MYTHS OF THE MODERN MEGA-CHURCH
Key West, Florida
Event Transcript
Monday, May 23, 2005

http://pewforum.org/events/print.php?EventID=80

Some of the nation's leading journalists gathered in Key West,
Florida, in May 2005 for the Pew Forum's biannual Faith Angle
conference on religion, politics and public life. Conference speaker
Rick Warren, pastor of the largest church in America, addressed
misconceptions many Americans have about mega-churches. He also
discussed his best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, as well as
current trends in the evangelical movement, the work his church is
doing for AIDS and poverty relief in Africa, and some of his views on
hot-button political and cultural issues.

Other conference speakers were John DiIulio (University of
Pennsylvania), who spoke on faith-based initiatives, and Reuel Marc
Gerecht (American Enterprise Institute), who spoke on Islam and democracy.

Speaker: Rick Warren, Senior Pastor and Founder, Saddleback Church,
Orange County, California

Respondent: David Brooks, Columnist, The New York Times

Moderator: Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics & Public Policy
Center; Senior Advisor, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

..............

EVENT TRANSCRIPT:

MICHAEL COMARTIE: Rick Warren is the author of the New York Times #1
bestseller The Purpose Driven Life, which sold a record-breaking
seventeen million copies in its first 19 months, making it the
bestselling hardback nonfiction book in history. He is also the
founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, one
of America's largest churches. He and his wife, Kay, began the church
with one family in 1980. Today the church averages over 20,000 in
attendance each weekend on its 120 acre campus and lists over 80,000
names on the church roll. The 40 Days of Purpose and the Purpose
Driven movement have become a world-wide phenomena featured in
numerous newspapers, magazines and TV shows. Time, Christianity Today
and several other publications have named Rick Warren "the most
influential pastor in America."

We're delighted that Rick could be with us for this conference. Rick,
thank you for coming and we look forward to hearing from you.

MR. WARREN: Thank you. My favorite introduction was one time they
said, "And here is Rick Warren, of whom Billy Graham said, 'Who?'"
(Laughter.)

I am truly honored to be here. I really mean this. When I saw your
names and who was going to be on this list, I thought, you know, these
are men and women that I read all of the time and I respect, and I
want to thank you for the columns and the articles that you write.
Just to be sitting up here with David Brooks, I feel like we ought to
reverse this, let him talk and let me comment on him because I love
reading his stuff. I read all of your stuff all of the time and I just
wanted to start off by saying thank you. Thank you for helping me
grow, helping me develop.

As a writer, you never know who is reading your stuff and so I just
wanted you to know I am reading you. I read a book a day and I read
tons of magazines, tons of articles, and I just devour enormous
quantities of material, and thank God for the Internet. I get The New
York Times and I get The Wall Street Journal, and I get the local
papers in L.A., but the rest I have to read online or in the magazines
that I subscribe to.

There is a verse in the Bible that says the intelligent man is always
open to new ideas; in fact, he looks for them. And so when Mike
invited me to come to this and I saw your names, I really jumped at
the chance. I enjoy these smaller, intimate meetings. You know, when
you speak to 23,000, 24,000 people every weekend, crowds don't impress
you anymore. So really, anywhere I go is going to be smaller than the
group I talk to on Sunday. So it's not like I'm going to get a big wow
out of a crowd.

I would much rather come and do this kind of thing where we can
dialogue and talk back and forth. Last night, I was in Miami speaking
to this huge international convention of all of the Spanish-language
publishers and they gave me the city key to Miami, but really I would
have more fun with you here today. And then I saw you were doing it at
Key West and that sealed the deal – (laughter) – because I subscribe
to the Gilda Radner philosophy of fashion: I wear what doesn't itch.
(Laughter.) And this is as formal as I get. I get a Hawaiian shirt
every week when I speak. I wear a suit once a year on Mother's Day to
honor my wife and that is about it, and so this is right up my alley.

I also wanted to come and challenge you to see your writing as a
stewardship of influence. God has put you in this position. As you can
imagine, I get a lot of invitations to speak – I get about four or
five a day – and so I have been choosing pretty carefully which ones
to accept. And I came here because I only speak to influencers, and
God has given you a degree of influence.

And I would challenge you – pardon me for using a religious term – to
speak in a prophetic voice. What I mean by that is in our world today
we need more than information, we need more than interpretation: we
need action. We're drowning in information, and there is a famine of
meaning – what does it all mean?

So I have been asked today to speak on the evangelical mega-church and
then a case study of Saddleback, and part of what I would like to do
is share my journey – I would like to tell you the story behind the
story of my life changed. You know, when you write the best-selling
book in the world for the last three years, that changes your life and
I'm not the same person I was three years ago. And, you know, maybe I
can share that.

But since you're journalists, before we look at this idea of the myths
about the mega-churches, I would like to just give you maybe four or
five trends or stories I think you need to be aware of that have come
in on the scene, because as I travel around the United States, and
around the world, I see them over and over.

The first trend that I would say you need to be aware of is the return
of the evangelical movement to its 19th-century roots; that is going
to be a big story – the return of the evangelical movement to its
19th-century roots. What are those roots? Compassionate activism – and
I am not talking about politics; I am talking about the fact that
about a hundred years ago, Christianity split into two wings in the
Protestant division and this hasn't been happening with Catholicism,
but it did happen in Protestantism.

There is a fellow named Walter Rauschenbusch, who is the man who came
up with the term "social gospel." Rauschenbusch was a liberal
theologian and he basically said we don't need this stuff about Jesus
anymore; we don't need the cross; we don't need salvation; we don't
need atonement; we just need to redeem the social structures of
society and if we do that people will automatically get better. This
is basically Marxism in a Christian form.

And there were even magazines like The Christian Century, which was a
pretty audacious title when it started at the beginning of the 20th
century – as if to say, this is going to be the Christian century; we
are going to bring in the millennium simply by changing the social
structures of society. Well, nobody believes that anymore after two
world wars and a bunch of other stuff.

But what happened is Protestantism split into two wings, the
fundamentalists and the mainline churches. And the mainline churches
tended to take the social action issues of Christianity – caring for
the sick, for the poor, the dispossessed, racial justice and things
like that. Today there really aren't that many Fundamentalists left; I
don't know if you know that or not, but they are such a minority;
there aren't that many Fundamentalists left in America.

Anyway, the fundamentalist and evangelical movement said they were
just going to care about personal salvation when they split from the
mainline churches. What happened is the mainline churches cared about
the social morality and the evangelicals cared about personal
morality. That's what happened when they split. But they really are
all part of the total gospel – social justice, personal morality and
salvation. And today a lot more people, evangelicals, are caring about
those issues.

Bono called me the other day and said why don't you come up to the U2
concert at the Staples Center because we're both active in AIDS
prevention. My wife and I have given millions to the prevention of
AIDS and those afflicted and those orphaned by AIDS. And we were
working together with him and he came back to us and I said, "What
have you learned in this data plan that you've got?" And he said,
"That I was wrong about the church. They have been the most receptive,
and I didn't expect them to be receptive." And we began to talk about
that, but that's a trend, and one of the trends you're going to be
hearing about in the future is a thing called the Global Peace Plan,
and we may get back into that a little bit later.

I would echo one of the things John DiIulio said earlier, that
Washington isn't that important. It's not. I'm sorry to tell you that,
but it's just not. And one of the things that evangelicals have is a
true view of the limitations of politics. Politics is always
downstream in culture. By the time it gets to law – I'm sorry, folks –
it's already in the water system. There is not a high school person in
America who has a politician's picture on his wall as a hero. Who do
they have? Sports stars, entertainers, celebrities and things like
that. And so, I would say that that's a key issue.

Another trend that I see is this 40 days phenomenon – this 40 Days of
Purpose, which of course I'm right in the middle of. Ten percent of
the churches in America have now done 40 Days of Purpose and that's
just now. We will take another 10 to 15 thousand through it this year,
and on and on and on. And there's a little story of how that got
started in churches and then it spread to corporations like Coca-Cola
and Ford and Wal-Mart, and they started doing 40 Days of Purpose. And
then it spread to all the sports teams. I spoke at the NBA All-Stars
this year because all of the teams were doing 40 Days of Purpose.
LPGA, NASCAR, most of the baseball teams – when the Red Sox were
winning the World Series, they were going through 40 Days of Purpose
during the Series. So the story of the 40 Days of Purpose is more than
the story of the book. And maybe we can get back to why that touched
such a nerve around the world, because The Purpose Driven Life is not
just the best-selling book in American history; it's the best-selling
book in about a dozen languages. It's in about 30 languages right now
and that's why I was at this meeting last night with the Spanish.

The next phase that you're going to see is we're actually doing
citywide 40 Days of Purposes. We've already done one in Chattanooga;
we're going to do one in Philadelphia this fall with 250
African-American churches. We're doing one in Orlando, and you're
going to see this movement.

The third trend I think you need to be aware of is the signs of the
possible spiritual awakening in America. You know we've had two Great
Awakenings in the history of America and we're a hundred years overdue
for the next one. If there is a second Reformation in the Church and a
third spiritual awakening in the world or in America, it will come
through two words – small groups.

The small group structure is the structure of renewal in every facet
of Christianity – including Catholicism. And really "mainline" is
sideline now. They're not mainline anymore, they're sideline
denominations. The mainline is evangelicalism. The sidelines are the
ones that used to be the mainline. And so, it's kind of like when we
talked about the mainstream media. What is the mainstream media?
There's old media and there's new media, okay, but what's the
"mainstream"? It depends on what stream you're in. I think it was
pointed out earlier that America is a pretty big place and there are
lots of streams. And I could take you around America and show you
forty different streams. And so it just depends on who you're
listening to. But I do believe what David Brooks wrote in an article
right after the election, what he called the two conversations going
on in America. And I think that was a pretty seminal article; there
are not just two conversations going on, but there are even more than
that.

I think a fourth trend that you might be interested in as journalists
is the move – the shift in power – in evangelicalism from what's
called para-church organizations to local churches. In the last 50
years, most of what was new and innovative that's been done in
Christianity was done by para-church organizations, not actual
congregations. Things like World Vision, World Relief, Campus Crusade
for Christ, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Billy Graham Organization and
on and on. And America in its entrepreneurship has started thousands
of these para-church organizations since the 1950s. And in the '70s
and the '80s particularly, all of the bright minds were not going into
local churches. They were all going into these para-church organizations.

