I was so busy with my paper on Hagar that I missed this story:
Megachurch Pastor Rick Warren is adamantly denying he praised Syria on his recent trip, which he describes as a favor to his Muslim next-door neighbor.There was a video posted to YouTube and then removed of him saying something positive about Syria:
Warren, author of the best-selling "The Purpose-Driven Life," visited Syria this week and was quoted by official Syrian news agencies as saying the U.S. should have been holding dialogues with Damascus, that Syrian Muslims and Christians co-exist peacefully and the Syrian leadership is responsible for the nation's tolerance and stability.
However, in a video posted on YouTube but removed today, titled "Building Bridges," Warren is shown walking down a Damascus street commenting on political and social life in Syria, saying Christians and Muslims get along with each other.He is reported to have said the following according to the "official Syrian news agency:"
"It's a moderate country, and the official government role and postion is to not allow any extremism of any kind," Warren says.
* "Pastor Warren hailed the religious coexistence, tolerance and stability that the Syrian society is enjoying due to the wise leadership of President al-Assad, asserting that he will convey the true image about Syria to the American people."But Warren wrote the following to his congregation:
* "Syria wants peace, and Muslims and Christians live in this country jointly and peacefully since more than a thousand years, and this is not new for Syria."
* Warren told Syria's Islamic grand mufti there could be no peace in the region without Syria and 80 percent of Americans reject the U.S. administration's policies and actions in Iraq.
"Why Syria? The simple truth is that I was invited by my neighbor! We were talking over his backyard fence a couple months ago when my Muslim neighbor, Yassar, said, "Rick, you visit so many countries, I want to show you mine." I was touched by this invitation from my friend and promised, "The next time I'm traveling that direction, I'll visit your home with you." It was a favor for a friend, not a political statement.He probably said something positive that got twisted by the Syrians but it looks suspicious now that the video has been removed by the user from YouTube.
"When we got to Syria, our first event was a home cooked meal with 20 of Yassar's family," he wrote. "Then he showed us many of the sacred Christian sites in Syria: the road to Damascus where St Paul was converted, Straight street where the Holy Spirit led Paul, the house where Ananias prayed for his healing, (2,000 years old!), the wall where Paul was let down in a basket to escape the Romans, the tomb of John the Baptist, and the oldest Christian church building in existence (AD 315)."
Warren went on to explain that every Christian he met expressed gratitude to the government for protecting their right to worship.
"Next, my neighbor arranged for me to meet many of the key Christian leaders of Syria, including the Presbyterian pastor who leads the coalition of Evangelical Churches of Syria, the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church, the patriarch of the Catholic Church, and the pastor of the oldest church in the world," he continued. "You may be surprised to know that Christianity is legal in Syria, that the government provides free electricity and water to all churches, allows pastors to buy a car tax-free (a tax break not given to Imams), appoints pastors as Christian judges to handle Christian cases, and allowed Christians to create their own civil law instead of having to follow the laws for Muslims. One city we visited, Malula, is two-thirds Christian. Every Christian I met with expressed gratitude to the government for protecting their right to worship. Honestly, that shocked me."
Warren explained how his meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad came about.
"Then my neighbor invited me to meet the president since I often meet presidents of countries we visit," he explained. "I had talked to Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse who has had years of experience with Lebanon and Syria and asked him what to say. Franklin told me, 'Thank the Syrian president for protecting the freedom of Christians and Jews to worship there.' After what I had seen in the churches I’d visited, I did just that."
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