Warren: Christian inspirational mega-seller turned Christian right powerbroker?

Warren: Christian inspirational mega-seller turned Christian right powerbroker?

The faith forum at Rick Warren’s Saddleback church in Orange County, Calif., has evangelism and the Religious Right back in the news cycle this week. Some are asking if Warren is the newest shining light in the Religious Right, while others are condemning Sen. Barack Obama for attending an event widely seen as a sop to the Christian right.

Warren certainly endeared himself to evangelicals and politicos Saturday night. For many, the event seems to have secured Warren a spot as one of the media’s main-line religious right leaders. (Warren was the heaviest hitter in Christian publishing, having authored the inspirational mega-seller The Purpose-Driven Life, which sold over 15 million copies in its first year-plus on the market, circa 2003-2004.)

Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family,” a history of elite fundamentalism, told Lindsay Beyerstein that Warren is the new Billy Graham. “Like [Billy] Graham, [Warren] knows that liberals mistake his kind-spiritedness for moderation,” said Sharlet, “In fact, Warren stands side-by-side with the hardest right-wing of fundamentalism, theological point by point. But he’s a much better salesman.”

(For more on Sharlet, listen to the Minnesota Independent interview with the author back in June.)

Warren’s sales pitch works to make progressives more comfortable as he tells evangelicals to put gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research on the same plane as poverty, the environment and the AIDS crisis worldwide.

But that’s not what happened on Saturday.

Tom Prichard of the Minnesota Family Council weighed in on his thoughts about the forum. “Initially, I was concerned it would be a feel-good affair without tough questions asked by Warren. The promo mentioned leadership, environment, poverty and so on as topics to be discussed. It turned out to be a very good forum with Warren asking a lot of insightful questions.”

Warren spent considerable time asking about key Religious Right issues, including gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research. It’s a clue to the narrative that Warren has gotten the media to go along with: building a new version of the Religious Right that is more inclusive. Religious Right leaders Tony Perkins, Mike Huckabee and Lou Engle were so concerned that Warren would skirt social wedge issues, they planned a press conference to complain.

Much to their surprise, the new Religious Right is just as beholden to the wedge issue as it always has been.

Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody interviewed Warren about the perception that wedge issues would get left behind. “I’m going to ask them about abortion. I am going to ask them about the definition of marriage, but I’m also going to ask them about more than that,” Warren said. “[M]any people think because I’m trying to expand the agenda that I’ve left the prior agenda. I have not.”

The forum did, predictably, bring up issues of separation of church and state.

“Barack Obama should not have agreed to do this,” wrote the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, immediately following the forum. “[A]ll in all, the evening served up biased questions on the social issues and little value for Obama with the still mainly very conservative ‘evangelical’ crowd. But thanks to Rick Warren for assuring us that we Americans ‘have the freedom to protest this meeting.’ I did and I’m glad.”