News that John McCain and Barack Obama were interviewed on their moral stances by the Rev. Rick Warren's Saddleback Church made me wince. Despite my roots in the historical churches that still claim apostolic succession, I am an agnostic. So what's my beef? Let me count the gristle.
Theologically, Warren is a midget. He subscribes to the plainest, simplest, most literal interpretation of the English translation of the Bahble. Period.
Granted, he doesn't pretend to be Teilhard de Chardin. He's more of a religiously inclined Willy Loman. Therein lies my complaint with Warren and evangelicalism: the project of life they propose.
Both embrace the American Dream, seek popularity before truth and propose a life based on ultimately superficial, uncritical and magical thinking.
What can one possibly glean from asking what three people a candidate would ask advice from or what an itinerant woodworker of 2,000 years ago means to him or -- hell's bells! -- what he thinks about abortion?
It's the same old pap.
Call yourself a salesman, Warren, and make sure you publicize that your god is Mammon. Then go leave the rest of us alone.
