Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Can Rick Warren Save the World?
Can Rick Warren Save the World?
Apr 4, 2025 4:15 PM

Fox News broadcast a one hour special the other day titled: “The Purpose Driven Life: Can Rick Warren Save the World?” Accidentally, while channel surfing from the Red Sox vs. Yankees baseball game on ESPN to various news channels, I got in on the opening segment of the Warren special and was hooked for the whole.

Much of the Rick Warren story is widely known but some things came together in this brisk, but largely focused, video presentation. My admiration for Warren soared as a result of this broadcast. If “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God” is “to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27) then Rick Warren is practicing the faith of true religion. There can be no doubt that Warren’s faith produces Christ-centered works (James 2:14-26). And, to his great credit, he listens to his wife Kay’s counsel, who is plainly a major reason for his clarity in this and other areas. It is a wise man who listens to such a thoughtful and insightful wife!

Frankly, evangelicals who take shots at Rick Warren ought to be ashamed. But their number increases with everything this man does on an expanding stage of public opinion. I have heard many of the attacks. Warren is too shallow and promotes pop-religion. (If this is true we could use a great deal more of his kind of religion in many of the places where I’ve been in North America.) Warren doesn’t really understand “purpose driven” life theologically enough. (On one level I agree with this criticism, and said so in an article published in our quarterly journal a few years ago.) Warren is naïve about world problems. (I wish we had more naïve evangelicals who understood the relationship of faith and works the way Rick Warren does.) And, Warren is a typical mega-church pastor who doesn’t feed his flock well. (This criticism has a stereotypical view of “feeding the flock” that is rooted in categories that need to be seriously challenged.) Finally, Warren has not proven to be a loyal conservative in many contexts, especially in his open support for the Baptist World Alliance over against the conservative elements in the Southern Baptist Convention who defunded it and protest its “liberalism.” (His actions actually prove that he can rise above fundamentalist politics and seek the greater good of the church in the world.)

Warren’s biggest project right now is Rwanda. He is working closely with President Kagame, a Roman Catholic who loves both Rick and his book (Rwanda is predominantly Roman Catholic). President Kagame was introduced to Warren through Joe Ritchie, a Chicago-area Christian businessman with a degree in philosophy from Wheaton College whom I have known and respected for some time. Ritchie has been actively engaging hot-spots in the world with a clear vision for the kingdom of Christ and its advance for many years. He has a great deal of savvy in such matters. (Ritchie appeared several times on the Fox program.) President Kagame and Rick Warren have formed a partnership that is quite impressive. The goal is to make Rwanda a successful free enterprise context where jobs and wealth are increased so that multitudes can be clothed, fed, and allowed to vote and experience basic human rights and protection from violence. In addition, the ravaging impact of AIDS has to be faced in one of Africa’s worst contexts. Progress is being made on every front but the battle is far from over.

Warren’s next target will be North Korea, slated for a major “Purpose Driven” effort in 2007. I wish him well. I have my doubts about how this effort will work given the brutality of Kim Jong-Il, one of the world’s most deadly dictators. But I have no doubt that Warren will get good advice and seek wise counsel. Who knows, if God favors this man again, as he clearly has in the past, he may do more good in North Korea than all our diplomatic bined.

At the end of the television special Warren said there were four words he wanted on his tombstone when he died: “At Least He Tried.” I give him full credit, he is trying to make a real difference in this world and people who love Christ ought to love and support him in every way possible. We have far too few mega-church pastors with either the vision or integrity of Rick Warren.

John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at "encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening."

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
The Root of All Freedoms: Kuyper on Freedom of Conscience
The Obama administration’s HHS mandate has led to significant backlash among religious groups, each claiming that certain provisions violate their religious beliefs and freedom of conscience. Yesterday’s Supreme Court rulingwas a victory for such groups, but other disputes are well underway, with many more e. Even among many of our fellow Christians, we see a concerted effort to chase religious belief out of the public square, confining such matters to Sunday mornings, where they can be kept behind closed doors....
Hobby Lobby Reaction Speaks to Future of Religious Liberty
Regarding the Hobby Lobby decision and the Supreme Court, I believe the National Review editors summed it up best: “That this increase in freedom makes some people so very upset tells us more about them than about the Court’s ruling.” I address this rapid politicization and misunderstanding of religious liberty and natural rights in today’s mentary. The vitriolic reaction to the ruling is obviously not a good sign for religious liberty and we’re almost certainly going to continue down the...
Audio & Video: Sirico on the Hobby Lobby Decision
Acton Institute President and Co-Founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico had a busy media day yesterday in the wake of the release of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby vs. Sebelius case. using the audio player below, you can listen to an interview with Rev. Sirico on The Michael Berry Show on Houston’s 740 AM KTRH radio where the impact of the decision is examined. Additionally, beyond the jump I’ve embedded Rev. Sirico’s appearance on Bloomberg TV’sStreet Smart with...
Political Contributions To The Real War On Women
Gender disparity in pay has been discussed ad nauseum, especially given that the facts are that women really don’t get paid less than men, taking into account real life circumstances. But are there factors that hold women back? Women still tend to choose lower-paying jobs, and are more likely to leave the job market than men. Less than 5 percent of our nation’s leading CEOs and corporate leaders are female. What’s behind this? Abby M. McCloskey, program director of economic...
Net Neutrality and Religious Advocacy
Yesterday, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) held a Senate hearing on his proposed bill, the Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act of 2014. The bill, reading at just four pages, serves as a tool bat “paid prioritization” in the network traffic business in an effort to maintain petition in that market. This idea, known as net neutrality, as explained by Joe Carter, assumes “that a public information network should aspire to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally” as well as...
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
In the latest video blog fromFor the Life of the World, Evan Koons reads abeautiful poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins over some striking visual imagery. Watch it below: Hopkins begins by highlighting the wondrous and mysterious pulse of nature, moving eventually to the acts of we “mortal things,” prone to appease the self, and bent on crying, “Whát I dó is me: for that I came.” But he doesn’t stop here, for surely man was neither created nor destined to...
Helping The Poor With, Of All Things, Cash
Christopher Blattman, an associate professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, thinks giving cash to the poor is a good idea. Not free meals, not tickets to redeem for food, but cash. And it just might work. Blattman writes in The New York Times of the experience of giving cash to the poor. The knee-jerk reaction to this idea is, “Well, they’re just gonna waste it.” But Blattman finds evidence to the contrary. Globally, cash is a major...
China’s One-Child Policy Creates Human Trafficking Plights
China’s one-child policy and a cultural preference for boys means that the world’s most populous country has a severe shortage of women. That means a severe shortage of brides. And that means a human trafficking crisis. Kiab, a Vietnamese girl who had just turned 16, was told by her brother that he was taking her to a party. Instead, he sold her as a bride to a Chinese man. The ethnic Hmong teenager spent nearly a month in China until...
American Freedom: Is It Overrated?
We Americans will celebrate 238 years of freedom this Friday. In 1776, the 13 colonies unanimously declared: When in the Course of human events, it es necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare...
What You Need To Know About ISIL In Iraq
has an excellent piece on Iraq’s ISIL and the political crisis there. Here are some of the most salient points. ISIL is Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria and Iraq.ISIL began as ISI or “Islamic State in Iraq” and was seeking to regain power for Sunni Muslims. “…“…after U.S. forces left in 2011 the Iraqi government failed to follow U.S. advice to take good care of the Sunni tribes, if only to keep the tribes from again supporting the Islamic terrorist...