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America’s Most Powerful Religious Leader Takes On the World
(New York, August 7, 2008)—In this week’s issue, TIME’s David Van Biema profiles Rick Warren, the founding pastor of one of the country’s largest churches and the host of the nationally televised Civil Forum on the Presidency, which featured the two presumptive Presidential nominees on August 16. Also in the issue, John McCain and Barack Obama write about their own views of faith, and a new TIME poll shows that 70% of white Evangelical voters support McCain. (p. 37)
In his profile of Warren, Van Biema writes that the pastor “is unquestionably the U.S.’s most influential and highest-profile churchman. He is a natural leader, a pathological schmoozer, insatiably curious and often the smartest person in the room. Like Graham, he projects an authenticity that has helped him forge an exquisite set of political connections—in the White House, on both sides of the legislative aisle and abroad. And he is both leading and riding the newest wave of change in the Evangelical community: an expansion beyond social conservatism to causes such as battling poverty, opposing torture and combating global warming. The movement has loosened the hold of religious-right leaders on ordinary Evangelicals and created an opportunity for Warren, who has lent his prominent voice to many of the new concerns.” Previewing next Saturday’s forum, Warren tells TIME he will not give the candidates a “Christian religion test,” but that he wants to showcase “what’s good for everybody, not just what’s good for me. Who’s the best for the nation right now?”
Obama writes, “I don’t believe we should ignore the debate over traditional “values issues” at the expense of these other moral challenges. But we can’t just talk about “family values.” We actually have to stand up for policies that value families. I hope we’ll get into these tough topics and others at Saddleback. The next President will have to lead Americans of all religious and secular backgrounds and will navigate a range of tough values issues.”
McCain writes, “A living faith calls us as well to care for the most vulnerable members of society. The poor, the hungry, the stranger seeking shelter and the child waiting to be born—all are in need of our compassion and protection. Faith shows us that the weak and defenseless are not a problem but rather a priority, and a chance for us to live out the message of the Gospels. That message can reach into any place, however dark. Even in solitary confinement, when everything else has been taken away, nothing can separate us from the love of our Creator.”
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