberals put on blinders to potential allies in Christian churches who believe the same things they do, but who have a (at least partially) religious motivation for those beliefs. Tarring all Christians with a broad brush is unwarranted by the objective fact that not all of us are alike, and not all of us are like (nor do we like) Rick Warren and his ilk.
To answer DougJ’s question, it seems like a specific faction of “modern Christianity” is simply power hungry and have gotten intoxicated with living rich off of their power as church leaders — and, power corrupting, they look for historical examples of authoritarian leaders and then project those examples onto Jesus. I don’t see anything, either, in the Gospels to support that projection – but it’s a convenient one if you want to (a) posit an authoritarian God and then (b) get rich as the political and economic acolyte of that God. It’s a warped view of what Jesus was all about, but it has a stranglehold on the public discussion of Christianity — which sucks for us Christians who don’t buy into it.
mommybrain
If I remember my bible reading, from back when I had to, God smites a lot of people for offending him.
Sounds a little Beckian, yes?
John Sears
I try not to worry too much about understanding any particular religion or religious belief or stance, because ultimately it’s staring into the howling void of madness, and while that’s fun for an afternoon, you don’t find real answers there.
Doug, your problem here, I think, is that you are trying to analyze something that is by its very definition outside the realm of reason. Faith is… to be charitable, untestable. To be less charitable, it’s another form of insanity. Either way, don’t look to ‘understand’ it from the inside out. Logical rules, empirical evidence, all irrelevant in that pursuit. A person can believe anything they want, for any reason they want or none at all.
DougJ
DougJ, I’ve never seen where you have stated your religious beliefs, although I may just have missed it.
I’m a proud member of what I believe to be the world’s greatest religion: lapsed Catholicism.
morzer
I think the explanation is simple – people like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen have no inner, lived spiritual life. It’s why they become materialist megalomaniacs who make a living by abusing the name of Jesus Christ and desecrating everything Christ stood for.
morzer
And there was a great light in the heavens, and a voice cried aloud:
“No you bloody well aren’t!”
And they were embarrassed, for five seconds, and then resumed the peddling of merchandise and learned discussion of how camels really do fit through the eye of a needle, if the needle is very large and the camel has been run through a blender.
Sloegin
Evangelicals (nearly) to a man still believe in their heart of hearts that we are in the end times, millennium-come-and-gone be damned.
They’re starting to freak a small bit about its lateness and are getting antsy, which is why they’re such easy marks for the Southern Fried Dominionists, who believe that the Apocalypse just needs a little kick-start.
Never mind the amazing blasphemy that is that God can’t seem to git’er done and needs our help to get the ball rolling.
morzer
When I think of how destructive, small-minded and viciously ignorant evangelicals can be, I feel a strange sense of sympathy for Nero. And the idiots were peddling the millenium back then too. You’d really hope that a few of them would finally catch on to the fact that this is something like the tenth time that the millennium has failed to appear.
mclaren
Well, let’s see…Hitler’s totalitarian movement produced genocidal death camps and a murderous world war, Lenin’s totalitarian movement produced gulags and torture chambers and mass murder, and Mao’s totalitarian movement produced thought reform prisons and torture and mass murder.
So I’m guessing a Christian totalitarian movement would produce genocidal death camps, a murderous world, gulags, torture chambers, and mass murder.
Am I missing anything?
Zuzu's Petals
So I guess he’s saying that all those thousands of people who fill his megachurch every Sunday do not – despite his years of ministry – see themselves as belonging to Jesus.
geg6
You people are aware, aren’t you, that the nut in Uganda advocating the death penalty law for gays was mentored by Rick Warren? And that they are trying this out in Uganda as a practice session for world domination? And, no, I’m not kidding. Religion. Yeah, gimme some of that. /snark
kommrade reproductive vigor
@morzer: John Varley FTW.
DPirate
Is there a simple explanation for this?
Yes. They are evil.
Richard R
Robert Wright’s current book “The Evolution of God” shows how politics and power shaped the idea of god from the days of hunter/gatherer tribes through the development of the hebrew, christian, and muslim concepts of the deity. A great read.
SGEW
No, seriously, read Sharlet’s book.
The Harper’s article, “Jesus Plus Nothing,” here.