But all the smart people I know are now working in local churches.
They're moving there and the power is moving back to the local
congregations. Regardless of size, they just happen to be there. And
as a result, the pastors and the priests and the ministers of these
churches are, I think, gaining a larger voice. And that's why, by the
way, the religious right does not represent evangelicalism. I'm not a
part of the religious right and I don't know any of my friends who are
part of the religious right. It's a portion, but it's like when you
take the elephant and you've got the nine blind men and one says it
looks like a tail and one says it looks like something else – you
know, it's what you're grabbing onto at the time. And a part of that
is because the religious right has tended to limit the number of items
on the agenda to three or four social issues and missed a bunch of others.

Another issue that I think you need to be aware of is what I call the
three great questions of the next twenty years. And I think these are
questions that we're going to be facing – they're all religious issues
– and here is what I think they are. Number one, will Islam modernize
peacefully? We're going to hear more about that a little bit later
tomorrow. Will Islam modernize peacefully? – big implications on that one.

Number two, will America return to its religious roots and faith? It's
questionable whether that will happen or not. Will America return to
its religious roots and faith or will it go the way of Europe and
basically reject its heritage?

And number three, which is a really big one and of particular interest
to me, what is going to replace the vacuum in China now that Marxism
is dead? What's going to replace it? In all likelihood, it's going to
be Christianity. I've had two state dinners in China in Tienanmen
Square and People's Hall with their government, with the bureaucrats
there, with the Cabinet members. I've actually had them in our home
and had them in our church, and they've given me pretty much carte
blanche in China for some reason. I don't know why they trust me, but
we've discussed this, and I've debated them. I said, "You know what
the problem with China is? You want the economic freedom of the West
without the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion and the
freedom of information that you must have to get the other." And so,
they're going through turmoil. But there are about 80 million
Christians, maybe as many as 100 million Christians – most of them
evangelical – in China right now. That's about 25 million above ground
and about 75 million meeting below ground in house churches. And so it
is a huge, huge wave that's taking place there.

Then the other story that I would encourage you to look at is this
evolving alliance between evangelical Protestants and Catholics,
particularly in the evangelical wing of Catholicism. In 2004, there
were three big surprises in our culture. One of them was the success
of the movie The Passion, which was roundly panned by everybody and
then went on to become the third biggest best-selling movie in history
– grossing $600 million. The second was, for the second year in a row,
my book was the best-selling book in the world. A book by a pastor –
how's a book by a pastor selling that many, almost a million a month?
And the third was some of the so-called "values voters" from this past
election. And really, I happen to agree with some of what's been said,
that there's a lot of over-emphasis laid on that. But in all three of
those, Catholics and evangelicals came down on the same side of the
fence in many areas. Now when you get 25 percent of America, which is
basically Catholic, and you get 28 to 29 percent of America, which is
evangelical, together, that's called a majority. And it is a very
powerful bloc, if they happen to stay together on particular issues.

Okay, now let's talk about what I was assigned, "Myths of the Modern
Evangelical Mega-Church." I spoke at Harvard last month. I did a
series of lectures for the faculty in the Kennedy School and also in
the law school. I spoke to several groups of faculty and several
groups of students and I started with this quote from Peter Drucker:
"The most significant sociological phenonmenon of the first half of
the 20th century was the rise of the corporation. The most significant
sociological phenomenon of the second half of the 20th century has
been the development of the large pastoral church – of the
mega-church. It is the only organization that is actually working in
our society."

Now Drucker has said that at least six times. I happen to know because
he's my mentor. I've spent 20 years under his tutelage learning about
leadership from him, and he's written it in two or three books, and he
says he think it's the only thing that really works in society.

Before we can talk about the myths, let me give you some definition.
What is a mega-church? Technically it's a church that averages over
2,000 in attendance. That's the draw point, the break-off point for a
mega-church – 2,000, not in members, but in attendance on a weekly
basis. Now let me put this in perspective. In 1963 in America, only 93
churches in America had more than 1,000. Today, there are over 6,000
churches that run over 1,000 in America.

There is a shifting. There are 6,000 churches that run over 1,000,
there are about 750 churches that run over 2,000 – so those are the
real mega-churches, the 750 over 2,000. There are about 20 churches in
America that run over 10,000 in attendance on a typical weekend. And
there are three of us that run over 20,000. The three largest churches
in America are Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington,
outside of Chicago; the Lakewood Church in Houston, which is on
television, so you might have seen that one (the pastor is Joel
Osteen); and then Saddleback is the largest church in America. We had
our 25th anniversary on Easter this year. I did 12 services. We had
45,000 in attendance and I preached 12 services in a row. Two weeks
later, we celebrated our anniversary and we had never had the church
in one location, so we rented Angel Stadium and had 30,000 at Angel
Stadium. I have 82,000 names on the church roll.

I started Saddleback in my home 25 years ago with my wife. And you
need to understand, I am a country boy. I grew up in northern
California in a town of less than 500 people. So the church I pastor
is about a zillion times bigger than the town I grew up in and that
has been cultural shock for me. And I've watched the church grow from
just my wife and me over the past 25 years. One of the things we
wanted to prove is that you don't have to have a building to grow a
church, so we grew the church to over 10,000 before we had our first
building. We went 15 years without a building. We met in 73 different
facilities in the first 15 years. We said, "We're the church that, if
you can figure out where we are, you get to come, because we only want
really smart people." So we kept changing it. But we wanted to prove
it's not a church. We met in warehouses, bank buildings, stadiums,
tents, whatever. So today, we have a 120-acre campus, we have about 30
acres just in parking, if you can imagine that. It's like I'm in the
Dumbo parking lot or the Goofy parking lot or whatever.

If I were to drop dead right now, Saddleback Church would keep
growing, because it's not built on me. It is a purpose-driven church,
rather than a personality-driven church. We've all seen what happens
when churches or ministries are built on personality and that guy has
a moral failure or he flames out or something and the whole ministry
collapses. When I wrote "The Purpose Driven Life," I took off seven
months and I did not preach, and I did not teach, and I did not lead
my staff of 300, but I just wrote the book. And while I was gone, the
church grew by 800 people because it's not built on me, it's built on
the 9,200 lay ministers in the church.

We were talking about volunteers this morning – I know about
volunteers. We have 9,200 lay ministers who lead 200-plus different
ministries all over southern California. I know these numbers are a
little overwhelming, but just to give you an idea, we have 2,600 small
groups that meet from Santa Monica to Escondido in 83 cities. And so
the church gathers on Sunday for a big service and then meets during
the week in homes. That allows us to do all kinds of enormous things.
For instance, in November, during our 40 Days of Community, we decided
to feed every homeless person in Orange County three meals a day for
40 days. We went out and we found out that was 42,000 people. How do
you feed 42,000 people three meals a day for 40 days? Well, it takes a
lot of volunteers. And we did – we collected over 2 million pounds of
food and those 9,200 lay ministers pulled it off and we fed 40,000
people three meals a day.

So when you talk about taking government money – we don't want
government money. I don't want government money because I don't want
them intruding in what we're doing. I love the point that John DiIulio
made earlier, that there's a difference between teaching and
transformation. I'm in the life change business. I'm in the
transformation business. You know what motivates me? – not size; in
fact, I don't even like big churches. I mean, my favorite size was 300
people. What motivates me is that I am addicted to changing lives. I
love seeing lives changed and that is the untold story. Everybody
tries to attribute the growth of churches to everything else but what
makes them grow – and it's changed lives.

Now that's what a mega-church is, so what's an evangelical? Let's just
review. An evangelical believes the Bible is God's Word, Jesus is who
he claimed to be, salvation is only by grace – in other words, you
can't earn your way to heaven – and everybody needs to hear the good
news; information, not coercion. It is a funny thing to me that about
every five years America and journalism reintroduces evangelicals to
America. It's like starting with Carter – you know there was a
headline – "Who are the Evangelicals?" And about every five years, we
get a new article – "Who are the Evangelicals?" Well, it's not like
they're a fringe group; they're 28 percent of the country. In a
pluralistic nation, we are a lot bigger than most of the other
sections. And it's not like they need an introduction. What needs an
introduction is some of the smaller groups and it's just kind of
funny. It's like people say, "Because I don't know about them, well,
then maybe America doesn't know about them."

Well, the other thing that I would say is that we need – and I'm not
speaking of you here – but we need to help journalists use the right
terms. There is a difference between "evangelicalism" and
"fundamentalism" and "the religious right." And people use them like
they are synonyms. They are not – they are very, very different. I am
an evangelical. I'm not a member of the religious right and I'm not a
fundamentalist. And also, a pastor is not an evangelist. I get called
an evangelist all the time, as if that's the only thing there is. I'm
not an evangelist, I'm a pastor. An evangelist is somebody who travels
around from town to town to town speaking. James Dobson is not an
evangelist, he's a radio psychologist. But people call people
evangelists like that's the standard term if you're an evangelical;
no, I'm a pastor. What does a pastor do? He cares and comforts and
counsels.

Toffler wrote a book many years ago – I'm sure you all read it –
called Future Shock. In that book he says when life is changing
rapidly, we need what he calls islands of stability to hang onto. We
need some rocks in our lives that don't change when everything around
us is changing. And when I went to start Saddleback Church, I had just
finished my doctorate. I was out of seminary and I moved from Texas to
southern California, and I said I want to spend my entire life in one
location because I value being in a community, watching the kids grow
up and go through stages. My daughter was four months old when I
started Saddleback Church. She's now married and has a child and has
one on the way. So I've watched an entire generation grow up in my
church, and I've loved that – watched the kids be born, be dedicated,
grow up; I've watched them go through grade school, graduate from high
school, go off to college, come back, get married, come back, have a
baby. It's that kind of stability that builds really strong churches.
And so I just said, "I want to be pastor."

And so what is a mega-church and what are some myths about it? Well, I
wrote down a bunch of them here. Here is the first one. The first myth
is that mega-churches are a uniquely American phenomenon. That's a
myth. Mega-churches are not a uniquely American phenomenon. The
reality is there are far more mega-churches outside of the United
States than there are inside of the United States. In fact, all of the
largest churches in the world are outside of America and Saddleback is
just a baby compared to some of them. For instance, William Kumuyi's
church in Lagos, Nigeria, has 120,000 in attendance. Cesar
Castellano's church has 250,000 in attendance. They're building a
stadium right now that seats 250,000. Ten of the 11 largest churches
in the world are in Seoul, Korea. The largest Baptist church, the
largest Methodist church, the largest Presbyterian Church, and the
largest Pentecostal church are all in Seoul, Korea. I've spoken in
them. The largest church in the world is in Seoul, Korea – Central
Church on Yoido Island, which has a half a million members. They have
50,000 home small groups. So this is not a phenomenon of America. In
America, a mega-church is really tiny in comparison.

