Rick Warren’s Clout

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“Just how powerful is Rick
Warren? Ask the IRS. When they tried to collect back taxes from
the pastor, Warren used his mega-clout to campaign against them
— and won. With the help of Congress, that is, which stepped in
to preempt a court ruling on the Cold War law Warren appears to
have twisted to his advantage.

Jon Weiner reports. This small piece is in many ways the
most revealing article we’ve read on Warren — and church and
state — in awhile. That it’s published in the left-liberal
Nation shouldn’t dissuade more conservative readers from
considering the facts.” —The Revealer.org

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This item
above comes from
The
Revealer.org, a website associated with Jeffrey Sharlett, who
authored

The Family: The Secret
Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which
detailed his experiences and research into the secretive

Washington Fellowship, which has been a hub of international
church/state/marketplace (3-legged
stool) activities for many decades.[1]

The link takes the reader to a newly published article in

The Nation by Jon Wiener
entitled
“Rick Warren’s Clout”
(1/15/09) which reminds readers of a
series of controversial activities involving Rick Warren and the IRS
back in the late 1990s that ended up in court, culminating in an
unusual act of Congress. Weiner is bringing this matter up again now
because of Rick Warren’s scheduled appearance delivering the
invocation at the inauguration.

For readers unfamiliar with this case, Weiner reviews the scenario.
The full article is a

MUST READ. Warren was challenged by the IRS for claiming an
extraordinarily high exemption for his housing, and in May of 2000
he won in court. Weiner wrote: “The IRS appealed, and since Warren
lives in California, the case went to the US Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit, known for its liberal judges.” But what
transpired next is quite interesting:

“But before the three-judge panel could rule, either on the IRS
effort to collect back taxes from Warren or on Chemerinsky’s
broader argument for declaring the entire exemption
unconstitutional, Congress stepped in — and acted with ‘almost
miraculous’ speed, as Richard Hammar, editor of the Church Law & Tax Report
newsletter, explained to the New York Times. The new law granted Warren his
deductions (along with any other clergy who had done the
same — although Warren was the only one to end up in court).
Congress also put into law, from that time forward, the IRS’s ‘fair rental value’ rule.”

This congressional act is “very rare” according to an expert
quoted in the article. Not only that, but, “The Clergy Housing
Allowance Clarification Act of 2002 was approved unanimously by
Congress, then signed into law by George W. Bush on May 20, 2002,
rendering the IRS case against Warren moot.”

The author ponders the significance of
both the political Left and
the political Right in Congress siding unanimously with Warren. He
finds “Obama’s invitation to Warren is dismaying, but this history
may make it more comprehensible.”

It is not so incomprehensible. There is so much more to the history
of the rise of the political Right and Left in evangelicaldom than
meets the eye. This is probably why Jeffrey Sharlet linked to
Weiner’s article yesterday. Sharlet in his book

The Family chronicles
how the Left and Right have worked together at the highest echelons
of power, interlocking the

3-legged stool for global power grabs, using secretive cultish
methods, and all done under the cloak of “Christianity.”

Rick Warren represents the

emerging

“new breed” of evangelical leaders[2]
who are working to create a

Communitarian

paradise on Earth, building a “kingdom” for a

nebulous “God” utilizing state-of-the-art

psycho-social manipulations and

marketing techniques. These men in power are

neither Left nor Right according to the

old dialectic game played out for the

past three decades in American politics. At the present time
they are rapidly eschewing the social issues (abortion, e.g.) and
have become refocused on

pre-defined “social justice” issues that just happen to mesh
completely with the goals for an

international world order. They are intent on building a complex

global governance SYSTEM based on

networking structures. As

Rick Warren explained in Forbes
magazine (5/07/07,

“The Power of Parishioners”), in describing how the

3-legged stool will operate via these networking structures,

“The network is a far older and more basic organizational
pattern than the hierarchy. Our bodies, families and the
environment are just a few examples. What’s different now is
that technology turns this organic paradigm of networking into a
global force. It transforms every social structure that was
previously organized by command and control. Whether in the war
on terror, the presidential campaign or
American Idol, the power
and effectiveness of networking — for good or bad — is
undeniable.”

As the
titular head of this

emerging global peace networked system, it seems very
appropriate that

Rick Warren will give the invocation at the coming inaugural.

The Truth:

“I know thy works, that thou
art neither cold nor hot:” (Revelation 3:15a)

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Endnotes:

1. For more reading
on this group, see Constance Cumbey’s excellent on-going series
entitled “The Family’ and its Hijacking of Evangelicalism,” archived
at
http://www.newswithviews.com/Cumbey/constanceA.htm .
 

2. For example, an Orange County
Register article (“Visits by McCain, Obama to Orange County church
underscore Pastor Rick Warren’s prominence,” 8/13/08) says that Rick
Warren ” is emblematic of a new breed of evangelicals who put social
justice ahead of partisan politics. Some go so far as to call the
plain-talking Warren, a bear of a man who prefers bluejeans to
business suits, the Billy Graham of his era.”


 

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