So…I’m reading this article by Terry Eastland about the “Forum” recently hosted by Rick Warren where both major-party presidential candidates were interviewed by this influential church-planting pastor.
Don’t know Terry Eastland. Don’t know if he is a man of faith—it was a political article in a political publication.
What caught my attention was the last page, where Eastland—much to my very pleasant surprise—talks about the sermon Warren preached that Sunday after forum.
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On the Sunday morning after the forum, in the same worship center in which it was held, Warren preached on “The Kind of Leadership America Needs.” Noting that the two men he had interviewed were “very different in personality, in philosophy, in direction, in goals and in vision, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Warren asked the congregation to look not just at where the candidates stood on issues but at their character. He had three points: God blesses leaders who “live with integrity,” “serve with humility,” and “share with generosity.” As is customary for Warren, the message came laden with citations from Scripture, 21 in all–13 from Proverbs and two from the Psalms; three from the Gospels, two from James, and one from Philippians. He used the verses to lend support to his points.
Notably absent from the message, however, was the distinctive content of the Christian faith, even though this was a worship service. Warren didn’t discuss the verses he used in the context of the Bible’s overall redemptive message. Had he done that, he would have made it to the Good News of Jesus Christ. Even when citing a text explicitly mentioning Jesus, Warren didn’t go into what it was actually about. “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36) is fundamentally not about how leaders need to be compassionate, though they do, but about how Jesus the shepherd has come for his lost sheep.
You don’t have to be a Christian to accept the essence of Warren’s message. We all tend to agree on the need for integrity, humility, and compassion in our leaders. A non-Christian might pass on Warren’s closing exhortation to pray for God’s guidance in deciding whom to vote for on November 4. But to his other exhortations–to study what the candidates stand for, to register to vote, and then to vote on Election Day–who can say no?
Plenty of pastors mine the Bible for moral teachings and character lessons. Warren’s approach to Scripture on this particular Sunday was hardly unusual. And taken as a civics lesson, his message was fine. But as a sermon for a church, it left something to be desired.
The irony of Saddleback is that one of the two candidates–it was not McCain, but Obama, in his remarks about Christ dying for his sins and redeeming him–actually said more about the Christian faith in the civil forum than America’s most influential pastor did in his message on Sunday to his congregation. Such are the oddities that attend the present moment, in which our faith-involved politics carries on, triumphant.