Here's the second myth. The second myth is that mega-churches are
politically active. In fact, you don't get to be a mega-church if you
get involved in other issues. You would find that most of the churches
that are politically active tend to be medium- or small-size churches.
They are not the largest churches. And because they tend to get caught
up in a political agenda, they don't grow to the size of others. The
largest churches tend to focus on issues like the ones that we're
focused on.

A third myth is that mega-churches attract people because of their
size. Now that one is laughable. Nobody goes to a church because of
its size. Actually, the larger a church gets, the more headaches there
are, the more hassles you have to put up with, the further you have to
walk to get to the service. Can you imagine in our church checking in
and out four or five thousand children into our Sunday school? Our
Sunday school is bigger than any school in our district – it's just
enormous. I mean, we have a computer system where you come in with
your tag and you've got a bar code and you flip the thing and it
brings up three tags and you put one tag on the baby and one on the
bottle and one on the diaper bag and then you don't get them mixed up.
And you don't check that baby out unless you come back with the right
tag because we've got split homes, and we found one parent trying to
come pick up the child when it's not their weekend. And so there are
all kinds of things to think through. The truth is the only people who
like large churches are pastors. (Chuckles.) And they like them
because they like to speak to big crowds. But people put up with the
size in order to get the benefits – they say, "I like the teaching, I
like the programs, I like the music, and I like the ministries," and
things like that. So it's a myth that people go because they want the
size.

A fourth myth is that most mega-churches have televised services.
That's just not true. In fact, until Lakewood Church grew up, Bill
Hybels' church and our church – the largest churches in America – were
not on the television. In fact, when I started Saddleback 23 years
ago, I said we would never go on TV and we'd never go on the radio
because I didn't want to be a celebrity. I think always being in the
spotlight blinds you. I think that you get more done under the radar,
behind the scenes. And I actually was able to do it for about 23 years
until this blasted book kind of blew my cover. But I was able to just
keep behind the scenes, and while I wasn't known like a Jerry Falwell
or a Robert Schuler or some of these media personalities, every pastor
in America knew who I was because I put all of my sermons on an
Internet site and it gets 400,000 hits a day from pastors. And so,
instead of me teaching it on the radio or TV, we put it on the
Internet and we allow other pastors to take this material and use it.

Another myth is that mega-churches require little or no commitment.
What I mean by that is that people think if you're big, you must be
shallow. And I would just say to that – the reality is that most
members of typical churches could not join Saddleback because they
would not be willing to meet the requirements. We have very strong
standards for requirements. They're pretty tough, and we're not
interested in the big membership; we're interested in turning an
audience into an army and mobilizing it for good.

The last one that I'll give you is the myth that mega-churches grow by
marketing. I'm so tired of this story; I've heard it over and over and
over – the latest being the most recent issue of Business Week, where
it basically says the mega-churches are big business. Now that is just
such a superficial, unrealistic view of what actually goes on. The
implication is that if a church is this big, it must be because of
marketing. No, it's because of changed lives. When peoples' lives are
changed you'd have to lock the doors to keep them out, because they
want to go where their lives are changed. We put people in a tent for
three years where we would freeze in the winter and it would rain on
us all spring and we'd burn up in the summer and the howling winds
could come through – and people would walk about a mile through the
mud to get to this tent. I mean, everything was inconvenient. And why
did they come, why did they show up? Because their lives were getting
changed; that is what was happening. So they put up with inconvenience.

The only guy I know who got this was a New York Times reporter who did
an article on Saddleback a while back. And I like the way he said it.
He said, "Marketing creates a message in order to sell a product. But
Warren's doing the exact opposite – he's creating products in order to
push a message." Well, it's true. I plead guilty to that. But that's
not marketing, that's taking the message and trying to get it out as
many ways as possible instead of creating a message to sell your product.

Really there are two kinds of mega-churches. They don't grow the same
way. Some grow by transferred growth and some grow by conversion. And
anytime you see a mega-church that grows instantly – it just kind of
explodes – and all of a sudden they go from zero to 5,000, that's a
church that's growing by transfer growth, which means they've just
become the hot act in town and everybody goes, "Let's just all go over
there. That's the place to go so we'll all go." And as a pastor, I
don't consider that legitimate growth. Jesus said, "I'll make you
fishers of men." This is like swapping fish in the aquarium. It's like
we pop them from one place to another, and they grow at the expense of
other churches.

Saddleback is unique in that 78 percent of the members of our church
had no religious background prior to joining the church. It is a
church of conversion growth. We've baptized about 14,000 adults in the
last eight years. So that means this is not a church that grew at the
expense of other churches.

The other thing that you need to understand is that most pastors in
America are in small churches, while most of the members are in large
churches. In other words, right now there are about 340,000 churches
in America of all different sizes and shapes. A lot of those are out
in towns of 50 people and there's nobody in them, but there's a
pastor. So there are a lot of pastors in little churches. But today
most of the members are in the larger churches. You know, I could go
on, but I think I'll just stop on that and let David Brooks respond.

MR. CROMARTIE: Thank you, Rick. We asked David Brooks to respond
because in his book, which many of you have seen – On Paradise Drive –
part of David's research was on the mega-churches. And so, we thought
David would be an ideal person to comment on this since he traveled
around the country and saw some of the communities where these
mega-churches are located. So, David, thank you for responding.

DAVID BROOKS: First, I think that was just fantastic. The personal
story is kind of amazing, but I think we also saw your spiritual gifts
and leadership and business gifts. The intellectual gift is the gift
to be able to pick out – out of the draws of the media world – the
crystalline pebble that is truly important. And I thought the trends
you raised are fantastic and I think in the book you do that with the
Bible.

Now, thanks to Rick and his folks, I have my own personalized
leather-bound copy of the book.

MR. WARREN: Now don't show them that – they're going to get envious.

MR. BROOKS: Well, you know, it's a two-class world, what can I say?
(Laughter.) And it's handy for me because as Anne Kornblut can tell
you, in the afternoons, I'm up in the Times Bureau, you know,
evangelizing – (laughter) – with the book. And the first sentence of
the book is, "It's not about you." And that is the way we live our
life at the Times. (Laughter.) It's not narcissism, it's never about
us. And day 26 of the 40-day process is called "Growing Through
Temptation." And a lot of us have felt temptation since aroused by
this number of 22 million and that is the temptation toward envy. For
all of us who have written books, that figure is kind of eye-popping.

I leave the Times Bureau with Tom Friedman, who's number one on the
non-fiction list right now. I come to this conference in Key West, and
I see Malcolm Gladwell, who was recently number one on paperback and
hardcover non-fiction. I go to see Mr. 22 Million over here. I expect
to walk outside and see Tom Clancy sitting there. (Chuckles.) I'm
going to be writing my book, The Blinking Flat Purpose-Driven Tipping
Point. (Laughter.) I actually thought of doing a book just for
Republicans called The Chauffeur-Driven Life. (Laughter.)

But, anyway, what I thought I'd try to do is talk a little about what
I think of as a transformation in the evangelical community – a
transformation in methods and especially in leaders, which I think
Rick exemplifies. And since Rick mentioned Bono, let me start with a
little story of something that happened to me two weeks ago, which I
think sort of exemplifies this. I got a call a couple of months ago
from a friend of mine who works on the Hill, Mark Rodgers, who used to
work for Santorum. And he said, "Do you want to go to a U2 concert?"
And I love U2 and my wife especially does. So we went up there and he
organized a little group and Gerson went – his first rock concert.
(Chuckles.)

And we went out to an Italian meal in South Philly and there were some
people from the Billy Graham organization, there were some Christian
rock musicians from Nashville, and it was a great conversation.
Everybody else at the table except my wife and I knew Bono and had
long relations with him either through Africa work, through the
Heartland Tour – remember he took this tour, where he went to Willow
Creek, he went to Wheaton, he went up and down the Midwest, stopping
at mega-churches, stopping at schools, doing a lot of conversation, a
lot of awareness of AIDS, urging evangelicals to get involved in AIDS
research. There had been a piece of research showing that evangelicals
were less likely to get involved in combating AIDS than other groups.
And I think when that came out I think a lot of people in the
community felt embarrassed. And I've been told that he was
instrumental in raising awareness among evangelicals.

I was told at this dinner by one of the guys who is a producer for
Switchfoot of a meeting in Nashville where Bono was coming through,
and he had a meeting just with Christian musicians. And he said – you
know, it was a group of forty or fifty – he said, "I know what you
guys are feeling. You're in this genre – in some way it represents who
you are, but in some way you feel trapped by it. You feel trapped by
the strictures of what you have to do. It's not quite fully expressing
who you are as artists." And this guy from Switchfoot said, "That's
exactly how we feel, that somehow we're constrained." And then my
friend who was at the dinner put up a guitar, hoping Bono would get up
and lead the group in some songs. And he played "They Will Know We Are
Christians By Our Love" – that was the song he played.

And what I found interesting was first the comfort these people felt
with Bono –he doesn't call himself a Christian; he's very
non-sectarian – but he has a faith in Jesus and at the end of the
concert, he takes off his cross and puts it on the microphone stand
and the last thing you see is the spotlight on the cross. And so
there's a lot of Christian imagery in what Bono is and what he does.
But he's not typical. But what I found was a great comfort between
these two heterodox communities.

And then the second thing was what this guy from Switchfoot was saying
– the sense of breaking out of the crust of a certain stricture, an
ethic in the community. And people wanted to break out of it and
express their faith and their lives in new ways, and there was a sense
of frustration with that. And I think that's happened across the
evangelical world. And I'm coming from outside that community – I'm
Jewish, and so I'm sort of looking at it from the outside. I'm
reminded of when the Human Rights Campaign, the gay and lesbian
organization, had a group of people come in to explain Christian
conservatives to them, and they invited me and Jonah Goldberg.
(Laughter.) And so, I don't come from this community, but I speak for it.

