Rick Warren

From the article, "The purpose-driven pastor":

"The New Testament says the church is the body of Christ, but for the last 100 years, the hands and feet have been amputated, and the church has just been a mouth. And mostly, it's been known for what it's against," [   ] "I'm so tired of Christians being known for what they're against."

"One of my goals is to take evangelicals back a century, to the 19th century," [   ]"That was a time of muscular Christianity that cared about every aspect of life." Not just personal salvation, but social action. Abolishing slavery. Ending child labor. Winning the right for women to vote. It's time for modern evangelicals to trade words for deeds and get similarly involved, Warren contends.

Warren "is able to cast the Christian story so people can hear it in fresh ways," said Donald E. Miller, director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. He is "a very important figure in evangelical Christianity," part of a "trend we'll see more of," Miller said, citing Warren's independence, social activism, informality and ability to reach across racial and national lines.

Among evangelicals, Warren is more influential than better-known and more-divisive figures such as religious broadcasters Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell or radio psychologist James Dobson, and is often seen as the heir to the Rev. Billy Graham as "America's pastor."

Evangelicals are often equated with fundamentalists or the religious right, which annoys Warren. Although he's politically conservative - opposing abortion and gay marriage and supporting the death penalty - he pushes a much broader agenda and disdains both politics and fundamentalism.

Warren is a friend of President Bush and a repeat visitor to the White House. But he also met for several hours at Saddleback last month with Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, to discuss issues such as poverty and the environment.

"I'm worried that evangelicals be identified too much with one party or the other. When that happens, you lose your prophetic role of speaking truth to power," Warren said. "And you have to defend stupid things that leaders do." "Politics is always downstream from culture. I place less confidence in it than a lot of folks. I don't think that's the answer... . Politics is not the right tool to change the culture."

Comments

[dlw]

Yes, but there is such a thing as political culture and when you denigrate politics, it doesn't help things too much.

We shd kill off the word culture and replace it with five or six other words, since it is so easily abused, IMO.

dlw
ps, Carlos, when you gonna let me know what you thought of my SBP paper?

[wenmeister]

he sounds much more refreshing than our normal pastor in the spotlight.