The pulpit and the presidency

Rick Warren has the power to broaden the evangelical agenda
By Electa Draper The Denver Post
01/13/2009

Rick Warren, the chubby, denim-clad, goateed 54-year-old Southern Baptist now hailed as America's pastor, was the heir apparent to 90-year-old Billy Graham long before President-elect Barack Obama asked him to give the inaugural invocation.

Warren rose to the occasion in 28 years, under circumstances very different from Graham's.
Even before Obama's invitation, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. was pastor, asked Warren to speak at its King Day service Jan. 19.

Long before the Saddleback Civil Forum last August, where Warren moderated a values-focused Q&A session with presidential candidates Obama and John McCain, the media represented Warren as the authoritative spokesman for a new generation of evangelical Christians. the rest