Rick Warren responds to Newsweek (updated)

June 12, 2008 By

obama and warrenWe get our share of interesting comments here at this weblog and we also get lots of straw-man sermons that have nothing to do with religion-news coverage. And from time to time we hear from the reporters, editors and religious leaders involved in the actual coverage.

Most of the time, these emails come in flying “private” and “not for publication” warning labels.

But Mark’s “Another way to be one sided” post drew a most interesting on-the-record response. You may recall that this post focused, in part, on the following section of Lisa Miller’s Newsweek report on Soul Force’s lesbigay activism on Christian college campuses:

… (Last) week Rick Warren announced that he was welcoming a group of gay fathers to his church for Father’s Day. Now, even on very conservative Christian campuses, there are gays who are “out” and who want their authority figures to recognize them — and their sexuality — as deserving of God’s love. Thanks largely to the efforts of Soul Force, which encourages dialogue between gays and Christians on campus, these students are trying to get organized.

That led to this GetReligion comment from the megachurch pastor, and mega-selling author:

(You) were correct in assuming Newsweek quoted a Soul Force press release headline that was 100% false. We did not invite this group and I will not be meeting with them. They invited themselves to draw attention to their cross country publicity stunt.

My staff has already told them that neither my wife nor I will meet with them for any discussion or debate. This weekend, both Kay and I are receiving awards from two different universities so we’ll be out of town! Also, it’s Father’s Day and I’m spending the holiday with my children and grandchildren, as are all my staff.

Rick Warren
Saddleback Church

Warren’s comment on this factual error is important, in large part because the Miller report is inspiring other commentaries and will probably lead to live coverage of the service/demonstration. You think?

Take, for example, this commentary over at the New York Times website by Timothy Egan. It opens with this remark about some “good tidings” from Saddleback land:

This Father’s Day, one of most popular pastors in America will open his megachurch to homosexual dads, an event that would usually signal an extreme weather alert from old guard Republican evangelical leaders.

But by welcoming gay fathers into his Southern California flock, Rick Warren, author of the “The Purpose Driven Life,” is not just living up to the highest standards of Christian fellowship, he’s turning the page on a particularly embarrassing part of our politics.

I guess the Times has to yank its Warren praise pretty quick, before it works into ink on paper.

Meanwhile, these reporters need to rethink a basic part of their framework for these reports. The assumption that Warren is set to “open his megachurch to homosexual dads” assumes that he had previously closed his church to gay dads. The odds are very good that there are gay dads and even scores of ex-gay dads at Saddleback every weekend.

That isn’t the question, is it? The question is whether he had made a decision to allow his church to be used as a site for a media-friendly demonstration by a Christian group on the theological left that wants to attack some of the traditional, small-o orthodox doctrines about marriage and sex that his church has preached and tried to advocate day after day.

Does Newsweek need to print a correction? Does the Times, which just push-teched the Egan piece out to online subscribers atop its editorial-page listserv?

UPDATE: Click here for more info on this debate.

Photo: That’s Rick Warren on the right.

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Filed Under: Announcements, Evangelicals, People, Sex, Social Issues
About TMatt

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

  • Jerry

    Fact checking stories is so quaint. Who has time for it when the world lives on internet speed.

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    JERRY:

    Another interesting thing. Warren is usually very fast at responding to MSM emails from reporters.

    Did anyone even ask him if the press release was accurate or reflected his view of the event (an event at his own church)?

  • danr

    Interesting also, this blog just had a long passionate thread on the discontinuance of “homosexual” in the MSM, as its “clinical” origin now purportedly renders it pejorative.

    Yet Egan’s commentary in NYT uses homosexual and gay interchangeably. Perhaps he didn’t get the memo? Am I missing something?

  • Jerry

    Terry,

    I guess this is the new way to deal with rumors and lack of fact checking. Google news turned up this LA Times story:

    Barack Obama campaign sets up rumor-busting site Los Angeles Times – 1 hour ago Fed up with all the nasty rumors, Barack Obama and his campaign have set up fightthesmear.com, a website devoted to zapping the recalcitrant untruths that have been dogging him for months, especially online.

