{"id":3363,"date":"2005-08-26T00:30:39","date_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/purposeful-questions.html"},"modified":"2005-08-26T00:30:39","modified_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:30:39","slug":"purposeful-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/purposeful-questions.html","title":{"rendered":"Purposeful Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting little piece by Alan Wolfe in today’s WSJ about Rick Warren’s Rwanda effort. <\/a> As he should, Wolfe gives full and admiring props to the project. But:<\/p>\n

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My single greatest fear is that Mr. Warren and his followers will draw huge and enthusiastic crowds to their rallies, convert numerous souls to Christ and then leave when they discover that, for all their efforts, a country like Rwanda faces political and social problems beyond the reach of even the most earnest and popular humanitarian efforts. In short, there is a limit to the good that can be done until such countries alter the basic structure of their societies, eliminating corruption, curbing the abuse of power, setting up an independent judiciary and allowing a free press. <\/span><\/p>\n

I do not believe that Rick Warren has a bad bone in his body. But I do believe that his remarkable enthusiasm is fueled by considerable na\u00efvet\u00e9. It has taken centuries for Rwandans to descend into the hell in which they exist. Not even becoming a purpose-driven nation is likely to bring them to heaven anytime soon.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting little piece by Alan Wolfe in today’s WSJ about Rick Warren’s Rwanda effort. As he should, Wolfe gives full and admiring props to the project. But: My single greatest fear is that Mr. Warren and his followers will draw huge and enthusiastic crowds to their rallies, convert numerous souls to Christ and then leave…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPurposeful Questions - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/purposeful-questions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Purposeful Questions - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Interesting little piece by Alan Wolfe in today’s WSJ about Rick Warren’s Rwanda effort. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}