Rick Warren, the chubby, denim-clad, goateed 54-year-old Southern Baptist now hailed as America’s pastor, was the heir apparent to 90-year-old Billy Graham long before President-elect Barack Obama asked him to give the inaugural invocation.
Warren rose to the occasion in 28 years, under circumstances very different from Graham’s.
Even before Obama’s invitation, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor, asked Warren to speak at its King Day service Jan. 19.
Long before the Saddleback Civil Forum last August, where Warren moderated a values-focused Q&A session with presidential candidates Obama and John McCain, the media represented Warren as the authoritative spokesman for a new generation of evangelical Christians.
“Nobody takes a vote on this kind of thing . . . but I can’t imagine any other religious leader who could have pulled off (the candidate forum) the way he did,” said Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
“Rick Warren has become America’s pastor, replacing Billy Graham in that role,” Cromartie says without qualification.
Not everyone agrees.
“Billy Graham is in a class and a league by himself. He’s been so visible for so long,” said Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, which is a fellowship of 60 denominations, 45,000 churches and millions of individuals.
Graham’s eldest son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, also thinks it’s too soon to bestow the mantle on Warren. “After 50 years, my father became America’s pastor. It wasn’t a mantle he sought. It certainly isn’t one I seek,” the 56-year-old Graham says.
People are looking for a Graham successor and anointed spokesman for evangelical Christians because they constitute a powerful bloc politically, commercially and culturally.
Nearly eight in 10 Americans say they are Christians. Evangelical Christians make up 26 percent of the adult U.S. population and constitute the single largest faith group.
Cromartie says the reason Warren, rather than Franklin Graham, succeeds Billy Graham is pretty simple: Franklin Graham hasn’t enjoyed the same book sales or media attention.
Within three years of the 2002 publication of his blockbuster book, “The Purpose Driven Life” — more than 30 million copies sold in English — Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report magazines named Warren to their lists of top American and world leaders, religious or otherwise.
Franklin Graham, who heads the Christian relief group Samaritan’s Purse in addition to running the organization his father started, sweeps aside comparisons of Warren with his father, or himself.
“If God elevates Rick to that position one day, he’s a good choice. He’s a good man. I like him very much,” Graham says of his longtime friend.
Warren, who started out in 1980 with a few people in Bible study in his home, now leads more than 20,000 members at his Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. He doesn’t take a salary from the church and practices a reverse tithe when it comes to his considerable income as an author, keeping 10 percent and donating 90 percent.
Warren is known as the pastors’ pastor. His first book, “The Purpose Driven Church,” started a small revolution among clergy in 1995. His worldwide pastor-training network has half a million alumni.
“What’s attractive about Warren is that he is a pastor, not a TV figure,” Anderson says. “He’s been a champion of pastors as few others have been. To me, that makes him valuable and gives him a great deal of credibility.”
Warren heads innovative global missions, such as The Peace Plan, and is widely credited with broadening the evangelical agenda beyond abortion and gay marriage to confront poverty, disease, climate change and genocide.
“Warren often finds himself ministering at the intersection of faith and culture,” says his publicist, A. Larry Ross.
Yet the pastor won’t televise his popular services for a national audience, Ross says, because he doesn’t want TV to compete with live local pastors.
The key difference between Billy Graham and Warren, says Ross, who serves as spokesman for both men, is that Billy Graham is an evangelist who brings people to Jesus, while Warren is a pastor who brings the faithful to spiritual maturity.
Franklin Graham predicts Warren will have Obama’s ear on important issues, while his father will not be a spiritual adviser to the new president. He recently told Christianity Today magazine that his father is “just happy to get up in the morning.”
Ross says Billy Graham is homebound, yet “the lion still has his roar” and is working on adding a new book to a list of more than 100 titles he has authored.
Warren has said he’s very tired of comparisons to Billy Graham.
“I have said many times, there is no successor to Billy Graham. Who was Luther’s successor? Who was Wesley’s successor?” Warren recently told Christianity Today. “God uses individuals in individual ways.”
Billy Graham has been the confidante of 11 presidents, every one since Harry Truman. He led prayers at four inaugural ceremonies. He participated in inauguration-related events for every president since John F. Kennedy, until Obama.
Warren disavows any role for himself as cultural warrior, yet, unlike the elder Graham, whom Warren has called one of his important role models, he has been a lightning rod for people on both the left and right of the social divide.
The selection of Warren to pray at the inauguration Jan. 20 elicited sharp criticism from gay rights advocates angered by his belief — the traditional evangelical Christian view — that homosexuality is a sin.
Cromartie and Graham both say that Warren’s stance on gay relations is the same as any other Bible-believing, gospel-preaching minister.
The 2008 Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reported that 64 percent of members of evangelical churches believe homosexuality should be discouraged; while only 34 percent of mainline Protestants believe the same.
Harry Knox, with the national gay advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, told PBS, “God help us if (Warren is) America’s pastor.”
And some on the religious right have criticized Warren for reaching out to Obama — the first time was two years ago for Warren’s HIV/ AIDS Initiative.
Warren has said conservatives worry he’ll “wimp out” on issues, such as abortion, stem-cell research and gay rights, on which he and Obama are at odds.
Still, Warren’s Dec. 18 statement on his inaugural invitation commended Obama for his courage in choosing someone with whom he doesn’t always agree.
“Hopefully, individuals passionately expressing opinions from the left and the right will recognize that both of us have shown a commitment to model civility in America,” Warren said.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
