The Notorious Rick Warren Video Transcribed

I read a lot of stuff today about the new video that Rick Warren issued through Saddleback Church, accusing bloggers of hate speech and so on. Unfortunately I couldn't get the video to work until this evening. I wanted to see for myself what he actually said. How inflammatory was he? Reading bits and pieces, I was ready to say, okay, I'm changing my mind, I am opposed to including this guy in the inauguration.

TTF treasurer Christine transcribed a bunch of the video, and I did more. I skipped a couple of irrelevant parts, in brackets. And listen, I have to run, I have a band rehearsal in a few minutes, so I will probably leave in some mistakes, misspellings, etc. I'll try to fix them later.

See what you think, this is just for the record. The video is HERE. [NOTE: As promised, the transcript was edited a few hours after it was posted, I corrected numerous spelling errors.]

[Introduction ...]

You know, I have traveled around the world a lot and you know I've learned several things about the media in the last few years. One of them is that the media never gets it one hundred percent correct. I've never seen an in-print article that has everything right, there's always something that's wrong -- why? Because we're humans. And so, you know, if you believe everything you read or hear, or see, there's a word for that: foolish. Because the media never gets it always correct. Second thing I've learned is that the media lives for conflict. Conflict is the essence of a good story. Every good movie, every good novel, is built on some kind of tension and conflict. And if you don't have conflict you don't have a story, and what I've learned is that if there's no conflict then somebody's gonna create it. The media loves to create conflict.

The problem with that is that it's creating a more and more polarized nation, and that polarization is causing people to be ruder and ruder and more and more inflamed, and I blame that on two groups. One is all the talk radio and other programs where the goal is simply to get people to yell at each other. And the other is bloggers who really need to get a life. A lot of people think that because they can sit in the quietness of their own home and hide behind the screen they can hurl all kinds of bombs at people, and get away with it. Well, no, they're just being rude.

Now what I thought I'd do in this weeks News and Views, to the members of Saddleback Church, is to talk to you about some of the questions that came in this week. And of course the first one that came up is Rick, what do you really believe about gay marriage? Cause it's been all over the map. Well, let me just lay it out for you our members, cause you know, my views have not changed in thirty years, you've heard me talk about this over and over and over.

I have been accused of equating gay partnerships with incest and pedophilia. Now of course as members of Saddleback Church you know I believe no such thing, I never have. You've never once heard me in 30 years heard me talk that way about that. Now while you know I believe the Bible teaches that God created sex exclusively for marriage between a man and a woman, that means I don't believe in premarital sex, I don't believe in adultery, I believe that man, God created sex exclusively to be a marriage connection between a man and a woman. But I've in no way ever taught that homosexuality is the same thing as a forced relationship between an adult and a child or you know between siblings, things like that. I've just never taught that in 30 years. However I understand how some people think that because of a recent BeliefNet interview. In that interview I was trying to point out that uh I don't just, I'm not opposed to gays having their partnerships, I'm opposed to gays using the term marriage for their relationships and I'm opposed to any redefinition of the definition of marriage. The marriage, the definition of marriage that has been universally accepted since the beginning of man. The definition of marriage that every religion, whether it's Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or Jew or Christian has said it's between a man and a woman.

Now in that interview I named several other relationships, in fact I've done it several times, I've named other relationships such as living together, uh or a man with multiple wives or brother sister relationship or adults with children or common law partnerships or all kinds of other relationships. I don't think any of them should be called marriage. Now I was not saying that those relationships were the same thing because I happen to not believe that and I've never taught it. I was just pointing out that I believe the definition of marriage should only be included one definition, a man and a woman for life. It's not an anti-gay view. In fact it's the view of the vast majority of the world and the vast majority of religions.

Now gay partnerships are typically between consenting adults. And while I believe that the gay view of sexuality is contrary to God's word, I do believe that God gives us a free choice, and he gives us a choice to obey his word or to disobey it. And you know what, God has given me that choice. He's given me the free will that I can choose to follow Him and His ways and His rules and His precepts or I can, I'm free to not follow them. And because of that, I believe I must give everybody else that same freedom of choice. And I am opposed to forcing people to act the way I believe that I ought to act. That's not what's its about, it's what I believe God wants me to act and it's the way I believe God wants other people to act, but God has given me the choice, and there's been times that I didn't act the way God wanted me to act. Now I believe God says I must love everybody.

