Hillary Gets Standing Ovation at Evangelical Church

Hillary Rodham Clinton went to a major evangelical church on the west coast this week to deliver a speech, and received a standing ovation.

When one considers the church and its Pastor, it is easy to see why the candidate would receive such an overwhelming welcome.

Saddleback Community Church is not your normal evangelical church. In fact, you would never know it is a church at all except for the name. Visitors are treated to jazz and rock music upon entering the facility, which can hardly be called a 'sanctuary.' The minister has been known to deliver his 'talks' in shorts and a tee-shirt, or his signature wild-Hawaiian shirts.

The minister in question is Rick Warren, author of the best-selling book, The Purpose-Driven Life.

Warren is the founder of the Saddleback Church, which he claims is purely an evangelical enterprise that seeks to win over the non-church crowd in California. An ordained Southern Baptist minister who graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and who claims that Fundamentalist icon W.A. Criswell, long-time Pastor of the megachurch, First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, is his spiritual hero, Warren has nonetheless discarded most of the accoutrements of the evangelical Christian culture that Southwestern and Criswell held so dear. Warren claims his only goal is to reach people who are turned off by church.

And, to that end, he has been quite successful. The church is now one of the largest in the world. And most of the 'congregants' never cared much for the churchy stuff of which American evangelical Christianity is made.

Hence, everything is informal. There are dance routines, musical groups that sing the popular music one might hear on the radio, and there are no 'sermons' but talks that are geared toward the interests of the non-church suburbanites in California.

The controversy of the church does not stop with its methods, however. For the past two years Warren has made the controversial decision to invite two of the most liberal icons in American politics to speak at his annual AIDS conference.

Last year the special guest was Barack Obama. This year it was Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Warren's hero, W.A. Criswell, surely must be turning over in his grave. Criswell was an unabashed political conservative who made no secret of supporting Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. He was also known to deliver a zinger or two aimed at liberals in his sermons if he felt they had betrayed not only the Christian faith but the ideals of the Founders of the Republic.

Warren, on the other hand, embraces these liberals, and his congregants love it, as the standing ovations exhibit.

It is not clear as to Warren's true motives, his rhetoric notwithstanding. This is an election year, and we are in the middle of a campaign. To invite Clinton to speak at this particular time has a symbolic endorsement written all over it.

In case you are wondering, I have no use for the Rick Warren methodology. The fact that he tends to wrap himself in liberal politics only further raises my suspicions as to just how 'evangelical' he and his congregation actually are.

When I go to church, I want to feel like I have been to church and not to a bar. Yes, I have tried out these so-called 'seeker-friendly' type churches that are modeled after Warren's Saddleback experiment. I departed the building thinking that the only thing lacking in the experience were the drinks and the cocktail waitresses.

Spare me the informalities, the jazz music, and the 'hip-pop' culture. I can get that at the bar.

Oh, and if I had been in attendance at Warren's Hillary-fest, I would have stood up and booed at the end.