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November 18, 2006

Rick Warren's Syrian Trip Upsets Christians

Pastor Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life," met this week with Syria's Grand Mufti Sheikh Badr al-Din Hassoun and told him that 80 percent of Americans reject what President Bush is doing in Iraq and consider America's policies and actions in the Middle East to be wrong. He also praised Syria for creating a society in which Christians and Muslims could live together peacefully. His statements particularly upset Joseph Farrah.

… Rick Warren has traveled to and provided legitimacy to a hostile foreign government, presided over by a brutal fascist dictator who hates Jews, threatens Israel, subverts neighboring Lebanon, imprisons and terrorizes its own citizens and even kills them in massive numbers when they stand up in revolt – now I have to denounce this impostor in the strongest terms possible. It is my biblical mandate to do so.

Other Christians may be holding back, waiting to hear Rick Warren's explanation for his behavior in Syria. Some are cautiously suggesting that accounts of his activities there may have been distorted by the controlled press. Some want to give him the benefit of any doubt.

I'm going to give it to you straight: Rick Warren had no business traveling to Syria and being used for propaganda purposes by Bashar Assad, the terrorist-supporting president.

There are only two possibilities to explain what happened:

He made the outrageous statements attributed to him by the Syrians, for which he should be ostracized – maybe even tried for treason, in my opinion.

He didn't make the statements, or was misquoted – in which case he has placed himself in the predictable position of being a "useful idiot" for the Islamofascist regime in Damascus.

Take your pick. Neither option is very attractive.

As one Christian website notes:

Protocol governing the travel of American citizens overseas dictates that they visit foreign leaders only with State Department approval, they do not meet with leaders of countries hostile to the United States, and they do not say anything which will contradict official American government policy. Rick Warren has just violated all these firm and fixed policies.

Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral also visited with the Grand Mufti of Syria back in 1999. Like Warren, he came back with a message of religious inclusiveness – or what some Christians fear is the beginnings of a one-world religion. Schuller's words sound amazingly similar to the religious unification dreams of the Reverent Sun Myung Moon (only without that wacky self-proclaimed messiah as the center of it all):

I met once more with the Grand Mufti, truly one of the great Christ-honoring leaders of faith.... I'm dreaming a bold impossible dream: that positive-thinking believers in God will rise above the illusions that our sectarian religions have imposed on the world, and that leaders of the major faiths will rise above doctrinal idiosyncrasies, choosing not to focus on disagreements, but rather to transcend divisive dogmas to work together to bring peace and prosperity and hope to the world.

It all sounds great, but as just about anyone who has ever truly believed in any religion knows, the notion of compromising one's beliefs in order to accommodate members of another faith is unthinkable. So it is no surprise that Christians are responding quite negatively to Warren's comments about a unified religion, even going so far as to suggest he is a traitor.

While we're on that topic, I do feel that the reports of Warren's statements in Syria call for an investigation. Even though I respect the right of any American citizen to speak out against the policies of our President and government while on American soil, I would never condone such talk on foreign soil, particularly when it could be used by foreign governments as anti-American propaganda. If Warren did go to Syria and talk down our government, I don't think that is something to be treated lightly.

Posted by Becky at November 18, 2006 12:14 PM