Saddleback civil forum called off due to candidates' lack of civility

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Baptists Standard:

 

Bob Allen

August 23, 2012

 

 

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (ABP)—Saddleback Church pastor and Purpose-Driven Life author Rick Warren announced Aug. 22 that a civil forum planned with President Obama and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has been canceled. Warren, who held a similar event in 2008 featuring then-candidate Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, said he pulled the plug this year because he believes discourse between the two campaigns has become so uncivil that a polite exchange for two hours would seem hypocritical.

 

"The forums are meant to be a place where people of goodwill can seriously disagree on significant issues without being disagreeable or resorting to personal attack and name-calling, but that is not the climate of today's campaign.” Warren said, according to the Orange County Register. “I've never seen more irresponsible personal attacks, mean-spirited slander, and flat-out dishonest attack ads, and I don't expect that tone to change before the election.”

 

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“I have invited the leading Catholic voice in America, the leading Jewish voice in America, and the leading Muslim voice in America to join me,” Warren said in an interview with the Register. “We obviously have different beliefs, but we are all ‘neighbors’ in the national sense and the scriptures command us to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”

 

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[Valin]

Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Campaign

Jeremy Lott

August 23, 2012

 

Don’t let Rick Warren’s diplomatic words give you the wrong idea. He didn’t cancel his planned Saddleback presidential forum — a reprisal of the of the Obama-McCain forum four years ago — because he was fed up with the “irresponsible personal attacks, mean-spirited slander, and flat-out dishonest attack ads” of both parties.

 

No, Warren the megabestselling megachurch leader threw in his moderator towel because intends to take sides in this election. As he explained to the Orange County Register, his paramount concern is the “crumbling of our constitution’s first guaranteed freedom: the freedom of religion.”

 

This, the Southern Baptist minister explained, is a much broader freedom than simply the “freedom to worship.” It entails “freedom from government intervention in you daily living out what you believe.” And it is under unprecedented threat as “government bureaucrats are daily trying to limit that freedom, impose restrictions, and stifle expressions of faith on campuses, in hospitals, and in businesses.”

 

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