TruthBook Religious News Blog

Rick Warren has the power to broaden the evangelical agenda
By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
Posted: 01/13/2009

Rick Warren, the chubby, denim-clad, goateed 54-year-old Southern Baptist now hailed as America's pastor, was the heir apparent to 90-year-old Billy Graham long before President-elect Barack Obama asked him to give the inaugural invocation.

Warren rose to the occasion in 28 years, under circumstances very different from Graham's.

Long before the Saddleback Civil Forum last August, where Warren moderated a values-focused Q&A session with presidential candidates Obama and John McCain, the media represented Warren as the authoritative spokesman for a new generation of evangelical Christians.

"Nobody takes a vote on this kind of thing . . . but I can't imagine any other religious leader who could have pulled off (the candidate forum) the way he did," said Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

"Rick Warren has become America's pastor, replacing Billy Graham in that role," Cromartie says without qualification.

People are looking for a Graham successor and anointed spokesman for evangelical Christians because they constitute a powerful bloc politically, commercially and culturally.

Nearly eight in 10 Americans say they are Christians. Evangelical Christians
Time and Newsweek both named Warren to their lists of top American and world leaders.

Warren, who started out in 1980 with a few people in Bible study in his home, now leads more than 20,000 members at his Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. He doesn't take a salary from the church and practices a reverse tithe when it comes to his considerable income as an author, keeping 10 percent and donating 90 percent.

Warren is known as the pastors' pastor. His first book, "The Purpose Driven Church," started a small revolution among clergy in 1995. His worldwide pastor-training network has half a million alumni.

Warren heads innovative global missions, such as The Peace Plan, and is widely credited with broadening the evangelical agenda beyond abortion and gay marriage to confront poverty, disease, climate change and genocide.

Franklin Graham predicts Warren will have Obama's ear on important issues, while his father will not be a spiritual adviser to the new president. He recently told Christianity Today magazine that his father is "just happy to get up in the morning."

Billy Graham has been the confidante of 11 presidents, every one since Harry Truman. He led prayers at four inaugural ceremonies. He participated in inauguration-related events for every president since John F. Kennedy, until Obama.

Warren disavows any role for himself as cultural warrior, yet, unlike the elder Graham, whom Warren has called one of his important role models, he has been a lightning rod for people on both the left and right of the social divide.

The selection of Warren to pray at the inauguration Jan. 20 elicited sharp criticism from gay rights advocates angered by his belief — the traditional evangelical Christian view — that homosexuality is a sin.

The 2008 Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reported that 64 percent of members of evangelical churches believe homosexuality should be discouraged; while only 34 percent of mainline Protestants believe the same.

Labels: Barack Obama, Billy Graham, evangelicals, inauguration, presidency, pulpit, Rick Warren