MR. WARREN: Well, I'm actually speaking at the University of Judaism
this next month, where I've been asked to come in and teach the rabbis
my preaching seminar. So I'm speaking for Jews.

MR. BROOKS: Well, I was going to say – we don't actually have
mega-gogues, because if you built a town with a mega-gogue, you'd have
people saying, "Oh, I don't go to that mega-gogue." (Laughter.) "I go
to that other mega-gogue, I wouldn't touch that mega-gogue."

But anyway, it's like popcorn. The popcorn is in that hard shell and
then it just bursts out. And that doesn't mean the hard shell part is
gone, but it's just much more complicated, what's going on, and in
some ways softer. And I think that's what's happening. And so I'll
just run down very quickly what I think some of the causes are of this
transformation in the evangelical leadership and community and then
some of the effects.

The first cause, I think, is the end of a certain sort of history
since the 1920s – evangelicals pulling in after the Scopes trial,
feeling embattled, defensive, and then more slowly over the decades
feeling much more comfortable in American culture. I think that
comfort derives from the home schooling movement, so there's less a
sense that "My kids are being educated in ways that are alien to me."
People are more comfortable with how their kids are being educated.
Then Reagan and Bush. And then it was interesting to hear Rick talk
about the repairing of the split between the social and the personal.
And I think these are just long and historical trends that are
creating a comfort level, and with the comfort level, less of a need
to feel embattled and part of a remnant and a greater need to express
yourself and not be quite so unified and disciplined. So that's one thing.

The second change, I think, is a certain embarrassment I sense with
the putative leaders of the evangelical movement. A sense of
embarrassment, to be honest – I can say this, I'm Jewish – with people
like Jimmy Swaggert, Tammy Faye Baker, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson,
Ralph Reed, sometimes James Dobson. You know, I was with some
evangelicals in Pennsylvania the day after Falwell made those
9/11-related comments. And the sense of revulsion was – I can tell you
– natural and profound. And as we learned in the South Carolina
primary in 2000, that doesn't necessarily mean people want to see
outsiders coming in and blasting those guys, but within the community
I think there's embarrassment. Evangelicals say, "They don't speak for
me. A lot of people in the country think they speak for me, but they
do not speak for me. That is not who I am." So that's the second cause.

The third cause, I think, is an embarrassment sometimes over the
quality of the evangelical sub-culture. Mark Noll's book The Scandal
of the Evangelical Mind was important for a lot of people that I run
into. There's another book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience.
The musicians I was talking about feel that the music doesn't really
represent who they are – and what was interesting when they talked
about Bono and U2 was that he is an artist and because he's an artist
he doesn't have pat answers for everything. He explores the
problematics of a certain situation. And that's what they wanted to
do, but they felt pressured to just give pat answers. And so they
wanted to be more artists and less – I don't know what you want to
call it – less doctrine promoters. And there was some embarrassment
because of the paltry response to the AIDS crisis in Africa.

The fourth cause is a greater and perpetual desire to be
Jesus-centered, which some of the putative leaders were not. I wrote a
column a few months ago about John Stott, this great writer and pastor
in England. And it was funny – he came to Washington and I had a
chance to have breakfast with him, and when I tried to talk politics
with him, you could see his eyes sort of cloud over. But whenever we
would talk about Jesus, he was just alive and vibrant. And there's a
gap between what Jesus was doing, which is so energizing to people,
and what politics and Ralph Reed are doing.

The fifth cause is a frustration with a certain political style, where
you go out and vote, you rally, you go to Washington, you meet with
important people like presidents and cabinet secretaries. Everybody
you meet – you know you're around powerful people but nothing ever
seems to happen. And so I think there's just been a sort of exhaustion
with that. It was interesting to hear Rick talk about the importance
of culture, not politics – how gay marriage entered the culture a
long, long time ago. Mark Rodgers, who is up on the Hill, is someone
who is acutely aware of that, and spends a lot of time trying to go
downstream to influence the culture.

Sixth – and this is what I wrote my book about – is just the changing
demographics of America, and especially of the evangelical community.
It's now an exurban community, an exurban culture. You know, 90
percent of the office space built in America in the 1990s was built in
these far-flung suburbs. I mentioned at lunch that the population of
Pittsburgh in the '90s shrunk by 8 percent. The developed land area of
Pittsburgh expanded by 43 percent – fewer people, they're just
spreading out. And they're spreading out to places like Mesa, Ariz.
Mesa now has more people living in it than live in St. Louis,
Cincinnati or Minneapolis. Mesa will soon pass Atlanta in population.
Food courts come and 500,000 people just follow.

And the culture of these places – you don't want to hear my whole
hour-long riff on these places – but basically, it's influenced by the
game of golf. It's a state of spiritual grace suggested by golf, which
I call living at par. And when you're living at par, your DVD
collection is well organized, your cell phone rate plan is well
tailored to your needs, your fingernail polish matches the interior of
your Lexus, you've got your life so calm and together that next to
you, Dick Cheney looks bipolar.

And what has really organized the exurban culture, if I had to pick
one thing – there are many obvious reasons people move out to these
fast-growing suburbs: lower mortgage, shorter commute, actually,
because people can work out there – but the number one reason is they
want an orderly place to raise their kids. It's all about finding a
place where they can feel comfortable raising their kids. And the
demographics of these fast-growing suburbs are basically 1950s
America. I call them Mayberrys with Blackberries. They just have very
low divorce rates, very low inequality, no rich people and no poor
people. It's just 1950s Leave it to Beaver Land out there, with
incredible fertility.

One of my favorite statistics from this last election was that George
Bush carried 22 of the 23 states with the highest white fertility
rates and John Kerry carried the 17 states with the lowest fertility
rates. And that's really not about fertility; that's about church
attendance. People who attend church have more babies than people who
don't.

By the way, one of the myths about evangelicals is that they're
prudes. This is the other thing I always quote at every one of these
meetings. The group of women in America that have the most orgasms are
evangelical women, according to the University of Chicago. (Laughter.)
Of course, at the University of Chicago an orgasm is a theoretical
construct. (Laughter.)

So anyway, those are the causes, and then I'll just, in five minutes,
run down what I think the consequences are.

One, a new leadership cohort, much more influenced by Chuck Colson
than anybody else, and much less by Pat Robertson. Rick Warren is a
perfect example – not a guy on TV, not sitting up there preaching and
crying with a potted plant next to him – someone who is not enriching
himself. Rick reverse tithes; he gives away 90 percent of his money.
He gave a check to his church that compensated the church for the 25
years of income it had paid him in the first 25 years of his service.
So that's a new sort of leader.

And there are other people, people I know less about or read less
about but I'm curious about. One is a guy named Brian McLaren, who is
part of the "emerging church," which seems to be a Gen X thing. I've
read about them, but I really don't understand them. They talk about
motivating younger believers, they talk about being postmodern, but at
the same time they emphasize Alistair McIntyre. I'm not quite sure
what it's all about, but it's something.

Then there's Rich Cizik at the National Association of Evangelicals.
And then Mike Gerson, who is another perfect example of a new sort of
person, less combative, more uncomfortable with the Robertson-Falwell
style, but someone who is much more comfortable in the world. When you
read Carl Cannon's National Journal article on him, it's clear that he
was not in the wilderness at any point in his life. He's been working
for Sen. Dan Coats and doing more things in power. Instead of
protesting against the mainstream culture, he's been energetically,
positively working proactively to get stuff done. So it's not as much
of a contrarian attitude. So, a new leadership.

Second, there are new causes, as Rick mentioned, beyond the normal
family agenda of abortion, homosexuality and vulgarity in the media.
Not to say those have faded away. But if you want to cover the
Republican Party and want to care about politics, it's the social
conservative wing of the Republican Party that cares about poverty,
and that's where the energy comes from, whether it's Rick Santorum or
Dan Coates or Jim Talent.

Of course, there's the AIDS issue, which Rick is very involved in with
his peace movement, and the whole focus on Africa, which Rick is also
involved with, leading thousands of people over there. Chuck Colson
helped in trying to get the president involved in the civil war in
Sudan. Rich Cizik has been a strong proponent of creation care – the
environmentalism we're beginning to see in evangelical circles. Mark
Souder, one of the more socially conservative guys from Indiana in the
House, is very green in his voting record, and I think you're
beginning to see more of that. There's the human trafficking issue.
And the late Diane Knippers worked on a book called For the Health of
the Nation, which really expanded the evangelical or social
conservative agenda beyond the normal issues to a whole range of
issues, which is just something new, and part of this flowering I'm
talking about.

And finally, you have a new political style. One of them, I think, is
alliances and not conversion. I think a lot of social conservatives
came into politics and said, "We'll win followers the way we do it in
faith; we'll convert them to us." And there is now much more effort in
trying to build strategic alliances with people who are fundamentally
not like us but who are operationally like us on certain issues. And
so there's a different political style. There's also much more comfort
in feeling crossways with the traditional Republican agenda. Social
conservatives, according to Andy Kohut's recent Pew data, are just
much more economically moderate or liberal than other Republicans. And
you begin to see it on the Social Security issue where they feel free
to divert away from the Republican movements on this issue. In fact,
if I were building a political majority in this country, I'd start
sort of where Gary Bauer is substantively. I'd take socially
conservative and economically liberal, and I think that's a
lower-middle-class majority in the making, which is the opposite of
what you hear, that a party should be fiscally conservative and
socially liberal. I think that's not the way to build a majority.

And then finally – and I think this is the most problematic thing –
the consequence of this transformation is the relationship with the
mainstream culture. You know, The Times had a Sunday piece about a
church – I think it was in Arizona – and the point of the piece was
that this is "religion lite" – and you hear this all the time – and I
happen to think that was overdrawn. I haven't been to that church, but
for most of the people I know it seemed overdrawn, but not totally
without point.

I do think there is a shopping-for-faith aspect – maybe there always
has been in American culture. Henry Steele Commager had a line: "In
the 19th century, religion prospered while theology slowly went
bankrupt." And he meant that Americans are not doctrinal in their
faith. We had presidential candidates like George Bush who switched
denominations in the middle of his life, but he couldn't quite tell
why. You had Howard Dean who switched denominations over a bike path.
And then you had Wesley Clark who switched four or five times. And
that's not atypical for Americans.

