This was posted on RedState. Worth reading.
The text of the letter, written by Redstate Contributor Hunter Baker, is below:
Dear Pastor Warren,
I am writing to you to express concern about something that may get lost when you host the candidate forum with John McCain and Barack Obama at Saddleback Valley Community Church which is likely to receive national attention. The decision to address you on this question in an open letter comes with some trepidation, but I have attempted to reach you through your media agency, the church email, and your personal email with no effect. I hope this message in a public forum will come to your attention instead of sitting unread in a pile of fan mail and requests for favors.
You see, I understand and appreciate who you are and what you’ve done. You are one of the most widely known pastors in the nation and have written one of the best-selling non-fiction books of the past several decades. I have many times walked into friends’ homes and have seen The Purpose-Driven Life sitting on coffee tables or bookshelves. When Time named you one of the most influential evangelicals in America, I agreed and applauded the selection.
During this period of well-deserved fame, you have been a good steward of the blessings God has provided. You gave away 90% of your massive royalties and repaid your church for years of salary. Instead of following the sometimes frivolous paths of other celebrity pastors, you focused in on the suffering of AIDS victims in Africa. You and your wife Kay have been outstanding role models. You have avoided making intemperate statements. Neither have you become some kind of caricature of the pastor in politics, ready to drop anything for a talking-heads appearance anywhere, anytime.
In your news release about the candidate forum, you suggest that you will avoid “gotcha” questions. The topics highlighted in the release are poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate and human rights with a special emphasis on character and leadership rather than programmatic details.
There is much to be said for rising above partisan politics. After all, the church is on a mission from God to all the earth. It is emphatically not intended to be a tool for either one of the political parties. We are after bigger game than a balanced budget, the right kind of welfare state, or term limits. We seek redemption for a world we believe has lost its way.
However, there are certain issues that demand the church’s involvement, issues of basic justice, issues of life and death. Perhaps the least ambiguous of those issues is the protection of babies throughout pregnancy and immediately after birth. We live in a culture that, strangely, acts as though unborn children are like genies that can be stuffed back into the bottle. We know that isn’t true. We know that abortions end with little piles of bloody flesh and bone. Fetuses don’t merely cease to exist. They experience violent physical death.
There are many doctrinal issues that divide Christians, but the protection of young life should not be one of them. Pastor Warren, as Protestants, we are part of a tradition that loves to point to the early church — the young church so pure in our estimation — still uncorrupted by the power of empire. That church, that persecuted church, was a tireless defender of life. Early Christians counseled against abortion and actively rescued infants exposed to the predators and the wild by Roman parents who vested few rights in human beings shortly after birth. A child of the wrong sex or one who looked weak could be abandoned. How strange it is that today a candidate claiming to be a Christian could oppose the Born Alive Infants Protection Act or a ban on partial birth abortion! To do so is to disclaim not only a major part of Christian teaching, but also a cultural advance in favor of protecting the weak and innocent.
Pastor, you know both John McCain and Barack Obama. You know where they stand on the protection of innocent human life. While it is a fine thing to allow both men to expound upon their experience, their leadership ability, and their attitudes toward challenges of the future like AIDS or climate change, I submit that you would do a disservice to your congregation and to the church at large if you host both candidates and ignore the issue that divides them more clearly than almost any other. Barack Obama has indicated a willingness to change his position on a number of issues, including drilling for oil, the way the Iraq war is conducted, and the proper understanding of gun ownership rights. But his position with regard to abortion rights is positively adamantine. Abortion on demand is non-negotiable. McCain, on the other hand, has consistently voted against a broad abortion license.
Some would respond to me, though I doubt you would, that I am emphasizing one issue unfairly. My answer is that this issue is basic. If the year were 1958, instead of 2008, do you think it would be right to host such a forum and ignore segregation, knowing one candidate was ardently in favor of the separation of the races? You and I both know that it would be wrong to gloss over a glaring breach of that kind. We both know many in the church were wrong in just that way. (It is a terrible irony of history that Mr. Obama now stands with those who favor the persistent removal of an entire class of human beings from legal protection through legal fiat. How I wish it were not so.)
My hope is that you will make no promise to leave the foundational issue of the sanctity of life untouched in this forum. If the lack of that promise means the forum may not take place, then I suggest it would be better to cancel it.
With respect,
Hunter Baker
Obama, contrary to his statements about not being a typical politician, is a cold an calculating politician who will do whatever he has to do to hide decisions from the public scrutiny. Read excerpts from Jill Stanek’s personal experience with Barack Obama.
