Dibs

Nearly 22,000 attendees arrive every week at evangelical pastor Rick Warren‘s 120-acre Southern California church complex. Warren, whose book The Purpose-Driven Life has been dubbed a 21st-century Christian manifesto, plans to use the Korean edition on his upcoming visit to Pyongyang, where Beliefnet.com reports that he “has been invited to preach this summer to some 15,000 Christians in North Korea, a communist country infamous not only for its nuclear threats but also for its religious persecution.” When he told his Southern California congregation last Sunday that North Korea would allow him to preach in a stadium seating 15,000, “a collective gasp arose from the worshippers. Then, claps and cheers,” according to Beliefnet. In North Korea, where religion can be a capital crime, proselytizers and members of “unauthorized” religious organizations are regularly arrested, tortured and executed, according to a 2005 US State Department report. Nevertheless, religious leaders including Billy Graham have visited North Korea. According to Beliefnet, Warren asked Graham for advice on his own trip, which he suspects will be highly choreographed by Kim Jong-Il’s government. Answering a question about whether he was afraid the invitation might be a set-up to expose North Korean Christians so that the government can arrest them, Warren said: “I know they’re going to use me. So I’m going to use them.”