And so we're just not a doctrinal people, but I think, nonetheless –
not only in mega-churches but maybe throughout American culture – you
have, I think, a lightening of religion, certainly a walking-away from
the old Jonathan Edwards trembling before an angry God. It's certainly
more happy, more upbeat, more optimistic. And to me, one of the most
interesting things about this book is the way it's both part of the
culture but in some ways very counter-cultural. It's very against the
culture of narcissism, the culture of "me," but on the other hand,
it's not Jonathan Edwards either.

And so it's the negotiating – being part of the world and being
opposed to it, marketing and at the same time sort of
counter-marketing – that's the great tension and the temptation, it
seems to me, looking from the outside. For a lot of the evangelical
community it's the temptation to just be so easy, so undemanding and
sometimes so vacuous. That is also part of the consequences.

In any case, I thought what Rick said was fantastic, and he
exemplifies a lot of the changes we're seeing.

MR. CROMARTIE: Well, there's our critical response. (Laughter.) Thank
you, David. Jeffrey Goldberg.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG, THE NEW YORKER: A very simple question. You
mentioned the Global PEACE Plan. What's your Global PEACE Plan?

MR. WARREN: It has to do with what happened to me, and I really have
to tell you the story. All my life I planned to simply pastor this
church for life and train pastors. That's all I wanted to do. And so
I've spent the last 20 years training about 400,000 pastors in 162
countries. I didn't want to do anything else. And all of a sudden
after the book came out, two things happened. First, it brought in a
ton of money. I mean, a ton of money. Second, it brought in a lot of
notoriety, which I didn't really want. And I began to say, what am I
supposed to do with this affluence and what am I supposed to do with
this influence?

And I call it the stewardship of affluence and the stewardship of
influence. And I don't think God gives you either money or fame for
your own ego – particularly pastors. And so I thought, what am I
supposed to do with this? And being a pastor I went to the Bible, I
started reading, and I came up with two passages of scripture, one out
of the New Testament on what to do with the money; one out of the Old
Testament on what to do with the fame.

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul says, "Those who teach the gospel should make
a living by the gospel." In other words, he says, "It's okay to pay
your priest. It's okay to pay your minister, your rabbi or whatever."
But, he says, "I will not accept that right because I want the
privilege of serving the gospel for free so I'm a slave to no man."
And so as David pointed out – I guess I'll go ahead and share it since
he's already shared it –my wife and I made five decisions. There were
millions of dollars coming in on this book. And we made five
decisions. Number one, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. So I
didn't buy a bigger house, I don't own a second house, I don't own a
yacht, I still drive a four-year-old Ford. We said we will not – no
matter how much money comes in – we will not change our lifestyle.

The second thing was, as he mentioned, I stopped taking a salary from
the church about two years ago. The third thing was I added up all the
church had paid me in the previous five years and I gave it back,
because I didn't want anybody thinking that I did this for money. And
sure enough, I knew that, being in the spotlight, I would be under
greater scrutiny. And the very next week either Time or Newsweek came,
and the first question they asked was, "What's your salary?" And I
thought, isn't that typical; they always think you're in it for the
money. And I said, "Well, actually I've now served my church for free
for 25 years." Got 'em! You know? (Laughter.) It's just the exact
opposite of what they expected.

Then, fourth, we set up three different foundations. One is called
Equipping the Church, which we use to train pastors in third-world
countries. The other is called Acts of Mercy, which we use to help
those infected with AIDS. And another one is called The Global PEACE
Plan, which I'll share in just a second.

The fifth thing we did was become reverse tithers. When Kay and I got
married 30 years ago, we began giving 10 percent of our income to
charity. And each year we would raise it a percentage, because every
time you give, you break the grip of materialism in your life. The
only antidote to materialism is giving. It's the only way. And so the
second year of our marriage we started giving 11 percent to charity,
then 12 percent, then 13 percent. Every time I give it makes my heart
bigger and it makes me more like Jesus. And as David said, I love Jesus.

And so, today, 30 years later, my wife and I are reverse tithers. We
give away 90 percent and we live on 10. And honestly, the easiest part
was what to do with the money. Last year my wife and I gave away $13
million. That was the easiest part. The hard part was, what are we
going to do with the fame? And so I began to read scripture and I came
to the passage in Psalms 72 where Solomon prays for more influence.
And when you read it, it sounds like a very self-centered prayer.
Solomon is the wisest and wealthiest man in the world. He's the king
of Israel at its apex in the United Kingdom. And he says, in Psalms
72, "I want you to make me more influential. I want you to spread my
name across the nations. I want you to bless me; I want you to give me
more power." It sounds like a very egotistical prayer. And yet then
you read the rest of it and he says, "So that the king may support the
widow and orphans, care for the oppressed, defend the defenseless,
speak up for the prisoner, help the immigrant." He basically talks
about all the marginalized of society.

And that was a turning point in my life two-and-a-half years ago,
where God basically said to me – and I've never heard God speak
audibly; it's in my mind – "The purpose of influence is to speak up
for those who have no influence. The purpose of influence is to speak
up for those who have no influence." And in religious terms I had to
say, "God, I repent, because I can't think of the last time I thought
of widows and orphans." I live in a very affluent Southern California
neighborhood. There aren't any homeless people lying on the streets
where I live. And I said, "I can't think of the last time I cared
about the homeless."

And so I went back and I began to read scripture, and it was like
blinders came off. Now, I've got three advanced degrees. I've had four
years in Greek and Hebrew and I've got doctorates. And how did I miss
2,000 verses in the Bible where it talks about the poor? How did I
miss that? I mean, I went to two different seminaries and a Bible
school; how did I miss the 2,000 verses on the poor?

And so I began to think about this, and two years ago I was in
Johannesburg, South Africa, where I was teaching this Purpose-Driven
church seminar, and we simulcast it to 400 sites across the continent,
and I trained in that time just about 90,000 pastors, in that one
week. And after it was over I said, "Take me out to a village." So we
went out to the township of Tembisa. I said, "I want to see some
churches." We got to this one little church where there were 75 people
in a tent – it's a tent church – 25 orphaned by AIDS and 50 adults
taking care of them. And this guy walked up to me, this young pastor,
and he looked at me and he said, "I know who you are." And I said,
"How do you know who I am?" He said, "You're Pastor Rick." I said,
"How do you know who I am?" He said, "I get your sermons every week."
As I told you earlier, I put all my sermons on the Internet, and we
charge Americans for them and then we translate it into other
languages with that money and give them away for free to the rest of
the world. So we basically let the Americans fund our international
ministry.

And I said, "How do you get my sermons?" I said, "You don't even have
water or electricity in this village." He said, "No, but they're
putting the Internet in every post office in South Africa." He said,
"Every weekend I walk an hour and a half to the nearest post office
and I download your free sermon and then I preach it." He said, "You
know, you are the only training I've ever had." And I thought, I will
give the rest of my life for guys like that.

So I began to ask myself, what are the biggest problems on the planet?
What are what I call the global giants, the problems that are so big
they seem impossible to solve; the problems that are so big the United
States of America can't solve them; they're so big the United Nations
can't solve them; they're so big they affect billions of people, not
millions? And I came to the conclusion that there were five. There
were five global giants. And here's what – in my opinion, as I've
traveled around the world – are the five biggest problems.

The first one is spiritual emptiness. Billions of people in this world
do not know that their life is not an accident. There are accidental
parents but there are no accidental children. There are illegitimate
parents but there are no illegitimate children, and there is a purpose
for every person's life. And they don't know that, and they don't know
that God made them for a purpose.

Number two – this one surprises people but it is the source of all of
our other problems – egocentric leadership. That is the second global
giant: self-centered, self-serving, instead of leadership like Jesus,
which says, "Lay down your life for your sheep." Servant leadership –
the leaders serves. The world is full of little Saddams. They are in
every nation, they're in every community, they're in every church,
they're in every business, they're in every academic setting, they're
in every homeowner's association. Give a guy a little bit of power and
it goes to his head and he becomes a dictator. And he doesn't
understand that I exist as a leader for the people, not vice-versa.

The third is poverty. Half the world lives on less than $2 a day.
We're working on the first national model of the PEACE Plan right now
in Rwanda, where the average income is 68 cents a day.

The fourth major problem is disease – the fourth global giant. What is
amazing to me is that the diseases that are killing and still
affecting billions of people we found the cures for in the 19th and
20th century and now it's the 21st century. And it is unconscionable.
We know the cure for yellow fever, we know the cure for malaria,
polio, measles, mumps, leprosy, and even AIDS. We don't have a cure
for it, but it is 100 percent preventable because it is a behavioral
disease – 100 percent preventable. And we just don't have the leaders
who have the courage and the guts to do something about it – the
conviction, the character and the courage to do it.

And then the fifth is illiteracy – illiteracy and ignorance, lack of
education. Half the world is still functionally illiterate, and how
are they going to make a living in the 21st century if they can't read
or write?

Now, I'll tell you my bias. I believe these problems are so big that
only the church is big enough to handle it – the millions and millions
and millions and millions of local churches that are spread around.
There is more distribution of them than all the Wal-Marts and K-Marts
and Starbucks and McDonalds put together. I could take you to a
million villages around the world that don't have a school, don't have
a grocery store, don't have a hospital, don't have a post office, but
they've got a church. And we are now working with the 400,000 pastors
that I've trained globally to build a network to do the PEACE Plan.
And we're privately testing it right now in 47 countries. I have 4,500
of my members on the field right now in 47 countries that have visited
the field.

And the PEACE Plan is an acronym. "P" is "Partner with churches"; you
find a church in the area to partner with, or you plant a church if
there isn't one there. "E" is "Equip leaders." And we're equipping
leaders in a way that is culturally relevant –– not Western-style
leadership but Jesus-style leadership. "A" is "Assist the poor," and
in assisting the poor, you've heard the phrase, "Don't give a man a
fish; teach him to fish." That's not good enough. If all you do is
teach a man to fish, what you do is you create a village of fisherman,
so they all live on subsistence living. You must raise the economic
standard. You must teach them not only how to make a fish; you need to
teach them how to sell a fish – teach them free enterprise. That way
not everybody's a fisherman and some people can specialize and the
economy begins to grow. "C" is "Care for the sick," and "E" is
"Educate the next generation."

