The Not-So-Simple Life of Pastor Rick Warren

Listening to Rick Warren is always a struggle for me. It's not because of his religion or political views, neither of which I share. It's because of the tension between his persona and his good works.

The globe-trotting Saddleback Church pastor, whose "Purpose-Driven Life" is the best-selling hardcover in the English language, met with Washington writers at a lunch hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. He sandwiched the Friday appearance between a taping of NBC's "Meet The Press" ("I told the great David Gregory....") and trips to Paris, Vienna (he's speaking at a dinner honoring "Peter Drucker, my mentor") and Africa ("I'm taking Tony Blair with me to inspect" programs to fight poverty, illiteracy, corruption, and disease.)

It was just the start of 90 minutes in which Warren may have broken a record for famous names dropped during one meal. The scale and nobility of the international work he leads through his southern California megachurch, whether it's starting schools, training health workers or adopting orphans, are mind-boggling. Yet so are the health of his ego and the altitude at which he lives.

In no particular order, unbidden, Warren brought up:
-- President Obama. "We don't agree on a lot of things but we are friends."
-- Former Arkansas governor and presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. "My buddy Huckabee, who I went to seminary with."
-- Former president George W. Bush. "President Bush invited me to be the closing speaker at a conference on malaria..."
-- Jim Collins, author of "Good to Great" (a massive best-seller in its own right, but nobody puts Rick Warren in a corner). "Jim and I were speaking at Claremont grad school last week..."
-- "My friend Nick Kristof" and his wife, Sheryl Wu Dunn, guests at an upcoming Saddleback forum on sex trafficking and slavery and co-authors of "a terrific book" about the oppression of women.
-- Melinda Gates, "who's a friend."
-- Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam. Cat, or Yusuf, approached Warren last summer at the Islamic Society of North America conference in Washington. And what was Warren doing there? "25,000 Muslims, and they invited a non-Muslim to be keynote speaker."
-- The Chinese Cabinet. "I went to a state dinner a while back with the Cabinet of China in People's Hall in Tianamen Square. I got into a debate on religious freedom with the Communist leaders themselves. In fact I'm probably one of the few people who's actually had the Chinese Cabinet in my backyard for a barbecue."
-- The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. As in, "The president of Rwanda asked me to go and visit the president of Burundi..." That does not lead to a punchline, but to something profound. The president of Burundi told Warren he had pursued national reconciliation by putting two men who murdered his brothers into his Cabinet. He also told Warren his country didn't have money for schools -- and Warren helped him start 200 in two months in churches that stood empty most of the week.

And so it goes with the push-pull. Warren's books bring in income in the tens of millions of dollars, and he tithes 90 percent of it to Saddleback. He hasn't taken a salary for seven years and he has paid back all the church money he received before that.

"I'm pretty simple. If I got a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, I don't need anything else," Warren said. "I still live in same house I've lived in for 17 years. I drive a 10-year-old Ford truck. I bought my watch at Wal-Mart. I don't own a boat. I don't own a plane. I don't own a vacation home. I didn't want to be a televangelist."

All the same, I'm not sure how simple you can be and still start a sentence, "Last year I was speaking at Davos..." That would be the World Economic Forum's annual conclave of the world's top business, political and intellectual leaders.

Warren's intersection with politics is also less than simple. He insists that he is not political and that, with the exception of urging presidents to take care of orphans and sick people around the world, he doesn't want or try to influence policy. Yet in 2008 he hosted a forum with Obama and Republican nominee John McCain and mobilized his church to fight gay marriage, which was on the California ballot.

Obama stirred controversy by asking Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, and Warren stirred it further by appearing to equate consensual adult gay sex with incest or pedophilia. He says he didn't mean to say that. "I don't believe that at all. Never have," he said, adding he has worked closely with gay people and groups in the fight against AIDS.

Warren declined Friday to say much about the health reform bill pending in Congress, or the abortion conflict that could hang it up. He did discuss a "civil society" initiative that he started because, he said, "the world's getting cruder. It's getting more crass." But he was strikingly vague about the origins and nature of this project, and its relation to politics, cable TV, radio talkers and the Internet.

When I pressed for details, Warren said he subscribed to four conservative and four liberal magazines throughout 2008 but did not renew any of them. "They were too derogatory. They could see no good in the other side," he said. "Even your worst enemy is going to say something that makes sense if you listen. And people are acting like babies. And they're acting extremely immature." Alas, that was one of the few times Warren did not name any names, although I asked.

The prominent pastor has been mostly out of the public eye since Obama's inauguration. "I really didn't have anything to say in the last year," Warren said. "The reason I'm doing this (lunch) is because I'm on my way to Brussels and then Paris. I had an invitation from David Bradley (owner of The Atlantic and other publications) to come and do one of his dinners. And I just thought well maybe I'll come do this on the way going out. I just stack 'em all up."

The re-emergence may originally have been purpose-driven since "The Hope You Need," Warren's new book, initially was scheduled for publication Tuesday, Nov. 17. It's an inspirational analysis of the Lord's Prayer and would have made a good Christmas present. From a marketing standpoint, the new Jan. 1 release date is also appropriate -- coinciding with all of us making hopeful new year's resolutions and committing ourselves to be better people living better lives.

Ironically, Warren is back on the radar just in time to help sales of another book: "Prophet of Purpose: The Life of Rick Warren," by Jeffery Sheler, released Nov. 3. "I haven't read the book. I haven't even looked at it," Warren said and added, possibly joking, "Terrible title. It was not an authorized biography. He just did it."

The last question of the Pew session came via e-mail from my Politics Daily colleague David Gibson, who had been listening over the phone. He asked if Warren considers himself a potential successor to Billy Graham. The pastor, though he plays a similar role counseling presidents under stress, gave an emphatic no and said Graham is irreplaceable. But of course, there was more. Graham is "a mentor of mine," he said, who taught him how to handle criticism. "I sent him an e-mail just this week," Warren said. "I just sent him a question this week about an issue he's kind of mentored me on."

No specifics about which issue, but there was clarity on another: They're close.