After Obama-McCain forum, Rick Warren sermon focuses on character
The pastor of Saddleback Church in Orange County urged his audience to judge the presidential candidates not just on the issues, but also on their personal virtues.
The morning after Pastor Rick Warren interviewed both major presidential candidates at his evangelical church in Orange County, he delivered a Sunday sermon urging his congregation to judge Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain on how their characters would affect their decisions as leaders.
"Don't just look at issues, look at character," Warren said to a crowd of nearly 3,000 during one of two morning sermons at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest. "Look at the candidate and say, 'Does he live with integrity, service with humility, share with generosity, or not?' "
Dressed in his usual bluejeans, Warren delivered the sermon titled "The Kind of Leadership America Needs" using Bible passages about faith and compassion. He did not speak of the differing views expressed by Obama and McCain when they appeared on the same stage Saturday, saying simply that "they were very different in personality, in philosophy, in direction, in goals and in vision, and there's nothing wrong with that."
Some who attended the Sunday services said Warren's nationally televised conversations with the contenders offered a glimpse of the candidates' qualities.
"It was a powerful forum in that we were exposed to the soul of who these two men were," said Jim Christensen, 54, of Rancho Santa Margarita. "Before this, I only got what pundits wanted us to hear. Issues of character, issues of value, you don't usually hear those types of things."
Christensen said he was glad that Warren asked difficult questions, such as inquiring about each candidate's greatest moral failure. "It gave us a chance to compare and contrast how they could handle things in different situations," he said.
Christensen, a registered Republican, said that before Saturday's forum, he wasn't sure who he would vote for. He said he was drawn to McCain's answer that a baby gets human rights at the moment of conception.
The forum, which took place inside the country's fourth largest church, highlighted once again the prominence of religion in politics.
Warren told his congregation that someone had asked if there was any kind of president he would not vote for.
"I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, 'I don't need God,' " Warren said. "They're saying, 'I'm totally self-sufficient by [myself].' And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It's too big a job."
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