605: From Dr. King to Rick Warren … these guys raise provocative questions


Y
ou love the guy—or you hate the guy, apparently.
    Sorry, I mean Rick Warren, who poses with President Obama above. When our in-depth interview with Warren biographer Jeff Sheler appeared this week, I bumped into some friends at a coffee shop. One said right away, “I love ReadTheSpirit, but did you have to give Rick Warren ink? The guy’s a tool of the Right. I couldn’t bring myself to read about him.”
    “Well, go back and actually read the interview with Jeff Sheler,” I said. “Jeff’s a smart guy. Wrote cover stories for U.S. News for years. You can trust his reporting on Warren.”
    And then, a message from Cindy Warren in Denver, who says she’s no relation to Rick but is definitely a big fan of his work: “My husband is a different man because of ‘Purpose Driven Life.’ My prayers are that Rick Warren does have a long future of teaching men and women.”
    Where are you in that range?
    If you’ve got thoughts on Rick Warren, please drop us a note. We welcome emails at [email protected] or scroll down to the end of this story for links to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

There’s no question you love Dr. King.
    This week, we received glowing responses to the fascinating array of material we published on King. If you’re just catching up with ReadTheSpirit today, here’s a quick index of highlights:
    FIRST, how much do you know about Dr. King’s global connections? Did you know that his world-changing work had roots in Asia? And, did you know that King’s legacy extends back to Asia into the life of yet another Nobel Peace Prize winner? On the holiday, we shared a three-part story about King’s global connections.
    SECOND, we published a soul-stirring sermon about King from Chicago. Just as intriguing are the King photos we published that day from the LIFE-Google archives. It’s worth clicking back to the sermon-and-photos story if only to ponder the images.
    THIRD, and here’s the provocative part of our King coverage: All this week, Dr. Wayne Baker’s OurValues.org series is exploring King’s questions about racial attitudes—and the questions we find our children raising today. This is a terrific series:
    1.) What does the holiday mean to you?
    2.) “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean”?
    3.) “Daddy, is it okay to be white”?
    4.) Here’s my answer … what’s yours?
    5.) Are we a society of minorities?

PLEASE TELL US WHAT YOU THINK:

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    (Originally published at https://readthespirit.com/)

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