And we've actually created what we call clinic-in-a-box,
business-in-a-box, church-in-a-box, and we are using normal people,
volunteers. When Jesus sent the disciples – this will be my last point
– when Jesus sent the disciples into a village he said, "Find the man
of peace." And he said, "When you find the man of peace you start
working with that person, and if they respond to you, you work with
them. If they don't, you dust the dust off your shoes; you go to the
next village." Who's the man of peace in any village – or it might be
a woman of peace – who has the most respect, they're open and they're
influential? They don't have to be a Christian. In fact, they could be
a Muslim, but they're open and they're influential and you work with
them to attack the five giants. And that's going to bring the second
Reformation.

FRANK FOER, THE NEW REPUBLIC: My questions has two parts, which will
keep you talking for a good while. What do you make of the Mark Noll
book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind? Do you agree with the
argument that David was alluding to, that there isn't theological
rigor always pervading that tradition? Mike Gerson, for instance, is
somebody I've heard make this argument before. That's why, for him,
First Things, the Catholic magazine, is far more influential than any
sort of evangelical publication, and that's why he genuflects in the
direction of somebody like John DiIulio. (Laughter.)

MR. WARREN: First Things is a great magazine. I read it cover to
cover. But let me just say this – I agree with half of what Mark Noll
says, but Mark is an academic and he's writing about an academic
culture. He doesn't have the slightest idea what's happening in local
churches. For instance, in our church, to be one of those 9,200 lay
leaders you have to take a 52-week systematic theology course. And he
doesn't know that. And so, I'm just saying, what you say in an ivory
tower is often not the reality in the local church.

MR. FOER: And the second part, what percentage of your church do you
estimate voted for John Kerry? And, given the move to the left – or
what you might call the left – on poverty, do you foresee anything
that the Democratic Party could do to increase its share of the
evangelical vote?

MR. WARREN: Well, in the first place, I do not believe it's healthy
for any one party to be co-opted by any one particular thing. I don't
think that's healthy at all. I am an American; I believe in pluralism,
and I don't think we need a God party. I really don't believe that at
all. In fact, notice in my definition of evangelicals I didn't say
anything about political views – I mentioned what evangelicals believe
about Jesus and the Bible, but I could show you evangelicals who
believe the exact opposite thing politically in my own church. Now,
I'm in Orange County; what do you expect? But I'll just tell you, I am
not interested in any policymaking, but as a pastor I minister to
politicians on both sides of the aisle, including this last year both
the president and John Kerry. Both of them.

And so, I'm not interested in trying to play policymaker; I'm trying
to play pastor, which means asking questions like "How's your life
doing?" In my own church I would imagine almost none of those people –
maybe 15 percent – voted for Kerry. But, again, part of the issue is
that there is no such thing as red state, blue state. There really
isn't, okay? If anything, it's red county, blue county. You know,
2,500 counties went for the president, 500 counties went for Kerry.
But they were almost equal in population. It was urban values versus
the rest of America. My state, California, is not a blue state. It's
all red except for the urban areas.

DAN HARRIS, ABC NEWS: Let me actually try to take a crack at what
Frank was getting at. What's your reaction to another best-selling
author, whose name hasn't been mentioned, Jim Wallis, who is, like
you, critical of the religious right, but much more so. What's your
take on his book?

MR. WARREN: Well, I think Jim Wallis proves the exact point I just
made, that there are evangelicals at opposite ends politically. I
would say this: if you're talking about what David said, where there
are socially conservative values in terms of morality and more
moderate values regarding the role of government, yes, there might be
that. That's definitely growing. And I would say this – I even
mentioned earlier, one of the trends is evangelicals are finally
coming back to the table and speaking out about the poor, the sick,
the environment and other issues that they took off the table when
they basically said, "We're only going to care about moral issues –
quote, 'personal moral issues.' " Those other issues are moral issues
too. The environment is a moral issue.

MR. CROMARTIE: One of the criticisms of Jim's book has been that he
says that evangelicals care only about these two issues and yet, from
what we've heard Rick and others say, there's this whole array of
issues that evangelicals comment on.

I've got Josh Green up next.

JOSHUA GREEN, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY: You said you don't consider
yourself part of the religious right and maybe churches aren't
political, and yet, you know, Karl Rove, the president's advisor, whom
a lot of us put a lot of stock in, made a point of trying to attract –
and apparently did attract – the evangelical vote. So what exactly is
your take on the 2004 election?

MR. WARREN: I think that in an election, faith trumps everything.
Faith trumps everything. The unspoken factor is this: in the last
eight elections, all eight elections, a man who claimed to be, quote,
"born again" won – everybody since Carter. And that shows the
difference in politics, but Carter, then Reagan-Reagan,
Clinton-Clinton, Bush-Bush, all eight elections, a guy who claimed to
be born again won the election. America, in the last half of this
century, elects born-again presidents.

Reagan has been to my church. And both Reagan and Bush number one
would tell you privately they were born again.

MR. BROOKS: On George the elder, I loved when he was asked during the
election, "What did you think about while you were floating in the
Pacific after you got shot down out of the sky?" He said, "I was
thinking about God – and the separation of church and state."
(Laughter.) You could see the politician in his head.

But back to this past election, just on the voting we all know that
Bush won 98 of the 100 fastest-growing counties in the country, and
one of the things – aside from the faith, which we can explore in a
million ways – one of the values of those counties, as I said, is
social order and orderly places for raising kids. And to me, the
importance of the churches is people move out to these counties, they
have no community; they have no place to get together, and the first
thing they do when they get there is to build a church so they'll have
a place to get together. And what I think Rove understood was that
it's very hard to reach those people because they're atomized – they
just got there. One way to reach those people is through the churches,
and a lot of it is just preaching traditional family values through
the churches.

The other thing – this is apropos to nothing – but to me, it was
Rove's most brilliant stroke of the whole election: the other place
they get together is health clubs, and the Republicans advertise on a
little screen on the StairMaster machines. (Laughter.) And I thought
that was ingenious.

But anyway, the churches are community centers as much as worship centers.

WENDY KAMINER, THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY: I'm having a hard time
articulating my question because it's kind of a large one. I want to
understand what you mean when you talk about seeing a Third Great
Awakening. When you were talking about your own beginnings you talked
about starting in your house and not having a building and working for
15 years without one. And I was reminded, while you were talking, of
AA, which started the same way, which has God knows how many people,
which still doesn't have a building, which is clearly purpose-driven;
it's just not Jesus-centered, and it's had to be very non-doctrinal in
order to be as large as it is.

MR. WARREN: Right.

MS. KAMINER: And then you also asked whether America would return to
its religious roots? I'm not sure it ever left its religious roots,
but that's a different question. But if you look at the Colonial
period, there's not a lot of religion, really, and that's why there is
a First Great Awakening, and why it's news. And then you have the
Second Great Awakening – you have the 19th century, and there's quite
a lot of religious experimentation, and the Second Great Awakening is
about individual salvation, as you say.
So I'm guessing that you're saying that this Third Great Awakening is
going to be the coalescing of progressive interest in the social
gospel with sort of revivalist interest in individual salvation. And
this brings me to something that David really hinted at. It's still,
for you, very Jesus-centered, and it's still very focused on saving
individual souls as well as doing all of this global work. How are you
going to protect yourself from all the influences of culture? You say
that culture comes before law; I would say culture and law work in
tandem, and I would also say that religion and culture work in tandem.
I think that's always been true historically.

And it's really hard for me to imagine that you have this Third Great
Awakening of gazillions of people who are bringing together a concern
about individual salvation and the social gospel, and maybe they're
also held together by a belief in Jesus. But I wonder if that is even
enough, and how it's going to be immunized by the culture that it has
to adapt to in order to be successful.

MR. CROMARTIE: Like some of the concerns Alan Wolfe brought up when we
had him here.

MR. WARREN: Yeah, I've talked to Alan about this, several times in fact.

You know, 500 years ago, the first Reformation with Luther and then
Calvin, was about beliefs. I think a new reformation is going to be
about behavior. The first Reformation was about creeds; I think this
one will be about deeds. I think the first one was about what the
church believes; I think this one will be about what the church does.

The first Reformation actually split Christianity into dozens and then
hundreds of different segments. I think this one is actually going to
bring them together. Now, you're never going to get Christians, of all
their stripes and varieties, to agree on all of the different
doctrinal disputes and things like that, but what I am seeing them
agree on are the purposes of the church. And I find great uniformity
in the fact that I see this happening all the time. Last week I spoke
to 4,000 pastors at my church who came from over 100 denominations in
over 50 countries. Now, that's wide spread. We had Catholic priests,
we had Pentecostal ministers, we had Lutheran bishops, we had Anglican
bishops, we had Baptist preachers. They're all there together and you
know what? I'd never get them to agree on communion or baptism or a
bunch of stuff like that, but I could get them to agree on what the
church should be doing in the world.

And the way I expressed it is that the Bible calls the church the body
of Christ, and what's happened in the last 100 years is that the hands
and the feet have been amputated and the church has just been a mouth,
and primarily it's been known for what it's against. It's been known
for what it's against. And I am working toward a second Reformation of
the church which could create a Third Great Awakening in our nation or
world, and it may not happen in America; it may not.

All of the growth of Christianity, as you know right now, is South of
the Equator, whether it's in South America, South Asia or Africa,
south of the Sahara. And so that's where the future of Christianity
is. There's no doubt about it in my mind. And so I'm more concerned as
a pastor about the church, but I think if there's a Reformation there,
it could lead to a spiritual awakening in the world. And I do see
signs of it in that people are hungry. How do you explain a book by a
pastor selling now over 25 million copies? And that's in English. The
book has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. And I'm not even a writer.

I tell you, there's nothing in the book that's new – not a single
thing in the book that's new, that's not in historic Christianity over
the last 2,000 years. I just happened to say it in a simple way.

ELSA WALSH, THE NEW YORKER: So are you saying doctrine won't be
important or is not important if you bring together all these –

MR. WARREN: No, no. I think, though, it's what Augustine said: "In the
essentials, unity; in the non-essentials, liberty; and in all things,
charity." And I think that's how evangelicals and Catholics can get
together. And I don't know if you know this or not, but
fundamentalists and Pentecostals don't like each other, okay? They
don't. But they could get together. "In the essentials, unity; in the
non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity."

SARAH WILDMAN, THE AMERICAN PROSPECT: I'll try to be quick, although I
think my two or three questions are sort of unconnected. What about
people who don't have Jesus in their lives, if you could address that
sort of generally, and then also, do you see this Reformation
involving conversion? And then also, how do you see people responding
to this in the wake of, say, the tsunami this year? How dose the
purpose-driven life connect to natural disaster?

