Being Rick Warren
In case you hadn’t heard, Pastor Rick Warren was supposed to be on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos but canceled at the last minute citing fatigue and exhaustion. I’m sure George had the tapes cued up of Warren’s supposed contradiction on Prop 8. Look, anytime you cancel on one of the major TV network Sunday shows you do yourself no favors. It makes it look like he’s running scared. Amy Sullivan of Time Magazine writes this:
The interview had promised some fireworks, given Warren's recent conflicting statements about the extent to which he campaigned for the passage of Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that banned gay marriage in the state. Now, I don't want to let the fact that I missed Easter services for the first time in my life to catch and cover the never-was-interview (note to self: buy in-laws DVR) color my opinion about whether Pastor Rick was telling the truth about his exhaustion. But I do think it's valid to examine why he might not have been completely psyched about going through with an appearance on "This Week."
For a man who is arguably the most famous religious leader in the world after the Pope, Warren is surprisingly sloppy when it comes to speaking in public. He acknowledged as much during an April 6 appearance on "Larry King Live," saying that "Everybody should have 10 percent grace when they say public statements." But Warren needs more like 50 or 60 percent grace.
There are two main reasons Warren tends to get himself in trouble when he talks in front of a microphone. The first is that unlike most public figures, he doesn't carefully script every utterance. In the now-infamous Saddleback video address in which he offers a full-throated endorsement of Prop 8--a video Warren seems genuinely surprised ever became public, despite the fact that it was distributed via email to 30,000 people and posted on his blog at the church's website--the pastor appears to be speaking off-the-cuff. "You need to support Proposition 8," he tells the camera. "This is not just a Christian issue; it's a humanitarian issue."
He uses the same winging-it style in the devotions he records on DVD for his new Purpose Driven Connection magazine. Listening to one a few months ago, I was startled to hear Warren recommend that couples whose marriages are on the rocks consider going into heavy credit card debt to pay for therapy. During a time of severe economic collapse. On the one hand, it's refreshing to hear a public figure speak without any filters. On the other, there's a reason "Bullworth" was just a movie. Speaking without thinking doesn't tend to serve people well in real life.
Warren's other habit is to do his best to agree with whomever he's speaking to. I suspect it comes partly from his pastoral experience, but even more from a desire to prove that he's not one of "those" evangelicals. He wears Hawaiian shirts. He has an easy laugh. He hugs people. A lot. If James Dobson is the Grinch, Rick Warren wants to be Mr. Rogers.
Here’s what I think is really going on. I have interviewed Rick Warren in depth before. I can tell you that Pastor Warren has no desire to be pigeonholed as the anti-gay religious right guy on the right. He will tell you that is NOT who he is. His mission revolves around the Church and how it can be used for good in the World.
The whole prop 8 comments flap with Warren probably stems from the fact that Warren is trying to do a little damage control. The Prop 8 interview he did with Beliefnet (which got major traction) hurt his well cultivated reputation as a global Church pastor. The whole thing took him off message. My guess is he’ll be much more careful about how and when he does interviews in the future.