You've heard me say that 1,000 times, I have to love everybody, regardless of the choice they make. In fact I am never, ever free to hate any person. In fact the Bible says love your neighbor, love your enemies, love everyone over and over and over, it's all about love. So we love everybody. Those who disagree with us, those who hate us, those who despise us, those who attack us. You know what? We love 'em. Not only God but America gives us this great freedom to make choices, and so I simply believe that while we're all free to make choices, I think gays should use another term for their consenting adult relationships and partnerships. I oppose the redefinition of the meaning of marriage. I hope that's clear.

[civil rights: no American should ever be discriminated against because of their beliefs... no church should ever be discriminated against, either ... ]

Now some people believe today that if you disagree with them, then that's hate speech, if you disagree with them you either hate 'em or you're afraid of 'em. I am neither afraid of gays, nor do I hate gays, in fact I love them. But I do disagree with some of their beliefs, and I have that constitutional right just as I would fight for their constitutional right, too. Free speech is for everybody. Now let me say that I favor anybody being able to make anybody else the beneficiary of their health or life insurance coverage. I don't see a problem with that, I mean, I think if I'm willing to pay for it, I should be able to put my mother, my father, my friend, a relative, or a total stranger on my coverage. I don't see a problem with that. If I'm willing to pay for it I should be able to put anyone on my coverage.

I also believe that nobody should ever be turned away from seeing a friend in the hospital. But I want to make a point here. Visiting rights in a hospital are a non-issue in California. I mean since 1999 California has had the strongest domestic partnership law in America. I think that's true. That grants gay couple visiting rights and all other rights, too, and you know, I probably have visited more people in the hospital than most, having been a pastor for thirty years, and I have never in my lifetime ever seen one person turned away from visiting somebody else, a friend visiting a friend. So I don't understand that one.

What I really want to talk about in this issue to you, our members, is this issue of how we must champion civility even when people are mean-spirited to us. Even when they're hateful to us, even when they disagree, but not just disagree, they slander us, they lie about us. One of my three life goals is to restore civility to civilization. You've heard me talk about this many times. Our nation is becoming more and more rude. And so as Christians, we have to stand up for two things, the good news and the common good. I'm for both of these -- I'm for the good news, I believe Jesus Christ is the answer to every one of human beings' deepest needs. I make no apology for that. He's changed my life and millions and literally billions of other people. That's the good news.

But I also believe in the common good, and I believe in America that we have democracy. I oppose theocracy, and I think that faith works best when we are in a free market society, and may the best ideas win. Today our nation is being destroyed by the demonization of differences. Just because somebody is different doesn't mean they're a demon. And as I said, I think one of the groups to blame for this most is the fact that the media often fans controversy and conflict to create a story. And we've started yelling at each other so much, nobody listens to each other any more. I disagree with a lot of people, but I don't have a right to turn them into a caricature of what they are. You know, during the political campaigns of 2008, I knew almost every one of the candidates, there were a couple that I didn't know personally. And you know what, it struck me that on both sides, both the Democrats and the Republicans sides, that the way they were being caricatured in the media and by people on either extreme were in no way representative of how those people really were. Whether it was Hillary Clinton, or whether it was Sarah Palin, neither of those women were exactly the way the caricaturization of them were. They just were not accurate. Or whether it was Barack Obama or John McCain, friends of mine, both of them, I grieved at the fact that people did not listen to the truth, they listened to characterizations.

[why did I accept Obama's invitation ... I don't agree with everything he espouses ... or McCain ...]

But the media is totally missing the story here, the story of the president-elect's selection of me. You know, the fact that an evangelical pastor believes in keeping the historic definition of marriage, that's not news. I mean, that's been not-news for hundreds of years. It's a non-story, nothing new. And the fact that the gay community would disagree with me, that's not news either. What's the real story?