    The story had a fact-check error. When I went to the web site, I saw they had a typo in the URL – it’s fightthesmears.com (plural not singular). They fixed it fast but online stories should have an elementary fact check – click on the URL to see if it’s valid. I do that for a web site I administer – if it’s obvious to me it should be obvious to professionals.

    Sure it’s a minor point, but symptomatic of the larger issue. Bias probably makes it worse, but even without bias there’s a serious problem.

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    Jerry:

    What you said. Amen.

  • liberty

    crazy idea – fact checking. Nobody would want to do that when they can use a story to promote their agenda. You can’t possibly let the truth get in the way.

    The media wonders why people don’t trust them anymore. Here is exhibit number 1.

    Now of course the correction (if there is one at all) will be in a tiny little box surrounded by ads. What Newsweek should do is a front page article about how they (and much of the media) fail to fact check.

  • http://faithphotos.aminus3.com Chris

    Just curious more than anything – how do you confirm that the person who posted claiming to be Rick Warren is actually Rick Warren? Not doubting, just wondering how you “fact check” something like that….

  • Martha

    I’m surprised that the reporter didn’t contact Rick Warren and/or Saddleback Church for a comment when the press release from Soul Force came in.

    I’d have expected that, if a Scary Fundamentalist was suddenly getting all soft and inclusive, it might have sparked a faint trace of interest in a thrusting investigative journalist as to why this change of heart? Or at least in the hopes of getting some juicy quotes (and maybe a bit of good old fashioned putting the boot into rivals and critics?)

    Then again, it’s “Newsweek”. Getting the date right on the cover is a triumph of factual accuracy for them.

  • Dave G.

    I hate to snipe, but I couldn’t resist. I loved the pastor two-step on humbly promoting yourself. In ministry(especially in the somewhat personality-driven evangelical world), the trick is to promote yourself/your ministry while staying humble. How? Easy:

    This weekend, both Kay and I are receiving awards from two different universities so we’ll be out of town! Also, it’s Father’s Day and I’m spending the holiday with my children and grandchildren, as are all my staff.

    Of course, Warren could have just said he’ll be out of town, even visiting a university or two, or he will be spending time with his family (I guess one is one day, and the other the other day?). But nope, in the personality driven world of modern-age Evangelicalism, its all about promotion, promotion, promotion: He’ll be out of town receiving awards from two different universities. And nobody should use that more than the man who made using Wall-Street marketing tactics in church acceptable.

    I wonder how many journalists catch those things, or is it something they would even care about?

  • danr

    Dave G wrote:

    I hate to snipe, but I couldn’t resist. I loved the pastor two-step on humbly promoting yourself.

    You could have resisted, but chose not to. Presumably to promote yourself and your own judgments for all to see here, forgive my own judgment if I’m wrong.

    I wonder how many journalists catch those things, or is it something they would even care about?

    Some journalists probably would care. Some would enjoy the chance to snipe at “modern-age personality-driven Evangelicals”, and presumptuously judge their motives, as much as you just did.

  • Brian Walden

    Dave G., without knowing Warren’s motivations it’s hard to really judge from those two sentences. For example, he could have mentioned the awards to show that he had prior commitments and wasn’t merely hightailing it out of town to avoid the Soul Force gathering. And he could have mentioned spending the holiday with his family as a way encouraging his followers to do the same – kind of preaching without being preachy. Or maybe he’s just a friendly person who tends to share the details of his life for no calculated reason. Without further evidence I don’t think we can say that he formulated half of a Get Religion post just for the sake of publicity.

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  • FW Ken

    Yes, how do you know that the comment was actually from Pastor Warren. I mean, it’s a safe bet that the comments from William F. Buckley are phoney, but when the comment’s from a living person…

  • Michael

    I wondered the same thing, Ken. Since there is nothing on Saddleback’s website, why would Warren use a blog posting to dispute a Newsweek article as opposed to, say, issuing a proper press statement.

  • Dave G.

