Rick Warren: Pastor in the political spotlight

Ann Curry • Profile

He's the most influential American pastor since Billy Graham — a blue-jeans and shirt-sleeves wearing phenomenon whose groundbreaking book, "The Purpose Driven Life," has sold 30 million copies — making it the best-selling book of all time, after the Bible.

Since the book's release in 2002, Rick Warren has gained a following as an evangelical who's willing to work with people of opposing viewpoints, but today he finds himself the target of criticism and controversy -- because of his position on gay marriage and the very public role he'll play at the dawn of President-elect Barack Obama's new administration.

For Warren, who takes pride in his reputation as a conciliator, it's an unexpected place to be. NBC's Ann Curry sat down with him two weeks ago for a wide-ranging interview on the same sex marriage controversy, his views on the economic crisis, and his relationship with political leaders, including President-elect Obama.

Ann Curry: So Barack Obama wins, you were disappointed or elated?

Rick Warren: I'm happy for Barack Obama to be the winner. I would have been happy for John McCain to be the winner. They're both friends. The Bible says pray for your president.

Ann Curry: Where is he, do you think, going to need a lot of prayer?

Rick Warren: The thing I'm praying for him and for all of our leaders are the three things I pray for myself— for integrity, for humility, and for generosity. Humility is being honest about your weaknesses.  And humility is being willing to listen.  And I think even in this transition period, we've seen how President-elect Obama has been willing to listen even to people who he disagrees with. That's a great sign of a great leader.

Video   Rick Warren on his Reader's Digest initiative Rick Warren announces a new partnership with Reader's Digest. Dateline NBC

Ann Curry: It sounds as though you have tremendous hope for Barack Obama and his future as a president.  But, you know, he is pro-choice.

Rick Warren: Yeah.

Ann Curry: You are not. How can you admire and say you are a friend of a man who's been elected president who believes in basically what you believe to be murder?

Rick Warren: Because no president, no leader... I can't get my wife to agree with my on everything or my kids to agree with everything. To me the issue of life is extremely important to me. But what I’ve learned over the last probably 30 years is the president doesn't have as much power over that as everybody thinks he does because we've had pro-life presidents for years and years and years and nothing's changed.

But he still sees a role for himself offering guidance to those in public life.

Ann Curry: You know, Billy Graham had that same attitude.  He did it differently.  But he counseled many presidents, one after another on both sides of the aisle.

Rick Warren: They're still people. And they get hurt by criticism and everybody does that.  After “Purpose Driven Life” came out, they began to call me 'cause-- "I think that guy's safe." I don't ever talk about what I say to them.  It's all confidential.  And it's all really more encouragement on a personal level.

Recently he's been offering encouragement on an issue that's on American's minds this Christmas season— the economic crisis.

Rick Warren: 365 times in the Bible is a phrase used: "Fear not." 

Ann Curry: How can people not be afraid, reverend?

Rick Warren: It takes me back to the first Christmas.  Mary and Joseph had these exact same problems. They didn't have housing. There was no room at the inn. They had travel problems.  It was financially a tough time. They weren't wealthy. They were poor.

It's a lesson Warren's been teaching on the true meaning of the holiday, and he's turned it into a new book, "The Purpose of Christmas."

Rick Warren: God is saying, "I want you to get the message. You need to trust me. He's saying, 'I want you to relax.'"  You never know God is all you need until God's all you got.  

More from the interview In these troubled times, Warren says, for Christians and non-Christians alike, there's only one source of true security. Rick Warren: Money can be taken from you.  As this last three months have shown, you can lose it a lot of different ways.  Relationships can be taken from you.  People can die.  If you're going have security, you've gotta put it in something that cannot ever be taken from you.  And that's a relationship to God.

Ann Curry: So for the person who's sitting right now who's rolling his eyes or her eyes because he just lost his home, who doesn't know how he's gonna pay for his next meal, you say what?

Rick Warren: Well, first I say don't blame God because people will typically say, "Well, it must be God's will." Well, there's a word for that: baloney.

Yet Warren says the economy's sorry state does have a Biblical explanation:

Rick Warren: We walked away from God's principles.

Ann Curry: Which principle did we walk away from to cause this economic collapse?

Rick Warren: The Judeo-Christian principles that America was built on were principles like thrift, like delayed gratification.  Like you don't buy it until you can afford it. But we buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't even like. (laughter) And then when the chickens come to roost, we start to blame God for the economic problems. I think at this time we have to go back and say what matters most --- realize there's a purpose begind every problem and that sometimes what we think is a problem is actually a protection in our lives. 

Case in point, he says, in October, the Warrens' 25-year-old daughter-in-law, Jaime, was seven and a half months pregnant with her first child when she went into labor.

Rick Warren: So we thought that's a problem, a premature baby.  Then the baby turned out to be breached.

Video   Rick Warren: 'I'm happy for Barack Obama' Evangelical Baptist Minister Rick Warren discusses the outcome of the election. See more from one of the most influential pastors of our time this Friday on Dateline NBC from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET. Dateline NBC

An emergency C-section saved the baby's life, but soon, Jaime was diagnosed with a large benign brain tumor. In November, she went through three delicate brain operations to remove it. And her father-in-law was left asking questions.

Rick Warren: [They're the] questions everybody asks: "Why me?  Why now?  Why this?" And those questions are unanswerable. You're never gonna get the answer on this side of eternity.

But Warren says he found that even these frightening episodes had a purpose... because the C-section delivery spared Jaime's life.

Rick Warren: If she had pushed, it would have killed her. So what we thought really was a negative-- God actually was using it to save her life. 

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