I don’t know if Warren is a believer in the particular theology of the Fellowship (aka The Family), in regards to authoritarianism (viz. Hitler, etc.), but this particular quote sure sounds like he is, at least, flirting with it.
patrick
no discussion about winger religion can be had without referencing this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofzCZiQ9vjA
geg6
@SGEW:
Judge for yourself:
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2009/11/29/pastor-rick-warren-responds-to-proposed-ugandan-legislation.aspx
And even better:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/144403/uganda%27s_%22kill_the_gays%22_bill_tied_to_rick_warren_mentor/
John PM
Late to the party again. I have three thoughts about Warren’s quote;
1. Leave the parables to Jesus
2. Warren seems to have forgotten that Christians did indeed take over the world in the fourth century, thanks to Constantine and the Council of Nicea.
3. In stating his comparison, it sounds like Warren is not so much hoping for Christ as the Anti-Christ.
matoko_chan
Rick Warren’s disciples are preparing to slaughter gheys in Uganda.
Follow the money.
SGEW
@geg6: I am familiar with Warren’s direct connection with the Ugandan situation, and his second-hand ties to the Family, but this doesn’t speak directly to whether he shares the very specific theological doctrines of the Fellowship vis a vis worldly dominion and totalitarianism.
But what the heck is Warren’s theology, anyway? I’ve never gotten a clear answer on that one.
matoko_chan
Sounds like a WEC Weimar rally.
It isnt all christians that evil….it is WECs…white evangelical christians, like Rick Warren and Sarah Palin and John Hagee.
WEC is politico-religious-racial demographic and not just a religion.
WECs believe they have right….no…..the DUTY to impose their views on others.
A lot of them are Pre-Tribulationists, and believe in the Endtimes, teh Rapture, and the First and Second Regathering in MENA as a precondition for the Apocalypse.
I personally cant wait to be Leftbehind.
The best thing in the world would be for these assclowns to lift off into outer space and leave the rest of the f*ck alone.
matoko_chan
SGEW…
read my linkz. ^ ^
DaddyJ
@MikeJ: The problem is, once you have that stadium/nation/planet of Jesus followers, who gets to wear the Jesus mask and folks what to do? Throughout the New Testament, when the disciples ask Jesus the equivalent of, “What are your orders, fearless leader?” he either rebukes them or tells them a parable. I don’t think Jesus, as least as the New Testament describes him, was interested in the kind of leadership that Rick Warren fantasizes.
SGEW
@matoko_chan: Like I said, I’m familiar with the connection between Warren and the (unbelievably monstrous!) Ugandan legislation, and that legislation’s connection with the Family: what I’m looking for is either Warren’s actual, direct interaction with the Family’s members on some concrete basis, or a delineation of Warren’s theological similarities with the Family’s bizarro-world “Christianity.” It all seems a bit second-hand right now: more along the evidence of Warren’s constant power-play backroom scheming than any doctrinal correlation (besides both the Family and Warren hatin’ on teh gheys, of course – which goes beyond theology, of course (see, e.g., Iran)).
This is not to excuse Warren’s passive support for the murderous law, mind you: I’m just wondering what the hell Warren’s specific theology is (if he has one, naturally), and if he’s been espousing the Family’s totalitarianism.
les
What’s it about? I think it’s fear. Yeah, they’re authoritarian assholes, and the leaders love them some power, money, etc. But, especially among the fundies, I think fear is a huge driver. All the while they spout that they’re best buds with jebus, and personally saved, and going to heaven–as long as somebody, anybody, doesn’t buy the drivel then they have to think, somewhere, that maybe they’re wrong. And given the malicious bastard they worship, that’s terrifying. If, through force, law, persuasion, whatever, they can regiment everyone into their belief, then they won’t be confronted and don’t have to worry.
Tonybrown74
I remember when the Gays were given a lot of shit for criticizing Obama for allowing that hack to give the invocation at his swearing in. Many of us said that this hack was nothing but a kinder kind of
assholeevangelical.Well, now we have the proposed Ugandan law and his links to it, as well as his little Hitler/Lenin/Mao statement.
It’s an interesting topic, given the recent discussions her WRT recent discussions about Republicans/conservatives being assholes …
Professor Fate
So I guess that the whole “my kingdom is not of this world” bit passes them right by then?
my guess is once the crowd shouts “we are yours” Warren takes off his disguise reveals himself to be Sauman the white and leads his orcs on an assult on Minias Tirith.
or maybe no.
geg6
@SGEW:
Here is what I consider a reasoned exploration of Warren’s “theology:”
http://cicministry.org/commentary/issue80.htm
At least as reasoned as any magical thinking gets.
matoko_chan
SGEW
Like I SAID follow the money.
