RELIGION: The New Evangelism

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bill Berkowitz*

OAKLAND, California, Mar 8 2006 (IPS) - In a recent New York Times Magazine story about U.S. evangelicals working in Africa, Daniel Bergner wrote that Rick Warren had declared Rwanda the world’s “first purpose-driven nation”.

According to Bergner, “The country would be a test target for [Warren’s] global plan to eradicate spiritual deprivation along with physical poverty and disease and illiteracy.”

Having dispatched some 50 U.S. evangelicals to meet with Rwandan leaders, Warren hopes to send hundreds of others, “armed with kits of instruction and resources called ‘church in a box’ and ‘school in a box’ and ‘clinic in a box'” to promote the country’s development, Bergner reported.

He may have started out in Southern California, but today Rick Warren is an international figure with an international agenda and an international following. His best-selling book, “The Purpose Driven Life”, has sold well over 20 million copies worldwide, and been translated into 56 languages.

Two years ago, Time magazine named him one of “15 World Leaders Who Mattered Most in 2004”. The following year, he was one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World”.

Warren earmarked Africa for special attention last year at the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of his Saddleback Valley Community Church. He told a crowd of 30,000 at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California that, “The only thing big enough to solve the problems of spiritual emptiness, selfish leadership, poverty, disease and ignorance is the network of millions of churches all around the world.”

After visiting Rwanda, Warren was convinced that the country was the right place for what he called “the first model of national cooperation” between churches and a country’s leaders.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame praised Warren’s plan as “a vision with a big goal … but one that also is simple in the strategy it proposes.”

“Each partner – church, government, business, education – has a role to play, and we are more effective when we cooperate,” Kagame said. “Rwanda is emerging from a difficult time. Together, we will learn from each other and create a future of P.E.A.C.E.”

Warren’s “P.E.A.C.E.” programme stands for Plant a church or partner with an existing one; Equip local leaders; Assist the poor; Care for the sick; and Educate the next generation.

In 1980, Warren founded Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, with one family, and now presides over a congregation averaging between 20,000 and 25,000 weekly attendees. He’s built a 120-acre campus, and he has developed more than 300 community ministries to groups such as prisoners, CEOs, addicts, single parents, and people with HIV/AIDS.

He leads the Purpose Driven Network of churches, a global coalition of congregations in 162 countries, helped train more than 400,000 ministers and priests throughout the world, and more than 150,000 church leaders subscribe to Ministry Toolbox, his weekly newsletter.

The Economist has called him “arguably the most influential pastor in America”, while ABC News reported that “The Purpose Driven Life” is “the epicentre of a spiritual shockwave taking root across America in unlikely places like offices and university campuses. It has become a movement.”

Forbes, the business magazine, called him a “spiritual entrepreneur” and noted that “if Warren’s ministry were a business it would be compared with Dell, Google, or Starbucks in impact”.

In short, Rick Warren is the most prominent face of the new evangelism and he may be coming to a country near you.

In the 21st century, ministering to a well-attended church is fine, but running a mega-church is superior. Having a religious radio or television programme might help spread the word, but having an international stage offers many more opportunities for growth.

Like many Christian evangelicals and missionaries before him, Rick Warren, the son of a Southern Baptist preacher, has a grand vision. However, unlike most of his predecessors, Warren has a robust array of skills and resources.

He is smart, media savvy, has a well-honed business sense, is fully conscious of the power of the Internet, is successfully managing his message, places a great deal of confidence in his parishioners, and has an impressive cash flow – according to Warren, much of the money generated by the sales of his books goes to his Acts of Mercy Foundation. Warren and his wife are also contribute to and are deeply involved in the worldwide fight against HIV/AIDS.

Warren’s agenda revolves around dealing with the five “Global Goliaths”: spiritual emptiness; egocentric leadership; extreme poverty; pandemic disease; and illiteracy/poor education.

“The New Testament says the church is the body of Christ, but for the last 100 years, the hands and feet have been amputated, and the church has just been a mouth. And mostly, it’s been known for what it’s against,” Warren told Paul Nussbaum of Knight Ridder News Service.

“I’m so tired of Christians being known for what they’re against,” he said.

Despite his conservative views – he opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and supports the death penalty – Warren claims that the religious right does not represent evangelicalism, and that he is not part of the religious right.

In a May 2005 speech at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s biannual Faith Angle conference, Warren encouraged conferees to look at the “evolving alliance between evangelical Protestants and Catholics, particularly in the evangelical wing of Catholicism”.

He also talked of “three great questions” that we will be “facing.”

“Number one, will Islam modernise peacefully?”

“Number two, will America return to its religious roots and faith? 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.”

Rick Warren is becoming a ubiquitous figure. In January, he was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – where one reporter pointed out that he was one of the few “genuine celebrities” present -and followed that with an appearance at Pres. George W. Bush’s prayer breakfast in Washington. That event was followed by an entertainment industry conference in Los Angeles.

Warren’s name was the first one cited in numerous press accounts of the recently issued Evangelical Climate Initiative – a call to action against global warming signed onto by 85 evangelical leaders. According to a Time magazine story, the liberal Democratic African American Senator from Illinois, Barak Obama, has sought his counsel. And Warren and U2’s Bono appear to have bonded over fighting HIV/AIDS.

Last year, the sale of Bruce Springsteen’s album “Devils & Dust” – which describes an explicit encounter with a prostitute in the song “Reno” – was banned by Starbucks. This year, according to a Knight Ridder report, “Starbucks will print spiritual quotes from the Rev. Rick Warren à on coffee cups.”

*Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column “Conservative Watch” documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.