Rick Warren is an intelligent, thinking moderate who has even been known to change his mind from time to time. He is among those who are trying to lead the Evangelicals out of the wilderness where Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, et al have taken them into positions where they're actually beginning to worry about issues most of us share - caring for the earth, caring for each other, i.e. alleviating poverty and providing health care, and actually giving a damn about people who might be different from themselves.

Many of these people have a long way to travel to move even to a place where the sky is the same color as it is in our world, but Warren seems interested in helping them find their way to what even those on the far left will see as a better place. We're all going to have a very challenging time restoring our planet, our nation and ourselves to health in the next few decades (if you don't expect things to get a good deal worse before they get better, you don't know what's going on).

We may not agree with these folks on many important issues, but if Warren can help them decide to join us in saving each other and the planet, he will be a very important ally. If we tell these folks to go to hell over one issue, even an issue as important as our own marriages we'll be proving we're not much different front them.

So which would you rather have... we stand on opposite sides of the few issues we disagree about and scream at each other while the whole world goes to hell, or we work together with them to deal with what's coming and, in the process, come to know them as they come to know us and find that we've got too much in common to keep being afraid of each other.

Another way to look at this is that, while some of us are still, quite understandably, looking at yesterday and the losses and pain we've suffered, Obama is looking at the future, seeing where we need to go, and doing whatever's in his power to build the bridges necessary to be sure we start moving together in the needed directions before it's too late.

Rick Warren is an intelligent, thinking moderate who has even been known to change his mind from time to time. He is among those who are trying to lead the Evangelicals out of the wilderness where Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, et al have taken them into positions where they're actually beginning to worry about issues most of us share - caring for the earth, caring for each other, i.e. alleviating poverty and providing health care, and actually giving a damn about people who might be different from themselves.

Many of these people have a long way to travel to move even to a place where the sky is the same color as it is in our world, but Warren seems interested in helping them find their way to what even those on the far left will see as a better place. We're all going to have a very challenging time restoring our planet, our nation and ourselves to health in the next few decades (if you don't expect things to get a good deal worse before they get better, you don't know what's going on).

We may not agree with these folks on many important issues, but if Warren can help them decide to join us in saving each other and the planet, he will be a very important ally. If we tell these folks to go to hell over one issue, even an issue as important as our own marriages we'll be proving we're not much different front them.

So which would you rather have... we stand on opposite sides of the few issues we disagree about and scream at each other while the whole world goes to hell, or we work together with them to deal with what's coming and, in the process, come to know them as they come to know us and find that we've got too much in common to keep being afraid of each other.

Another way to look at this is that, while some of us are still, quite understandably, looking at yesterday and the losses and pain we've suffered, Obama is looking at the future, seeing where we need to go, and doing whatever's in his power to build the bridges necessary to be sure we start moving together in the needed directions before it's too late.

The reason why Mr. Barber and his colleagues engage in such outrageous writing, whether by conscious or unconscious motivations (we can't be sure), is to help themselves ignore and prevent the rest of us from noticing the glaring reality of the Biblical Gospels. To discover their true nature, all you need to do is examine every conflict between the Biblical Jesus and his enemies: the chief priests, scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, between Jesus and the leaders of First Century Judaism in Jerusalem (though not between Jesus and the common people who were clearly on his side). In each and every conflict, Mr. Barber and those who support and agree with him come down clearly, undeniably, absolutely on the side of Jesus' enemies. They are, without a doubt, the chief priests, scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees reborn in a new day to try to stamp out the ideas and ideals brought into the world by the "Wonderful Counselor,... [the] Prince of Peace." Baal has nothing to do with it. Just ask Elijah.