We (I was part of the endeavor) expected Choose Life had been sent to Obama to kill. Obama was well-known as a liberal’s liberal. Just before the hearing, ABC News reported Obama considered Choose Life “contentious.”
Obama was only echoing Illinois pro-abortion groups. According to news accounts, NARAL’s legal director labeled Choose Life “aggressive propaganda,” and the vice president of the Illinois National Organization for Women called it “a violation of free speech.”
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There was standing room only inside the hearing, and one could barely get through the crowd milling outside in the hall.
Obama opened the hearing and proceeded to call his own bills and those of friends. An hour passed. I grew impatient and embarrassed at Obama’s disrespect of the Willises.
Then, abruptly, Obama surprised everyone by canceling the hearing early to attend a Democrat caucus, he said.
Obama apologized to those he said had traveled long distances to testify, i.e., the Willises, but the meeting would have to reconvene the next day.
Obama knew exactly what he was doing. He knew Chicago reporters would not spend the night, nor would the crowd. He didn’t want cameras around to sympathize with the Willises and badger him about the demise of Choose Life at his hand.
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Obama’s fanatical support of abortion extends not only to opposing legislation to save abortion survivors but also to opposing legislation to help mothers and families in need cover adoption expenses.
It makes sense that Obama doesn’t want anyone to choose life. In the video below he explains why he wouldn’t want to punish his daughter with a baby.
In what is becoming more and more frequent, people are being arrested for exercising their free speech rights to protest. This time Pro-Lifers were arrested in Maryland while peacefully demonstrating that abortion is murder. It is becoming clear that our morality has decayed to where truth is now regulated speech and murder of the unborn is accepted and protected.
Eighteen pro-lifers participating in the MD Face the Truth Tour were arrested without warning by Hartford County State Troopers in the city of Bel Air, MD on… August 1…. It was during the last tour stop of the week-long event, sponsored by Defend Life when a State Trooper named Bradley approached the group and told them to move and put away their signs or they would be arrested. In an effort to comply, group leader Jack Ames gathered the group and moved down the road, into the city limits of Bel Air…. The group stood peacefully on public property and did not “march” into the street as one news organization erroneously reported. Without warning, an estimated 20 patrol cars arrived on the scene and began arresting pro-life participants without a word. Those arrested were not told what they were being charged with, nor were they read their rights. One of the women who participated in the tour overheard a police radio conversation where an unknown person told the troopers to make the arrests and that they would “figure out later” what charges would be filed…. Two minors in the group were soon released, but the adults were held overnight…. The last of the pro-lifers were released… August 2, at about 10:45 AM. The group was eventually charged with loitering, failure to obey a lawful order, and disorderly conduct.
Here’s my letter to them back in June.
Dear Sir(s);
This is very, very wrong and until the Hilton Hotels cleans up their act, we are choosing to seek other accommodations when traveling. Not because an action group is against it, but because it happened to us, your long time customer!
I have always sought out finding a Hampton Inn when traveling around the country. I have always had good service and a pleasant stay at your hotels. I have since realized that Hampton Inns are owned by Hilton Hotels, but not before I made two reservations for this month. (I had heard that problems like mine have happened before in Hilton Hotels.) This weekend I stayed for my first reservation in Naperville, IL. If I wasn’t in charge of my elderly Mother in an enjoining room, and that are blocked off for my niece’s wedding, I would cancel my upcoming reservations. Here’s why.
While relaxing in our room after a long conference, we were flipping through channels on TV. With my children watching, I came to a channel that had the full width and length of the screen, a woman’s torso. She was naked. From the glimpse that we got before the TV permanently went off for the rest of our stay, this was not a fuzzy scene or shot from a movie. It was a blatant shot in an X-rated adult show or program. I do not know if it was on HBO or another type of channel like that, though.
I know that you have gotten emails before about this kind of content being shown in your hotels, but this was very personal to me. My wish is for you not to have this programming at all offered in your “family” hotels but I realize that you feel you are providing a service for those who want it. Here is my dilemma, why is the programming tuned into those programs per entering the room? If you KNOW that a channel has a propensity for having these kinds of adult programs, then you should make it available only for those who request it at the desk. I don’t understand how a quest has to get a special code at the desk to have internet access, but they are free to watch pornographic sites on your TVs!
I am still waiting for a response back from them and you can see what the date is.
As I said, I had to stay at a Hampton Inn for a wedding. I asked them to turn off the pornographic channel and they said that they couldn’t. It was HBO and they couldn’t turn off that channel. So we elected to keep it off. We haven’t stayed at one since or any other Hilton affiliate.
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