c. 2005 Beliefnet

(UNDATED) Usually when the words “evangelical” and “poverty” appear in the same sentence, the minister at the helm is Jim Wallis, Ron Sider or Tony Campolo. When Rick Warren is written and talked about, it’s almost never in the context of any political issue.

But Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and the author of the blockbuster “Purpose-Driven Life” book series, is diving into the issue of Christian responsibility to combat global poverty.

The move took the form of an open letter campaign to President Bush, launched June 3 by Warren with heavyweights Billy Graham and British evangelical John Stott and sent to more than 150,000 evangelicals nationwide.

“I deeply believe that if we as evangelicals remain silent and do not speak up in defense of the poor, we lose our credibility and our right to witness about God’s love for the world,” Warren wrote in his appeal for participants in the campaign.

As a top evangelical leader, Warren lends powerful weight to the cause of ending global poverty. Barna polls have placed him near the top of the list when pastors are asked who they feel is the most influential evangelical leader. In Time magazine’s list of the 25 most influential evangelicals, he was listed first, before other more traditionally political evangelical leaders such as Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Southern Baptists’ Richard Land.

Following its publication in 2002, “The Purpose-Driven Life” went on to become the best-selling book for 2003 and 2004, and the best-selling non-fiction hardback in history, with sales of more than 22 million copies. Warren and his wife, Kay, have set up three foundations through which to distribute 90 percent of the proceeds from the book back into global ministry, including assistance to individuals in Third World countries who are battling AIDS.

Warren stressed that his action did not signal a new, political phase of his career, but rather was an urgent call to live out his Christian faith.

“I’ve never been involved in partisan politics _ and don’t intend to do so now _ but global poverty is an issue that rises far above mere politics,” he wrote in his letter. “It is a moral issue … a compassion issue … and because Jesus commanded us to help the poor, it is an obedience issue!”

More moderate and liberal religious leaders have long urged evangelical Christians _ who claim their ranks comprise 40 percent to 50 percent of the Republican Party _ to pay more attention to poverty issues. Now, it appears, those appeals have hit home.

“Many leaders of the evangelical community have been stung by the criticism that’s been directed at them from outside the evangelical community,” including from Catholics and mainline Protestants, said John C. Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

As for criticisms from among their own ranks _ chiefly Wallis of the Call to Renewal movement, Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, and Campolo of Eastern University _ Green says, “Maybe that stung a little bit more.”

Warren’s letter, and his increasingly outspoken endorsement of a global agenda, has some thinking that a natural alliance is emerging between Warren and his socially conservative colleagues and liberal anti-poverty figures like U2 rock star Bono.

But in order for such an alliance to fully materialize, says commentator David Brooks, conservative Christians might have to take a break from the abortion- and gay marriage-centered “culture wars.”

“We can have a culture war in this country, or we can have a war on poverty, but we can’t have both,” Brooks wrote in a May 26 New York Times column.

The boundaries between the two sides may be becoming somewhat more permeable, as evidenced by Pat Robertson’s appearance alongside Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres and P. Diddy in a recent public service announcement for The ONE Campaign to end poverty.

Warren’s push is part of a larger vision he has been unfolding over the last few months. In April, during Saddleback’s 25th anniversary celebration, he announced he would lead thousands of churches around the world in eradicating five “giant problems” that oppress billions of people: global poverty; diseases, such as AIDS, that affect billions of people; illiteracy among half the world’s population; spiritual emptiness among billions of people who don’t know their purpose in life; and self-centered leadership.

Saddleback’s network of 2,600 small groups is now in the process of adopting villages in Rwanda, where a million people were killed in a 100-day genocide in 1994. Warren chose Rwanda after a recent visit there, and he recently hosted the Rwandan president at Saddleback.

Warren isn’t the only evangelical leader outside the short list of the religious left to take on poverty. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) adopted a document in October 2004 that urged evangelicals to embrace an agenda that is broader than _ but doesn’t exclude _ the social morality-focused “culture wars.”

It might appear that Warren’s focus on global poverty and the NAE’s broader evangelical “creation care” agenda that includes both poverty and the environment put them at odds with prominent evangelical leaders. James Dobson, for example, uses his Focus on the Family organization to rally around family and morality issues, chiefly abortion and gay marriage. But in an interview with Beliefnet, the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs at NAE, said the situation facing evangelicals isn’t either-or.

“We have both the intellectual and the human capital to engage in all the issues all the time in a full-scale assault against the apathy, postmodernism and nihilism that characterize our age,” Cizik said.

But at a Wednesday (June 8) meeting of the Consultation for Interfaith Education (CIE) in New York City, Cizik had stronger words to describe the fault lines within the evangelical community over combating what he calls the “structural evil” of global economic inequality. While Cizik’s organization has made a commitment to global anti-poverty efforts, other evangelical groups, he said, want to hew exclusively to a domestic, “family issues” public agenda.

Cizik cited Dobson as a leader of “isolationist” evangelicals who refuse to “extend support of the community to addressing poverty and the environment.”

In an interview, however, Cizik was more conciliatory, saying that his organization and groups like Dobson’s can work simultaneously toward their respective and shared goals.

“Jim Dobson’s concerns are well-founded,” Cizik said. “Dobson’s culture war issues are not irrelevant. I believe we can mobilize our constituencies, which overlap, in a way that doesn’t spread us too thin.”

Observers say that while the global poverty issue is fairly universally accepted as a welcome addition to the evangelical agenda, the new broadening trend isn’t without controversy.

Global warming, in particular, has been contentious, pitting those like Cizik who believe the issue of “creation care” is linked to fighting global poverty against those who feel that environmental concerns are inflated.

Warren’s focus on global poverty, meanwhile, is crucially timed, Cizik said. With the “G-8” summit of industrialized nations scheduled in July, he said, now is the time to act and influence those in a position to work to alleviate poverty.

“We won’t have the spotlight next year,” Cizik said.

KRE/PH END RNS

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