MR. WARREN: Before you go to the third, let me answer those two.
First, on the answer to the first one, everybody is betting their life
on something. Every one of you are betting your life on something.
You're all doing it. Every one of you are betting your life on
something. I'm betting my life that Jesus was right when he said, "No
one comes to the Father but by me." Now, I may be wrong, but I'm
betting my life that he knew more about it than I do. And that's all I
can say.

On the other issue, on the Tsunami, I'll give you an example. I think
Saddleback Church may be the most generous church in America. I wasn't
even there the week the tsunami happened, but here's how that network
works. I knew about the tsunami probably before any of you did because
I was up at 4:30 in the morning on my computer, and a Purpose Driven
church in Sri Lanka – the largest church in Sri Lanka, actually; it
runs 5,000 people – sent me a note that said, "Rick, we just had an
earthquake two minutes ago." He said, "Inevitably there will be a
tidal wave. Before the tidal wave hit, we had already released
churches headed for the coast to work on that because of the network
that we have now using the Internet."

See, here's the other reason why I believe a Reformation could happen:
every time God's word is put into new technology, there's a
Reformation. In 1456 or something, that's when Gutenberg came out with
the printing press, and the first thing he prints, what is it? A
Bible. It's not pornography; it's the Bible, okay? Within about 50
years of that time we have the Reformation. Why? Because what Martin
Luther nailed to the wall of the Wittenberg door somebody pulled off
the wall and started reprinting. The Reformation would have never
happened without the technology to make it possible. We now have a new
technology which allows global networking between millions of local
churches. It's called the Internet.

So when I got that information from the pastor, we immediately did two
things. First, we released churches all over India, Southeast Asia,
Thailand, Sri Lanka, in our network – immediately going to the coast
to start cleaning up, for instance, Buddhist temples that we knew were
going to be destroyed and stuff like that. And the second thing was, I
had announced in our church about people giving to the tsunami, and on
the basis of a one-minute announcement, our church gave a
million-and-a-half dollars to the tsunami, just like that.

So then we put out an email. I have an email newsletter called Rick's
Toolbox that goes out every Monday to almost 147,000 pastors. And I
write a little note every Monday. I sit in my pajamas, hit the button,
it goes to 147,000 pastors. "You guys want to help out on the
tsunami?" Boom, tons of money is coming in, and it's just all going
back out.

MS. WILDMAN: I guess what I meant was not so much response as how do
you reconcile the numbers of dead in terms of a "purpose-driven" life?

MR. WARREN: Well, that's the question Larry King asks me every time I
go on his show. Larry has the same question: why do bad things happen
to good people? Here's the bottom line. We live in a broken world.
This is not heaven; this is earth. That's why we're to pray, "Thy will
be done on earth as it is in heaven," because it's done perfectly in
heaven – not here. Life is not fair. The Bible doesn't say it's fair.
In fact, it's very unfair. And that's why I happen to believe in an
afterlife. If Hitler doesn't get his just rewards, then life is not
fair. And there are a lot of things that are not fair in this world.
The Bible says that every time I make a bad choice it has negative
implications on somebody. Now, that has implications in the fact that
the world is broken, and as a result, there are hurricanes and there
are tornadoes and there are all kinds of things – because Christian
theology says the world is broken. And God grieves as much over that
as we do.

MR. CROMARTIE: One of the topics that did not come up during our
advisors meeting is the problem of suffering and evil in the world,
and that certainly would take at least a whole afternoon session.

MR. WARREN: And brighter minds than mine have thought on that one.

JUAN WILLIAMS, NPR: Picking up on this business about the
disagreements between the fundamentalists and the Pentecostals, I
mean, this struck me as news because when journalists write about it,
we go to people like Robertson and Falwell to represent the
evangelicals. And that's the way it comes across, so it strikes me
that we're ill informed or you're wrong. (Chuckles.) And secondly,
that you're not using this God-given influence you spoke of, because
your influence is not showing up in the American media in terms of
supplanting people who you would tell us are bogus.

MR. WARREN: Well, I tell you, that's the reason I accepted this
meeting, because I'm just tired of having other people represent me
and represent the hundreds of thousands of churches where the pastors
I've trained would nowhere, no way, relate to some of the supposed
spokesmen of a previous generation.

Now the word "fundamentalist" actually comes from a document in the
1920s called the Five Fundamentals of the Faith. And it is a very
legalistic, narrow view of Christianity, and when I say there are very
few fundamentalists, I mean in the sense that they are all actually
called fundamentalist churches, and those would be quite small. There
are no large ones.

MR. WILLIAMS: Bob Jones is not a mega-church?

MR. WARREN: No, no, no, no, no, no no. Bob Jones is not a mega-church.
That's right exactly, it's not, and that group is shrinking more and
more and more. On the other hand, Pentecostalism and charismatic
evangelicalism is growing by leaps and bounds. It's growing huge all
over the world. And so that's the movement that's growing.

MR. WILLIAMS: What's the difference between a fundamentalist and a
Pentecostal?

MR. WARREN: A fundamentalist would deny the miraculous today. They
would – for instance, one of the hallmarks of a Pentecostal would be
praying for miracles of healing and speaking in an unknown tongue and
things like that. Those would be hallmarks of Pentecostalism and
fundamentalists would say, "Oh no, all that stuff died at the end of
the New Testament." They would not accept the miraculous today.

MR. WILLIAMS: So what's the difference between you and the
fundamentalists?

MR. WARREN: Well, I don't agree with that. I believe there are
miracles today.

MR. CROMARTIE: Let me give you a quick answer to that. The difference
between an evangelical and a fundamentalist is an evangelical is
someone who really, really, really likes Billy Graham. A
fundamentalist is someone who thinks Billy Graham is a liberal.

MR. WARREN: That would be true. A fundamentalist basically would look
at many others in Christianity and say, "You're not even a Christian."
They'd say it about Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics.
You know – even evangelicals. It's interesting – maybe 15-20 years
ago, Falwell stopped calling himself a fundamentalist, and actually
left the fundamentalist fellowship, and he went and joined the
Southern Baptist Convention – which is as wide – I mean you can find
anything in that.

MR. CROMARTIE: Well, let me ask John, do you have any data on this?

JOHN DIIULIO, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: Rick's absolutely right. As
I said this morning, just disaggregate the demographics on the
evangelical community, and you find intergenerational differences in
opinions. Boston College's Alan Wolfe, writing for The Atlantic
Monthly, did a long article a number of years ago on the interesting
intra-group differences among evangelicals. It was essentially
correct. Rick Warren represents evangelicals who are pro-life,
pro-family and pro-poor. For him and millions more evangelicals the
pro-poor part is every bit as important as the other two parts. A
majority of evangelicals are with him.

MR. WILLIAMS: So on abortion, you're strongly pro-life; is that right?

MR. WARREN: Sure, I am. It's just not the only thing on the agenda. Of
course, if I believe every child is born for a purpose – and in Psalm
139 it says, "I formed you for a purpose in your mother's womb" – then
obviously I would believe that abortion short circuits a person's
purpose. Sure, but that's not the only issue.

A lot of political issues are really what I call heart projection.
That is, in the book, I talk about how we're all wired different ways
to care about different things. If we all cared about the same thing,
a lot would get undone in the world. For instance, I don't know
anybody who doesn't believe that the environment isn't important, but
some people really care about the environment – it's like they're
rabid about it. Well, fine. I think it's important to take care of the
environment; it's just not my passion. Some people are really rabid
about protecting the rights of the unborn. I happen to believe the
rights of the unborn need to be protected, but I'm just not rabid
about it. I happen to be rabid about some other things. Why? Because
we're all passionate about different things.

Now, what happens is, when I force you to say you must feel as
passionate as I do about this particular issue, whether you're a
believer or not, then that's going to create political conflict.

MR. WILLIAMS: It's interesting that you don't mention race in your
global plan. And it just strikes me, given what you've told us about
the southern hemisphere, race is a major issue, immigration is a major
issue, the treatment of minorities in these mostly white areas, the
fact that your church is in Orange County – these are major issues.

MR. WARREN: Well, I didn't have time, Juan, to get into the "A" of the
PEACE PLAN. Part of the "Assist the Poor" is justice – a justice task
force. My wife has been in Cambodia and in Laos basically to get kids
out of forced prostitution, things like that. And I guess the reason I
didn't mention the race thing is because we look at it in terms of a
justice issue, not a racial issue. Of the 4,000 pastors I met with
this last week, 500 of them were black. I'm going to go do 40 Days of
Purpose in a citywide campaign in Philadelphia with 250 black
churches. I'm not even thinking that that's an issue with us. We –
black and white in the church – need to be fighting together on some
other issues.

REBECCA HAGGERTY, NBC DATELINE: A couple questions. I hope that some
of them can be brief. I'm interested in what your small groups do. I'm
interested in what your denominational background was – what you grew
up as and if Saddleback is a part of a particular denomination. And if
you could also expand on the ideas you've mentioned about a Third
Great Awakening and a "second Reformation" – whether you think that
that's coming in religious life?

MR. WARREN: Well, okay, let me start backwards. On the Great
Awakening, I am just seeing signs that people are more open to
spirituality and talking about God than they've ever been before. When
I went to Harvard a month ago, I honestly expected a pretty hostile
audience – I'm an evangelical pastor and I'm going into Harvard. And I
went in and I spoke four times and they gave me a standing ovation.

And the faculty sat and all the deans sat in the front row and I just
took hot-seat questions for an hour and a half and they broadcast it
on C-SPAN, and I found not skepticism, I found this attitude of "tell
me more, tell me more." It was like pouring water on a parched piece
of land, and I found incredible spiritual receptivity. It was the
exact opposite of what I expected. And I mean, David Gergen was there
and afterwards we were talking about it, and I'm going, "That's not
what I expected to happen." You know, I got invited to speak at this
Aspen Ideas Institute. And I'm going, what's an evangelical pastor
going to this for? Well, evidently somebody's not afraid of us anymore.

