Word: saddleback
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...comedy and fighting lions. Christians aren't funny because they tend to be literal-minded. Also because they're sad about having had sex with only one person. So when Kevin Roose, author of the excellent new book The Unlikely Disciple, told me that Rick Warren's giant Saddleback Church has its own improv group, for the first time in my life, I felt my calling. I may not be the Woody Allen or Jon Stewart of the secular world, but in the land of the unfunny Christian, the one-joked Jew is king. (See pictures of John...
Afterward, lots of supernice Christian people complimented my Christian-bashing jokes, including Tony Guerrero, Saddleback's director of creative arts, who also throws a jazz and Shakespeare festival at the church. I asked him what exactly the point of all this was, and he said, "If you look back in history, most of the arts were done for the church. All the music of Bach and Mozart was written for the church. We'd like it to be a hub for the arts again." Even back in the Renaissance, for every Michelangelo, there were probably five guys on a stage...
...summer of 1995, I was interviewing a woman who was a member of Saddleback Church in California. It was dark and we were sitting outside in a circle of light under a lamppost while she talked to me about her faith. The moment itself is hard to describe. It's as if someone stood on the edge of the circle and was breathing on us. A warm, moist air surrounded us. She was mid-sentence and stopped talking. It was a moment like I hadn't felt before - or since. There was the presence of something else that was spiritual...
...mystery. The Southern Baptist has built his Purpose Driven empire with hard work, a knack for inspirational and anodyne messages and, until recently, an ability to publicly distance himself from the kind of controversial politics that have defined other Evangelical leaders, like James Dobson and Pat Robertson. He built Saddleback Church in Southern California from nothing into a congregation of 22,000 members. His first book, The Purpose Driven Life, is the best-selling hardcover in U.S. history, according to Publishers Weekly. And he was the religious leader both presidential candidates trusted to interview them on national television during last...
...Helped engineer Obama's participation in Rick Warren's Presidential Forum during the campaign, as well as the decision to tap the Saddleback church pastor for Obama's Inaugural invocation. The choice of Warren, who has espoused controversial views on topics ranging from gay marriage to political assassination, was maligned by many Democrats...