    Danr,

    Yes, you are wrong, so I will forgive – this time. My point was the subtlety of it all. It is a common practice in evangelical ministry, and a difficult line: How to promote yourself and your ministry, without promoting yourself and your ministry. I have found it fascinating, and in my ministry days went round and round with folks over such things. It was the same mentality that said you can’t clap after a song, but saying Amen is OK. How to self-promote, for whatever reason, while maintaining that Christian Humility has always been a trick.

    For the record Danr, I am no fan of Rev. Warren, starting with that little book he wrote before PDL: the Purpose Driven Church. That went a long way toward getting me to rethink my faith in Evangelicalism and Protestantism, and helped me along that long path to the Catholic Church – but that long tale isn’t for this forum.

    Brian,

    Less zing to your response. But forgive my cynicism, I was a minister. When you write something, you know you are in a fish-bowl, and you check and recheck just about every word. I had no problem with the family part. But he could have said he had prior commitments at two universities. Believe me, that was very, very possible. He could have said the universities’ names to give credibility.

  • Brian Walden

    Dave G, sorry I didn’t mean to be zingy. You bring up a valid point about the cult of personality that builds up around some ministers. You may be right that Rev. Warren just said what he did for promotion, but I was just trying to point out that we can’t know why he said what he did from those few sentences alone.

  • danr

    Dave G, I knew I was “wrong”, I was being snarky. I recognized quite well that you were no fan of evangelicalism in general and Warren specifically, that came through quite clearly in your response.

    In fact, I share your disdain for the personality- and marketing-driven aspects of certain elements within modern Western evangelical Christianity. I’m sorry for your bad experience, but I too have been exposed to much of evangelical Christianity, and there is much more virtue (and genuine Humility) within many individuals and churches than what you chose to describe.

    So disagree if you will with the doctrine, but it was mostly your disdainful broad-brush stereotyping of seemingly all of “modern-day Evangelicalism” that I took issue with, and still do. I’ll stop now before I (we) get spiked.

    BTW, it does seem odd that a cursory Google search turns up no other source of Warren’s denial besides this blog, including Saddleback’s own website. Further verification of its authenticity would be reassuring.

  • http://blidiot.blogspot.com/ Raider51

    Photo: That’s Rick Warren on the right.

    The guy on the left looks familiar, I wonder who he is?

    ;-P

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    Two comments:

    * Saddleback has been active in ex-gay ministry support. I was not making a joke.

    * Concerning whether this is Rick Warren. The email came from the online address he has used in the past. I have written him at that email for several years.

  • http://www.geocities.com/hohjohn John L. Hoh, Jr.

    Photo: That’s Rick Warren on the right.

    Thanks for identifying one of the two men in the photo.

    But who’s the other guy?

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    And of course, as usual, the MSM’s mistake is in the direction of promoting the liberal-left agenda. And you watch sites like MSNBC (the most virulent anti-Hillary and pro-Obama news channel in the recent Dem primary) then after the primaries they all sit around with thumbs up their noses saying how fair they had really been–even though most people who loathe Hillary were even put off by MSNBC’s blatant, twisted “news” coverage. I never thought I could feel an ounce of sympathy for her until I started watching MSNBC and saw how they were covering (badly miscovering actually) the primaries.

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  • Dave G.

    Danr,

    Didn’t figure I was being too subtle. And I don’t mean to swipe at all of modern evangelicalism. As a three year old Catholic, most of the great Christian witnesses I know are still Protestant. And my problems are mostly theological. Warren is hardly the one who invented the issues that gave me pause. Warren is to this new approach to Evangelical Christianity what the Beatles were to the counter-culture: the spark that ignited the whole explosion. The ease with which trained Evangelical leaders were willing to embrace Warren’s, well, how do I say it…his ‘it’s OK to use marketing to grow your church, no matter what you believe about the faith (which isn’t important for the discussion of Church Growth)’, was what shocked me. It hit the ‘By What Authority’ issue hard, and gave me much to think about.

    Now, having taken up space on this blog about something that this blog isn’t about, I will cease the rest of my testimony. …

  • http://www.mikehickerson.com Mike Hickerson

    I wondered the same thing, Ken. Since there is nothing on Saddleback’s website, why would Warren use a blog posting to dispute a Newsweek article as opposed to, say, issuing a proper press statement.

