Choose ye this day: will it be the bible or coolness?

Al Mohler comments on The High Cost of Being (and Staying) Cool — Rick Warren in a Whirlwind.  The outraged pro-same-sex marriage crowd is screaming and throwing a hissy fit, comparing him to all sorts of unsavory people.

Here is the deep irony — Rick Warren has devoted enormous energy toward the goal of defusing the culture war and creating common ground. He has attracted the criticism of many conservative evangelicals who have been concerned about how these efforts have been positioned and for what often appears as comments at their expense. At times, Warren has even had to issue clarifications in order to make his generalized statements more specific. If the President-elect wanted to choose a figure recognized as an evangelical in the public eye, but sympathetic to much of his stated agenda to unite, he could scarcely have chosen a more recognizable figure than Rick Warren.

But now many of Obama’s own supporters attack Rick Warren as if he is a hate-driven homophobe, which he clearly is not. All that was necessary to bring on this opposition is Warren’s opposition to same-sex marriage and his support for Proposition 8. Now, he is grouped along with the most strident and careless apostles of hatred.

It’s a lot like John McCain, media darling… until he tried to run for President, and he suddenly morphed into a member of the Far Right without changing a single viewpoint.  That’s the trouble with trying to build unity at the expense of core principles.  Which, in fairness, I don’t know if Warren has.  He might be completely sincere in his stances, although just as completely misguided.  He has made some phenomenal errors in judgment, such as his signature on ‘A Common Word,” in which he and other Christian leaders essentially renounced their faith and asked forgiveness of Allah.

Between Rick Warren, with his involvement of his church in politics – entirely different from an individual Christian’s involvement, he’s doing it on the corporate level – and Joel Osteen, with his wishy-washy theology and his focus on having your “best life now” instead of having your “eternal life later,” I think the American Christian church is in a fight for its life.