The story is that a couple of different American leaders have chosen to model civility for the rest of the nation, and that Barack Obama and Rick Warren have decided to try to create a new politic that says we can disagree without being disagreeable. We can walk hand in hand without seeing eye to eye. We can have unity in our nation without uniformity. And we can have collaboration for the best of America.

Let me give you the history behind this decision. Three years ago I took a big risk for civility's sake by inviting Barack Obama to Saddleback to speak at our AIDS conference. Now I didn't invite him because of his views on abortion or his views on anything else, I invited him because he cares about helping people with HIV-AIDS. And he was willing to take a public AIDS test. As you know, I invited him to take one in public with me in front of all the national media, to show that it's no big deal, that everybody needs to be tested for AIDS, just to know your status. Studies show that when people know their status they actually tend to live safer lives. Now when that happened, I was criticized incessantly from the right, in fact it's never stopped. And they've just criticized me and criticized me for inviting, as if having him here said that I agreed with everything he agrees with. And one person said, he had Barack Obama preach in his pulpit. Well, no I didn't, first we never had a pulpit on stage, second it wasn't a worship service, wasn't a church service, it was a conference where we had invited world authorities on AIDS and doctors and specialists on the disease from around the world. But that is still going on, in fact one conservative writer who hates me for agreeing to pray for the invocation wrote me just recently, he said, you know, Rick, if you pray at the inauguration you are sticking a fork in the head of every aborted baby. No, come on, I'm doing this because I love America and it's a historic opportunity and it's an honor to be part of any inauguration of any president, and I love our country.

Now the president-elect has taken a big risk for civility's sake by inviting me to pray at his inauguration, knowing that he'd take flak from people who would disagree with me. But you know what, we're both willing to be criticized in order to try to bring America into a new day of civil discourse, and to create a new model that says you don't have to agree only with your side on everything. You reach out in the middle and try to figure out to have a way that we can make America a better place without having to agree on everything. You see, that's the story that the media is missing, it's the story of risk-taking. Not that people on both sides of the opposite poles are angry at me, or are angry at president-elect Obama, that we're friends and we admire each other even though we disagree on some things. It's the missing element of civility.

Another question that you wrote me this week, that I want to respond to in this Saddleback News and Views is you say, Rick, what about these hateful attacks? You know, when you refuse to side with either extreme, you're gonna get attacked. And the only way to not be attacked is to do nothing and say nothing and be nothing. And a lot of you have written to me this week and said, Rick, how you gonna respond to all these false accusations and attacks, outright lies and hateful slander, and really a lot of hate speech. It's what I would call "Christ-o-phobia," people who are afraid of any Christian. Well, you know how I'm gonna respond, you already know the answer. Cause we're gonna respond the same way that we have responded to every single unfair attack over thirty years. We have no intention of changing. And that is, we return good for evil. We return love for hate. We overcome evil with good. And how will we respond to these people who attack me or Saddleback, or anybody else? We will love and we will love and we will love and we will pray and we will care. And you know we're going to keep on assisting the poor, keep on caring for the sick, and keep on educating the next generation, we're going to do the peace plan, promote reconciliation, to equip [unclear] leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. We're not going to allow people to distract us from the main thing, we keep the main thing the main thing. And that is, God has never made a person he didn't love, God has never made a person Jesus didn't die for. God has never made a person that God doesn't want to know him in a personal way. And God has never made a person that he doesn't want him serving Christ and serving the Lord by meeting the needs, the practical needs of those around us.

Now I know this has been a long News and Views, so let me wrap this up by first sayinig a couple of things. I want you to know how proud I am of you. There is no church like Saddleback anywhere else in America. No church has sent more people overseas to help the poor and the sick, ever, in the history of America, than Saddleback Church. We sent over 8,000 of our members overseas in the peace plan, to 68 countries, in just the last four years.

[ ... more about Saddleback ... baptize more ... most generous ... bring a friend to Christmas services ... will release new network to help you grow spiritually, using high-tech etc. ... new magazine ... ]

This is not what I thought I was going to hear, after reading the summaries by progressive bloggers. I am curious to hear how the TTF community feels about the controversy and Rick Warren's statements, transcribed here.