Update 01/04/2010 The testimony of Kurt Warner that Oprah censored but not at CBN.
Update 01/22/2009 Oprah's show leaves a biased onesided view of "right wingers"....
For Palin's censorship see Matt Damon and Oprah Winfrey vs Palin. 3 More 1st Amendment Victories. UK's Leading scientist urges creationism in schools. Will Bush end the funding? and scroll down for more information.
Before we get into Oprah's censorship of Kurt Warner's faith let me say something that Kurt can do that Oprah can not censor. Tim Tebow it. Tim Tebow painted on his face John 3:16 during the College Football Championship and according to ESPN the next morning the number 1 googled search was John 3:16. See John 3:16 was the number one hit on Google this morning according to ESPN. Why?. It seems a little silly but who cares. Sometimes its the foolish things of this world that God uses to get in touch with somebody He is working with.
Below is an article at azcentral.com in Arizona where Kurt Warner has taken the Arizona Cardinals to the NFC Championship game this Sunday. I have always been a Dallas Cowboy and Georgia Bulldog fan but I am a bigger fan of bringing glory to God thru men using their abilities to bring glory to their great God and Savior Jesus Christ in hopes that others will find salvation in Him also.
The Oprah Winfrey Show censors Kurt Warner's faith.
Faith still at core of Warner's success
"If you ever really want to do a story about who I am, God's got to be at the center of it. Every time I hear a piece or read a story that doesn't have that, they're missing the whole lesson of who I am." - Kurt Warner
It has become part of the sports landscape. Athletes congregate on the field after a game to pray or offer a sound bite thanking a higher power.
It rarely makes the news.
Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner understands this. The man who led this organization to its first home playoff game since 1947 knows that discussion about resurrections comes only in the context of career revivals and that tape recorders shut off when faith references start up.
During a visit to The Oprah Winfrey Show, Warner "basically had three sentences to say, so, in the middle one, I made sure I mentioned my faith, because how could they cut it out?" he said. "I went to watch the show on replay . . . and they cut it out!"
Warner, 37, is right. There is dishonesty in telling his story if you ignore what drives him, especially if you accept its role in one of the NFL's great success stories. In five years, he went from a 22-year-old stock boy at a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, grocery store to Super Bowl MVP. He has morphed again, from unemployed veteran to record-setting starting quarterback with the Cardinals, who on Saturday in Charlotte, N.C., will try to advance to the NFC Championship Game by beating the Carolina Panthers.
"I wasn't always this way," he said.
During his final season at the University of Northern Iowa in 1993, Warner went to a country-music dance bar called Wild E. Coyotes. He spotted Brenda Carney Meoni and asked her to dance. Her immediate reaction?
"Get away. Get away," she thought.
"Here's this cute guy in a bar with an entourage of females, and I'm the last person that makes sense for him to go to," Brenda said. "I'm a divorced woman with two kids, one with special needs. And Kurt's 21. Twenty-one."
They danced, and the next day, Warner was knocking on her door with a rose.
"Again, I'm screaming in my head, 'Go away!' but I opened the door and said, 'C'mon in,' " she said. "My 2 1/2-year-old grabs him by the hand and shows him every radio we own.
"He fell in love with my kids before he fell in love with me. When we'd have a fight and were going to break up, he'd say, 'Well I get the kids.' I'm like, 'But they're my kids!' "
They stuck together, even when it appeared football wasn't in Warner's future. He signed with the Green Bay Packers as a free agent in 1994 but was cut before the season began. He returned to UNI to work as a graduate assistant football coach and spent nights stocking shelves at the local Hy-Vee grocery store. He moved in with Brenda, who was struggling financially and turned to food stamps for a while. They drove a car that died every time it turned left.
He landed with the Arena Football League's Iowa Barnstormers in 1995 and three years later was signed by the St. Louis Rams, who allocated him to the NFL's developmental league in Europe. His backup with the Amsterdam Admirals was Jake Delhomme, now the Panthers' quarterback.
Around this time, Warner began challenging Brenda about her faith. She had become a devout Christian as a 12-year-old after seeing a fundamentalist Christian film called A Distant Thunder (1978). Warner questioned her, suggesting she was picking and choosing her beliefs from the Bible at her convenience. During this exploration, he closely studied the Bible.
"When I did, it was obvious what the truth was," Warner said.
He committed himself to the Bible's message. That's Warner's way, why he has succeeded in football. He studies, commits, believes.
Before they married, he told Brenda they should follow the Bible faithfully, which meant, among other things, no premarital sex.
"I'm like, 'Dude, we've got so many other things to work on. Why that one?' " Brenda, now 41, said, laughing.
They married in 1997. In 1999, he took over as the Rams' quarterback when starter Trent Green was injured. What followed was two Super Bowls, two MVP titles and a legion of Christian followers.
He was both revered and scorned for his outspokenness about faith. Since Warner's arrival in Arizona in 2005, and the revival of his career, people here treat his religion with more curiosity than debate. Many were amused by Warner giving an invocation one year at Celebrity Fight Night, a popular black-tie fundraiser for Muhammad Ali's Parkinson Research Center. Ali is of the Muslim faith.
"I never feel like, 'Should I say this, or do I not,' but I do try now to strategically figure out (during interviews) how I can get somebody to include it because it's so important to who I am," Warner said.
How does Warner express his faith? He always has the Bible in his hand when he does postgame interviews. He joins players in postgame group-prayer sessions on the field. He loves to engage in spiritual discussions with teammates but says he tries not to be in-your-face about it. He wants the words of the Bible to guide his everyday life.
When he and his family dine on the road, they always buy dinner for another table in the restaurant but keep the purchase anonymous. The children choose the family. Brenda Warner said it's their way of teaching their kids one of the Bible's messages: It's not your circumstances that define you but what you do with those circumstances.
Warner shouldn't be categorized only one way, Delhomme said.
"Football doesn't define Kurt Warner, and I think that's the biggest thing to me. It's not who he is. Kurt Warner is a lot bigger."
Added Cardinals defensive tackle Bertrand Berry: "To limit Kurt as a Super Bowl champion would do a disservice to him. I think his legacy will be that he's just a great human being, and I think that's the highest compliment that you can give anybody."
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