    I don’t know why – perhaps he didn’t want to give SoulForce even more publicity? Perhaps he didn’t want to actively alienate gay attendees? Because he’s going out of town and doesn’t have time to oversee a “proper press statement,” which would guarantee that all of his appearances for the next week or so would be dominated by questions about it? I can think of lots of reasons.

    BTW, the Newsweek article has been revised with a correction:
    http://www.newsweek.com/id/140490

    The NY Times piece has added a “Postscript” that directly contradicts Egan’s statements at the top of the page:
    http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/godless/?scp=1&sq=rick%20warren&st=cse

  • rw

    Wow…this is simply stunning journalistic irresponsibility appearing in two of the news industry’s leading organizations. Couldn’t they have confirmed with a simple phone call?

    If solid news reporting is dying, we should be hearing more of this sort of death rattle.

    On the corrections – wouldn’t it be more helpful if the editors put the corrections next to the offending paragraphs? When the setup for the whole story is flat wrong, and you don’t know until you have finished reading the entire piece, don’t you feel like the paper has just told you “Psych!…I really had you going there, didn’t I?”

  • http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com Deborah Dombrowski

    Regarding Rick Warren’s alleged comments when he said that the Soulforce press release “was 100% false.” It wasn’t Soulforce that was false: they never said he invited them – they said they were going. It was some reports such as mentioned above that said he had invited them. They assumed he had invited them.

    So when RW says Soulforce’s report was 100% false, his statement is simply not true. And this isn’t the first time RW has made untrue statements, which cover up the truth in a matter.

    Incredibly, the majority of people will believe a leader no matter what he says – and not just religious leaders either. Most people today believe anything they are told by leaders and by the media. Many societies in history have gotten themselves into trouble that way. In general, don’t believe everything you hear from leaders – search out the truth and don’t let others think for you. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

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  • Thomas

    Soulforce, a homosexual activist group known for its theatrical publicity stunts and callous disregard for the facts about conservative Christians and their attitude toward homosexuals.

    Not a shred of bias in that statement at all.

    I think Mel White knows conservative Christians and how they express their attitudes rather well.

    Not only that, but there is nothing on Soulforce’s website that indicated that this visit was by invitation. The error was the reporter’s.

  • johnb

    So when RW says Soulforce’s report was 100% false, his statement is simply not true. And this isn’t the first time RW has made untrue statements, which cover up the truth in a matter.

    So Deborah, other than your obvious dislike for Warren…..what’s really your point? What do you think he is trying to “hide”?

    Perchance Warren was responding exactly to the story as published by the blog and NY Times. Come on…..follow the story. Don’t let your hatred get in the way of the facts.

  • johnb

    Please forgive the formatting of the previous post. The quote from Deborah was at the beginning of the post and my comment was mistakenly put in as a quote.

    Ooops.

  • Reader

    Anybody visit the Soulforce website and see what they say about this? hhtp://www.soulforce.org/afo and http://www.soulforce.org/article/1341 They really promo their GAY agenda; the spin they put on going to Saddleback is very enlightening. If Saddleback is hosting Soulforce, Warren is implicated. It’s ‘his church’ after all. So what if he mouthes some words to try and mollify his ‘detractors.’ The proof is in the pudding; his actions speak louder than words.
    His is the last of 6 megachurches to host Soulforce. The state of American Christianity is appalling.

  • Dave2

    They really promo their GAY agenda

    I didn’t quite catch the fifth word of that sentence, could you make it bigger?

  • Shawne

    … We were at Saddleback this morning. Attended the services, fellowshiped with it’s members in a very calm and peaceful manner. Just as my family does every week after Sunday mass. It’s just a conversation, not a conversion tactic.

    Rick Warren was in Corona this morning and did meet with Soulforce.

    God said to love each other as he loved us. What is wrong with that? Extend the olive branch and look into your own hearts and see where the hate and fear is coming from. I would think that there must be a bigger issue there.

    All my love,

    Shawne