Right from Saddleback offering plates to the prospective genocidaires.
matoko_chan
Its just an outreach of the Catholic and Mormon
churchesPACs funding anti-ghey legislation in Cali and Maine.Same old thing.
Why would they do this?
Because nonhispanic-caucasion is becoming not just an american electoral minority, but a GLOBAL minority in the halls of power.
The face of global xianity is black, brown and yellow……big white christian bwana is going down.
So the WECs have to keep power where they can.
Lex
@Nylund:
He was angry … at people exactly like Rick Warren. He didn’t curse out everyone, he cursed out corrupt religious leaders. He was hardly obsessed at all with moral purity; to the contrary, he specifically said that all the moral-purity imperatives of the Old Testament had to be understood in the context of loving God by loving that which God had created, including people you historically didn’t get along with.
But thanks for playing.
Ken
Megalomania
FormerSwingVoter
Yes. Christian Conservatism is the single greatest threat to our nation right now. That’s it. That’s the entire explanation. Figuring out the “why” is irrelevant – these people are just crazy.
SGEW
@matoko_chan: (sorry for harping on about it, but I’ve got a bug up my ass about the Family)
Again, I get it that Warren is/was heavily involved in the Ugandan pogrom. And that the Family is also directly connected. They (Warren and the Family) both definitely believe in the religious dominance of the state, and a pathological hatred of non-heteronormative cultural beliefs. Absolutely. But my specific question was about the very particular and very, very creepy (not to mention heretical) theological concepts of “brotherhood in Christ,” the divergence between ethics and the material world, and the literally totalitarian belief system that the Family has carefully crafted; and whether Warren has publicly acknowledged believing in any of them. Or if anyone’s asked him.
Warren’s “theology,” from what I’ve read (h/t <a href=”geg6)”>, seems to me to be a pablum of generic evangelical revival stuff (which is creepy enough!) and self-help pop psychology. Other than the quote in this post (which has appeared in many places), I haven’t read anything definitive about whether Warren has adopted and/or is propagating the much more sinister “in Christ” crypto-dominionism that the Family inculcates in their members. Or any of the other political/religious goals of the Family other than their shared hatred of certain sexual orientations and general “christian” evil batshittery.
SGEW
[wherez mai edit button?!1 Le sigh]
Remember November
Wait, doesn’t this happen at every Billy Graham concert?
I guess Warren as too busy stuffing his fat face.
chuck
Yes, there is a simple explanation: Rick Warren is a fascist.
There is simply no nice way to say it.
Mumphrey
I wonder if anybody else thinks that the name of his church, “Saddleback”, seems a little, well, odd sounding for an anti-gay evangelical? I don’t know why, but it makes me think of the unholy, naughty, wicked, hot man-on-man sex. Seems kind of ironic…
Northern Observer
Basically what’s going on, or what is being revealed is the degeneracy of ‘modern’ fundamentalist Protestantism. This has been a long process, but the key wound was when Sir Isaac Newton popularised a scientific interpretation of scripture which was taken up in earnest by English theologians in the 18th century. This lead to sciptural literalism, which had never been part of the traditional theology of the Orthodox or Catholic church, and led to some pretty flaky beliefs. The whole thing went nuclear when Darwin showed up and “proved” that the Bible is in fact not a scientific text and that literal interpretations of the Bible are impossible. Much of the degenracy in modern Protestantism stems from the manic determination to maintain the notion of the Bible’s scientificism and scriptural literalism in the face of inconvenient facts. They refuse to deal with the plain truth that their doctrine of scriptural infallability is in fact heresy since it creates an idol out of the book rather than God/Jesus’ message. As an added irony, I would call this issue in Protestantism an Islamicising heresy because textual literalism is exactly what muslims claim for the Koran, which I would submit is at the root of Islams numerous pathologies. It’s a pretty massive irony to have these two religous camps suffer from the same issue.
Now liberal Protestantism, Catholicism and Othodoxy all have their own problems but this post is about Ricky Warren and his school of theology.
YankeeApologist
@West of the Cascades:
I get it. Your church is progressive, and that is awesome. Seriously.
Unfortunately, you can say that the Theocons are the ones shouting the loudest, and therefore being heard the most. In a strictly literal sense, I suppose that’s true.
