Word: pastorate
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...outrage and protests that have greeted his selection to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama's Inauguration. Warren wasn't a polemicist like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson; he was the one who talked about a loving Jesus, who promised that God had a purpose for your life. "Pastor Rick" took on progressive causes like third-world poverty and sex trafficking, and implored Evangelicals to care about HIV/AIDS. Both Obama and John McCain were comfortable enough with Warren that they agreed to join him for a presidential forum at his Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif...
...short, Warren wants to be both the universally admired pastor who speaks to the nation and the influential leader who mobilizes religious conservatives for political ends. But those are two inherently conflicting roles, and he cannot be both, no matter how hard he tries...
...Warren himself encourages the confusion about his politics and agenda. When the Saddleback presidential forum was announced in July 2008, the pastor seemed eager to emphasize that he was not an old-school Evangelical leader obsessed with social issues. "There is no Christian religious test," he told TIME in the days before the event, vowing that questions would center on four areas: poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights. On the night of the forum, however, Warren hewed closely to a conservative script, asking the candidates about gay marriage, judges and abortion, and only briefly touching on poverty and climate...
...When Obama asked Warren to take part in the Inauguration, he thought he would get Pastor Rick. And on Tuesday Warren will undoubtedly deliver a blandly optimistic - if explicitly Christian - prayer of the sort that has made him popular with the tens of millions of Americans who have purchased his books. But the uproar that has accompanied his selection suggests that Obama would do well to get to know the other Rick Warren, particularly if his Administration intends to continue an ongoing relationship with the pastor...
...Eugene F. Rivers, III ’83 is co-director of the National Ten Point Leadership Foundation and pastor of Boston’s Azusa Christian Community in in the Four Corners section of Dorchester, Massachusetts...