You see, here's the problem. My book happened to be published by
Zondervan, which is owned by Harper-Collins, which is owned by
Newscorp, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. So when the book hit 15
million, I called up Rupert Murdoch and I said, "What are you going to
do to celebrate my book?" And he goes, "Well, what do you want to do?"
I go, "I want you to throw a party and I want you to invite all your
secular elite friends from Manhattan and let me talk to them." And he
goes, "Okay." (Chuckles.) So he sends out a list, he invited 350
people, who's who in Manhattan to the top of the Rainbow Room, and I
went up there and you know, I just started talking to them – again,
standing ovation. And I'm asking, as I talk to these people, "Have you
ever met an honest evangelical?" And the response is, "Well, no, I
live in Manhattan." Of course not, everything stops this side of the
Hudson. It's like, is there anything else in America? And that's why
David's book was so valuable in pointing out that there is another
conversation out there, folks.

And here's an interesting thing. My book sold 18 million copies before
it got its first review. What does that say about media?

MS. HAGGERTY: And your small groups – are they Bible studies?

MR. WARREN: Yes, they are. And we actually use a video-based study
where we study a curriculum and then they meet all different times of
the week.

MS. HAGGERTY: And your denomination when you grew up?

MR. WARREN: My father was a Baptist pastor. I grew up in little tiny
churches of less than 50 people. I call myself an evangelical.

MS. HAGGERTY: Also, briefly can I throw in another one? You brought up
gay marriage, so what do you think on the topic of gay marriage?

MR. WARREN: I don't accept gay marriage. I don't think that a gay
relationship is exactly what God wants in life. But I don't think that
homosexuality is the worst sin. The Bible says it's not. The Bible
says the worst sin is pride. Pride is what got Satan kicked out of
heaven. The Bible says pride goes before destruction of the body and a
haughty spirit before a fall. So, you know what? In looking at a
hierarchy of evil, I would say homosexuality is not the worst sin. But
I would also say homosexuality is not natural. I think that there are
certain parts of a body that are made to fit together. (Laughter.)

MS. HAGGERTY: Do you think marriage needs the protection of government?

MR. WARREN: You know, I talked to Aaron Brown about this – it's funny,
I was interviewed on NewsNight one time, and he was talking to me –
because he was very threatened by this, and he said, "You know what?
I'm worried about the tyranny of the majority." And I said, "Aaron,
tell me about this," and he grew up as the only Jewish family in some
town in Michigan or whatever. And he said, "I've always worried about
the tyranny of the majority." I said, "Well, I can understand where
you're coming from."

What I worry about is the tyranny of activist judges, who completely
keep throwing out what the majority says. Are we a democracy or not?
Do we have a right to vote? And do my votes not count? Or can any
single judge just consistently throw out what a majority of people
have voted? Is this a democracy or not? I believe in a pluralistic
America, and you know what? A lot of times in a pluralistic America, I
lose. I lose because I don't get my way all the time. And you know
what? That's okay. I'm willing to put up with the fact that I often
lose in a pluralistic America because it grants me the freedom. And I
believe that everybody has a right to be at the table. I think a gay
person has the right to make their case and I think I have a right to
make my case. And I think that in a democracy, we have a right to vote
on it. I do not believe in judges who go out and find all kinds of
excuses to thwart the will of the majority.

By the way, my wife and I had dinner at a gay couple's home two weeks
ago. So I'm not homophobic guy, okay? We had dinner with a gay couple
because we are heavily involved in helping people infected and
afflicted by AIDS and we've given millions to it. So I'm no homophobic
guy. I just don't believe it's God's will.

JANE EISNER, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: I'd like to go back to Sarah's
question because, frankly, I don't think you answered it, and maybe I
can rephrase it. Day 15 of the Purpose Driven Life says, "You were
formed for God's family. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt
us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus
Christ." And then you ask, "How can I start treating other believers
like members of my own family?" So does this belief mean that
non-believers are outside the family? And what then happens to
non-believers in a pluralistic America?

MR. WARREN: Good question. When I was born physically, I automatically
became a part of the human race. I didn't have a choice. The moment I
was born, I became a part of the human race. I didn't become a part of
somebody's family until somebody chose to take me home from the
hospital. There was a choice that was involved. So I was a part of the
human race, but I wasn't a part of the Warren family until my parents
decided to keep me. They could have decided not to keep me and I would
have been a part of something else. I believe every person is created
by God, no doubt about that. We're created by God, and I believe every
person is valued by God and I believe Jesus Christ dies on the cross
for every person. But I believe that being in the family of God is a
choice. I believe that I must choose to say I want to be a part of the
family of God. I believe it's a choice.

MS. EISNER: What happens to those people who don't make that choice
and where do they fit into a country that, in your view, is
experiencing a spiritual awakening, and is going to be doing things
based on those sets of beliefs?

MR. WARREN: Okay, first, do you have to be a believer to be an
American? No, obviously not. And I would fight with Muslim-Americans,
and Jewish-Americans, and secular Americans, and atheist Americans –
I'd fight together for our country. There's no doubt about that. So
we're talking about two different issues. We're talking about the
kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. And I don't believe they're the
same thing.

My job is not to save America as a pastor. My job is to save Americans
– individuals. Kingdoms, countries come and go. This is why the
Catholic Church really had it right in so many ways. How many nations
have come and gone in the last two thousand years? I believe with all
my heart that if history goes on for the next thousand years, the
United States may not be here, but the church will be here, because
it's not a temporary institution. I believe it is God's family that
will go on for eternity. And I believe that all human forms of
government eventually decline. So that's why I don't place my faith in
who is going to get elected because –

MS. EISNER: But, I mean, with all due respect, I belong to a tradition
that contends that it's been here for 5,760 years.

MR. WARREN: Well, if you're Jewish, then you're my cousin, okay?

MS. EISNER: But you may think that predicates a purpose in life, a
belief in Jesus Christ, and a belief in an afterlife. If I don't share
those beliefs, I mean, where am I?

MR. WARREN: You know what? I believe I'm going to hell. I believe I'm
going to hell if I don't do what God tells me to do. And as I said
earlier, I believe everybody's betting their life on something –
you're betting your life that Jesus was wrong. I'm betting my life
that he was right.

E.J. DIONNE JR., THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, what happens to those who
– because that's the question – who don't make your bet? What is your
belief about what happens to the people who don't make your bet?

MR. WARREN: My belief is that people who don't accept what Jesus said
will end up where Jesus said they'd go. And if you have a problem with
that, it's not a problem with me. It's a problem with what Jesus said.
I believe to go to hell you have to do the impossible: you have to
reject the love of God. I believe that God came to earth in a human
form 2,000 years ago, that he split history into A.D. and B.C., that
even if you don't accept that Jesus was who he said he was, every time
you write a date you use his life as a reference point – A.D. and B.C.
And I believe that he came to earth because he wanted to show us what
God is like.

I have a hard time relating to an impersonal force in the sky that's
like, "May the force be with you." I need a God with skin on it. I
need to see what it's like – it's kind of like for me to understand
God without some kind of human form would be like an ant trying to
understand the Internet.

MS. KAMINER: But what about the civic answer to Jane's question?

MR. WARREN: Well, okay, but I'm not giving the civic answer.

MS. KAMINER: But I think there's a civic component to her question.

(Cross talk.)

MR. WARREN: The civic answer is – are you an equal citizen? One
hundred percent. And in our country, I will defend your right to
believe something the exact opposite of what I believe.

MR. WILLIAMS: But what about some of the laws that say otherwise?

MR. WARREN: There is no law in America that tells you what to believe.

MS. KAMINER: No, but what if this majority that you respect passes
laws that codify the majority's religious beliefs?

MR. WARREN: Here's what I think – I think we owe all of our freedoms
to the Judeo-Christian heritage.

MR. CROMARTIE: I may have lost control. I need to go to the Jacuzzi;
you all continue. Let me just do this, out of respect. I think these
deeply theological questions that the church has debated, both
Protestant and Catholic, for many, many centuries are best discussed
over cocktails at the reception. (Laughter, cross talk.) But no, the
reason I say that is the questions that we are tapping into now are
not only sensitive and controversial, but they've been debated for
more than five minutes in the history of the church, and so to give it
the kind of attention it deserves may require a reception and a sunset
and drinks.

MS. EISNER: I still don't feel satisfied from the civic perspective. I
know that this isn't about persuading one or the other of us that
we're right theologically, and I understand that. But I think that –
as I understand the history of our government, its main purpose is to
protect minorities of whatever sort there are. It doesn't always do
that, but that is what it is about. And you know, one could feel left
out of this purpose-driven life theologically. And one could also feel
left out civically, if the values that are stated here, particularly
the belief that not only frankly, am I right – I realize that you feel
like you're betting on it – but that I am compelled to tell others, if
those values infringe on the rights and the stability of the minority.

MR. WARREN: Well, I obviously believe in total religious liberty. I
would say this: religious liberty does not mean removing any sign of
religion out of the public square –

MS. KAMINER: That's not the question. Let's take something trivial –
let's take the blue laws. Let's take that businesses have to close on
Sundays because for the majority Sunday's a holy day. So suddenly the
minority has to observe this holy day of rest.

MR. WARREN: I would be against blue laws myself.

MS. KAMINER: Now, that's a very trivial example, but that's the kind
of question. What happens when this majority that comes out of this
Great Awakening starts to codify its religious beliefs into law that
the entire population is supposed to obey?

MR. WARREN: Well, I would say that what came out of the previous Great
Awakenings were women's right to vote, the abolition of slavery and
all kinds of other major freedoms in America.

MS. KAMINER: That's simplistic.

MR. WARREN: No, it's not simplistic; that's history.

MS. KAMINER: There are a lot of reasons why you have feminism and
slavery being –

MR. WARREN: But it's not simplistic because every major movement like
that for freedom was led by pastors, including all the way up to the
most recent one with Martin Luther King. Historically, it's not
seculars; it's pastors who have worked for women's freedom, have
worked for racial freedom, have worked for the right to vote – every
single freedom movement in America in history was led by religious
leaders, not by secular leaders.

MR. WILLIAMS: When you were attacking judges a moment ago, you didn't
give any thought to the idea that judges and the Constitution protect
the rights of minorities. Instead you portrayed them as activist
judges. In fact, if you'd had an election on the end of slavery, I'm
not sure how it would have turned out. And as for women's right to
vote, I know they would have lost.

MS. EISNER: This is your Harvard audience.

(Laughter.)

MR. CROMARTIE: I'm going to let others in. We need to keep moving. Anne?

ANNE KORNBLUT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: People