Anyone who has listened to my show, read my syndicated column, or perused this blog in the past weeks knows I had been attempting to help encourage Rick Warren by showing him the merits of dis-inviting the leftist Senator from Illinois Barack Obama from speaking to his gathered faithful this coming Friday. (If you would like to express your opinion to Warren and his staff personally - 949.609.8000.)
Simultaneously Warren found himself fending off what seemed credible reports at the time from Joseph Farah at WorldNetDaily, who reported exclusively on Rick's rather bizarre endorsement of Syria (a terrorist state) as a place of moderation for Christians. Farah's reporting included a YouTube video originally posted by Warren's own staff that in fact had Warren saying THIS specifically:
"Syria's a place that has Muslims and Christians living together for 1,400 years. So it's a lot more peaceful, honestly, than a lot of other places because Christians were here first.
"In fact, you know Saul of Tarsus – Saul was a Syrian. St. Paul, on the road to Damascus, had his conversion experience and so Christians have been here the longest, and they get along with the Muslims and the Muslims get along with them. There's a lot less tension than in other places.
"It's a moderate country, and the official government rule and position is not to allow any extremism of any kind."
When Farah's report first broke, Warren began e-mailing Farah in a panicked fashion, at one point according to Farah, "nearly every hour."
Warren's staffers also yanked the incriminating YouTube video footage.
Then in an e-mail circulated to the Saddleback faithful Warren claimed that he had been misquoted by "Syrian Government press releases." And adding insult to injury Warren then claimed it was Farah who had misrepresented the facts. (He also purposefully and incorrectly refers to as a 'blogger' - in order to marginalize the far reaching impact of WorldNetDaily - which has 10 times the daily audience traffic of the largest blog in the blogosphere.)
"By the way, even though this was just a private trip, we notified our friends at the U.S. State Department in advance of our meeting with President Bashar (sic) and sought advice," he wrote. "They told us that Syria would likely offer press releases after the meeting – which they did."
Warren concluded: "Regrettably, because I praised Syria's welcoming of Christian refugees from Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon into their country, some bloggers concluded that I approved of everything Syria does. That's nonsense! Syria needs many reforms, but in terms of religious freedom, they are ahead of places like Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, and many others."
Warren made no apologies for putting himself in a position to be used by the police state. But he did say: "I also know that anyone who speaks publicly all the time, is bound to say something dumb every now and then. So I ask for your patience and forgiveness in advance because I’m sure it will happen! Every day I'm amazed that God uses someone as flawed as I am. You should be too. Just don't believe everything you read by bloggers or hear in the media."
That set up a "his word" vs. "his word" scenario that Warren now felt confident to win given that his staff had removed the proof as cited by Farah from YouTube. So confident in fact that he issued another statement to the Saddleback faithful over the weekend. And again he invoked the "Syrian press release" line as to the substance of the actual facts...
Recently, 4 "bloggers" made accusations about my visit to Syria (between speaking in Germany and Rwanda). They based their accusations on a Syrian state press release! Of course, they had no idea what my motivation was, what I actually did and said, and the confidential results. But they attacked me anyway. Not a single newspaper carried the story, but several websites repeated the gossip without talking to me to get the facts. Most sites were already critical of The Purpose Driven Church and Life, and were just happy to have something else to attack.
The only problem now facing Rick Warren is that the proof has resurfaced, and this time he cannot control the spread of it as now multiple copies now exist. Now you can hear with your own ears the exact quote as transcribed at the top of this post - in Warren's own voice - AND NOT from a Syrian press release.
And the ONLY CONCLUSION that most people can draw - is that Rick Warren told an outright lie, then denied it twice - thus making him a serial liar on this one matter alone. (In his mind it might not be that big a deal given that he 'asked for forgiveness in advance'.)
Rick Warren owes an apology to his congregation, he owes an apology to Joseph Farah and WorldNetDaily, and most importantly he owes an apology to the Christian communities in Syria and by proxy in Lebanon - where last week as Warren was covering his tail, trying to destroy evidence - the Syrians were murdering a prominent Christian leader.