Megachurch Warren, AIDS, and politics- Washington Post

"Warren speaks for a new generation of evangelicals who think that harnessing religious faith too closely to electoral politics is bad for religion, and who are broadening the evangelical public agenda to include a concern for global poverty and the scourge of AIDS."

The most-e-mailed article from yesterday's Washington Post is an op-ed piece that describes this shift in more detail. Here's a few highlights:

Message From a Megachurch
Washington Post
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006; A29

When Rick Warren, one of the nation's most popular evangelical pastors, faced down right-wing pressure and invited Sen. Barack Obama to speak at a gathering at his Saddleback Valley Community Church about the AIDS crisis, he sent a signal: A significant group of theologically conservative Christians no longer wants to be treated as a cog in the Republican political machine.

For a quarter-century since the rise of the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, white evangelical Christians have been widely seen as a Republican preserve.

But Warren speaks for a new generation of evangelicals who think that harnessing religious faith too closely to electoral politics is bad for religion, and who are broadening the evangelical public agenda to include a concern for global poverty and the scourge of AIDS.

Warren is also the most gifted religious entrepreneur since Billy Graham. Warren's book "The Purpose Driven Life" has sold in the tens of millions, and his specific model for the megachurch has spread all over the country. He is not building a new denomination. He is building a new network, and it's powerful. Warren and his wife, Kay, have made alleviating the AIDS crisis in Africa one of the central components of their mission.

[outbound links added, note that the first 7 chapters of The Purpose Driven LIfe are available free on-line here. ]

Some AIDS Crisis Reference Sites:

World Health Organization (WHO)
BBC News
US - Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
Wikipedia - (with many links to source sites)

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