Re: [Marxism] Juan Cole: a liberal patriot on a day with Warren's evolution toward liberalism

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Juan Cole wrote:
>Warren, in short, is a representative of the turn of some evangelicals to a
>social gospel. Since evangelicalism is a global movement and very interested
>in mission, his social gospel not surprisingly becomes a global social
>gospel. He is active in South Africa, Rwanda and more recently Uganda.


Poor Juan Cole. He doesn't seem to recognize missionary imperialism 
when it is staring him in the face. I might have expected more from 
Fred Feldman, who was in the Trotskyist movement for 43 years, but I 
imagine that he will explain this away as what might be expected from 
a "liberal, imperialist" president.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1809833,00.html
Tuesday, May. 27, 2008
Rick Warren Goes Global
By David Van Biema

Already established as perhaps the most important voice in 
contemporary American Evangelical Christianity, Rick Warren last week 
pressed the button that he hopes will take his "brand" to the ends of 
the earth. Almost offhandedly at the conclusion of a three-day 
meeting of 1,700 pastors that Warren later told TIME was "the most 
important conference of my life," the author of the Purpose Driven 
Life threw open participation in his PEACE coalition to the wider 
Evangelical community. It was the Evangelical equivalent of a 
long-awaited IPO of a tech start-up whose brand the cognoscenti have 
predicted will become a global juggernaut: The PEACE coalition is a 
plan of epic ambition, to turn at least half of the world's tens of 
millions of Christian churches into a giant "network of networks" 
dedicated to relieving the poverty and misery of the developing world.

Over the last four years, Warren has "beta-tested" his plan by 
sending almost 8,000 members of his own 22,000-member Saddleback 
Church congregation, and an undetermined number from 12 other 
congregations, to work in 68 nations. The flagship project has been 
in Rwanda, whose President, Paul Kagame, has declared his intention 
to make his country the world's first "Purpose-Driven Nation."

If last week's conference increases the number of participant 
congregations in the PEACE plan from 12 to 1,200 ? a reasonable 
estimate, given that 1,700 pastors were in attendance and many 
actually head networks of congregations ? then the number of PEACE 
missionaries would jump from roughly 2,000 a year to 200,000, 
vaulting the network to the forefront of the missionary field. Nor 
has Warren confined his invitation to those pastors in attendance. He 
is sending DVDs to the 30,000 churches that have participated in his 
rigorous "40 Days of Purpose" programs. And it was streamed from his 
website in hopes of capturing some of the half-million church leaders 
Warren and his team claim to have trained in his theological and 
organizational tenets over the last quarter-century. Even if only a 
fraction of those sign on, the resources at the disposal of the PEACE 
plan will continue to mushroom.

Despite being offered few details of the plan, the response of the 
pastors was enthusiastic. Not that it surprised Warren. "These are 
people who have been with me for a long time," he told TIME. "I knew 
they were already on board. It wasn't like they had come here to hear 
me persuade them to start. I was giving permission for them to 
start." His plan also carries an impressive sheaf of endorsements: 
from Billy Graham ("the greatest, most comprehensive and most 
biblical vision for world missions I've ever heard or read about."), 
President George W. and First Lady Laura Bush ("This is a miracle 
brought into being by love of God and neighbor"), John McCain and Bono.

Warren is particularly excited by the hands-on involvement of some of 
the larger players in the Evangelical community. "A guy was going, 
'I'll take Mozambique,' and another guy was going 'I'll take 
Nigeria,' " he said happily, adding that he's already secured 
personal commitments from influential leaders in the Salvation Army 
and the Assemblies of God (the largest Pentecostal denomination.) 
"They've said, they're in, and they have to get their boards along," 
he reported.

There was a peculiar offhandedness to the way Warren invited the 
conference, at the very end of the proceedings, to join his coalition 
? an approach that may reflect concern about getting drawn too deeply 
into the specifics of a plan that promises to be extremely 
complicated and possibly controversial. The PEACE program is an 
attempt to radically re-engineer Evangelicalism's huge missionary 
culture, connecting individual churches in the U.S. to congregations 
in target countries rather than funneling aid and evangelism through 
agencies that send trained professionals into the field. One of the 
coalition's theoretical benefits would be efficiency; another would 
be reach, since tiny churches exist in places that even the most 
dedicated missionary professionals don't get to. Originally, Warren 
was aggressive in his critique of the big missionary agencies ? but 
more recently, it has seemed likely that he will cooperate with them.

Warren seems intent on tamping down expectations of speedy results 
from his ambitious project ? a desire that runs somewhat counter to 
his inborn salesman's instinct. "This plan could take 50 years, so it 
might not be completed in my lifetime," he said at one point. "That's 
why I call the next generation the reformation generation."

Still, Warren has passed the point of no return. Until now, he could 
easily have pulled the plug on the PEACE coalition. Now, that would 
mean hauling back people like Ray Hammond, youth minister for the 
Brockport Free Methodist Church in Brockport, N.Y., who signed up 
along with his senior pastor and three other colleagues. "We're 
taking this home to our people," exulted Hammond, "and saying, 'We've 
got to get more involved in the mission of what God's doing in this 
world.' To be part of getting churches connected to each other 
globally, and not just sending professionals out, but each one of us 
having a part in the mission of God, to the ends of the earth. That's huge." 


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu