Pastor Rick Warren has canceled his highly anticipated “Saddleback Civil Forum” with presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, citing a lack of civil discourse between the two campaigns. Warren (the best-selling author of Purpose Driven Life) will hold a forum on religious liberty instead, which may bring attention to the Obama administration’s birth control mandate less than two months before the presidential election.
“We created the civil forums to promote civility and personal respect between people with major differences,” Warren told The Orange County Register.
“The forums are meant to be a place where people of goodwill can seriously disagree on significant issues without being disagreeable or resorting to personal attack and name-calling. But that is not the climate of today’s campaign.
“I’ve never seen more irresponsible personal attacks, mean-spirited slander, and flat-out dishonest attack ads, and I don’t expect that tone to change before the election. … It would be hypocritical to pretend civility for one evening only to have the name-calling return the next day.”
Instead of a presidential civil forum, Warren’s Saddleback Church in Southern California will host a forum on religious liberty.
Government bureaucrats at the federal, state and local levels, Warren said, “are daily trying to limit that freedom, impose restrictions, and stifle expressions of faith on campuses, in hospitals, and in businesses. There are widespread attempts to redefine the First Amendment to simply mean ‘You are free to believe anything at your place of worship but you are not free to practice your conscience elsewhere.’
“The Constitution doesn’t just guarantee your freedom to worship,” Warren added, “it guarantees your freedom from government intervention in your daily living out what you believe.”
Warren did not specifically name who will speak at the forum, but said that he would have some of America’s most prominent Catholic, Jewish and Muslim leaders.
The most well-known religious freedom issue taking place currently is over the President Obama administration’s birth control mandate. Under the new health care law, employers who provide health insurance to their employees will be required to cover contraception, sterilization and some abortifacient drugs.
Due to a narrowly written religious exemption, many religious organizations that oppose some or all of those services in their religious doctrine will be required to abide by the mandate or face stiff penalties. Dozens of lawsuits over the mandate are currently in various federal courts.
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