Word: saddleback
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...bill's loudest supporters is a charismatic pastor, Martin Ssempa, who heads a Ugandan campus AIDS eradication organization that is funded in part by the U.S. and who was associated with the global outreach of Southern California's Saddleback Church, run by Rick Warren, author of best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life. Ssempa has a penchant for burning condoms. In 2007, he organized a rally against homosexuality to protest "homosexual agents and activists" who were "infiltrating Uganda." Asked how the anti-homosexuality bill might affect the fight against HIV and AIDS, Ssempa seemed bemused. "I don't see what...
...Rick Warren's prized achievements over the past few years has been his outreach to Africa. The influential pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California, author of best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life, has become an influential voice in several countries on the continent, including Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. But that prominence has recently drawn him into controversy. When the Ugandan legislature began considering a draconian anti-homosexuality bill - which in one version would have punished "aggravated homosexuality" with death or life imprisonment - Warren was castigated for not denouncing the proposed law, especially when one of its most public...
...audience, cheering Bahati and Langa on, sat Pastor Martin Ssempa, a popular and politically well-connected preacher who has been at the forefront of the anti-gay movement in the country. Until October, he was associated with the enormously influential Saddleback Church run by Pastor Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose Driven Life. Controversy over the anti-gay bill, however, led Warren, who has a large East African network of connections, to sever ties with Ssempa. Ssempa, who has told reporters of a secret group of witches who live beneath Lake Victoria, has a rapt student following...
...Joel Stein wheedled an invitation to participate in an event at a mosque, Jewish temple or Hindu shrine and produced a column similar to the one he wrote about Saddleback Church, he would probably lose his job [July 27]. So why is it O.K. to generalize one small event at one church on one night into an indictment of Christians, especially Evangelicals? In America, we have freedom not only of religion but also of taste and style and, yes, even humor. But what can possibly make Stein's humor superior to anybody else's? There have always been scoffers...
...while Saddleback gets criticized for being plush - with its on-campus sand volleyball courts, skateboard park and concert theater - and straying from its central missions of proselytizing and charity, I think it's great that the congregation is branching out. I want there to be more kinds of comedy and music and art. I'm just glad I'm not one of the poor Evangelicals who let themselves see only Christian versions of those things. Because I can't be there every month to save the show...