But what’s unfortunate for you and those just like you that just want to worship Jesus and practice the whole “Golden Rule” thing is that the people shouting loudest are also VOTING the loudest. You and people like you, frankly, are not.
The whole basis of your world view, boiled down to essence, is to pretty much “live and let live”, and their world view, in contrast, is “destroy everything we don’t understand”. Unfortunately, that’s going to give your tribe a very bad name, because you happen to share the same God.
I get your point and furthermore feel badly that you get painted with the same brush sometimes, but it’s not really on purpose. It’s just that sometimes these things happen when ideologies are at war.
eyelessgame
The really, really evil thing about this sort of religion is the license it gives leaders to believe in their own humility. And that, being able to pretend even to themselves that they are humble, they are so terribly affronted when they’re called for doing things so egregiously megalomaniacal as this.
The very lack of self-awareness that he shows here is what convinces me that he’s a victim of his own religious rhetoric, not a cynical manipulator of it. It’s not only that Rick Warren fools his followers into believing that this is not about Rick Warren. It’s that I really think Rick Warren has fooled himself into believing this is not about Rick Warren.
Thus, in comparing a movement for good with another movement for evil, he trusts he will not be misinterpreted. Because, it’s not about him as the leader of the movement, he thinks.
If it were about leaders, you see, he’d be comparing himself to Hitler, which is what those of us outside the movement and not subject to its mind control see him doing, and wonder how the fuck he could possibly mean to do such a thing.
He doesn’t. He means to compare the effectiveness of one movement (the Nazis) to the potential effectiveness of another (Christians). The idea that he could be compared to the leader of another movement doesn’t even enter his mind — or he’d never say something so preposterous.
Because, see, he’s not a leader. Or so he thinks. It’s all about Jesus, not him. Because if it weren’t, he’d be comparing himself to Hitler, and that would be stupid.
See how the self-delusion works?
mclaren
Northern Observer opined:
Not so much. Warren and company are really just espousing pre-Reformation Christianity. Prior to the Reformation, Christianity was just as fascistic, just as totalitarian, just as obsessed with control and power and torture and death, as any of the secular religions that sent the 20th century into a death spiral — Marxist-Leninist soviet communism, Maoist communism, National Socialist fascism, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, the ethnic cleansing practiced by the Turks against the Armenians in 1915 and by the Hutus against the Tutsis in Rwanda in the 1990s and by the Serbs against the Muslims in the 1990s and the fanatical fundamentalist jihadis who’ve been blowing up trains and flying jets into buildings more recently.
The problem isn’t fascism. The problem isn’t authoritarianism. The problem isn’t totalitarianism. The problem is total absolute belief in an infalliable messianic doctrine.
When followers believe they have The Ultimate Truth, the supreme worldview that will make earth into paradise, anything becomes permissible. And when Warren exults in people “giving themselves to Jesus,” what he really means is exactly the same thing as Lenin meant when he urged people to “give themselves to Communism,” the same thing the students in the 1960s meant when they chanted slogans from Mao’s Little Red Book, the same thing the Hitler Youth meant when they ecstatically gave their salutes to Der Fuhrer at torchlight rallies.
Saying to the messianic leader “we are yours” means: parents killing their children in the name of The Ultimate Truth. It means crucifying your neighbor in the name The Ultimate Truth. It means setting your co-workers on fire or throwing them out a window in the name of The Ultimate Truth. It means slitting your parents’ throats in the name of The Ultimate Truth.
Whenever you have an all-encompassing belief system that promises absolutism and perfection in return for total surrender of the self and complete erasure of your identity and abdication of your conscience and your individual will, you’ve got a recipe for mass murder and torture and genocide.
The Reformation stripped that absolutism out of Christianity and the Enlightenment substituted reason and tolerance for ex cathedra pronunciamenti and heretic trials. These characters like Warren really want to roll back history and erase the Enlightenment, get rid of reason and tolerance from Western society, and switch the Wayback machine to a pre-Reformation Western Society run by the Grand Inquisition. There is no meaningful difference between the fundamentalist Christians today and the Grand Inquisitor of the 14th century, or the 19 madmen who flew a pair of 757s into the Twin Towers. There is also no significant difference between those people and Pol Pot or Reinhard Heydrich or Lavrenti Beria or Slobodan Milosevic.