Mennonite Weekly Review

Rick Warren suggests in The Purpose-Driven Life that Christians should protect the unity of the church by focusing on “what we have in common, not our differences. … God wants unity, not uniformity.”

Warren’s advice could apply just as well to the citizens of a nation as to the members of a congregation. He and President-elect Barack Obama have modeled this spirit of bridge building amid a controversy in which each angered a segment of their supporters.

When Obama invited Warren to give the invocation at the presidential inauguration, and Warren accepted, cries of protest rose on both the left and right. For some evangelicals, Warren’s role in the inauguration of a Democratic president proves that the megachurch pastor is not conservative enough to speak for them. On the other side, some gay-rights advocates thought Obama should not have offered a place of honor to a minister who has opposed their causes.

But in fact, Warren and Obama are setting an example of tolerance that both the nation and its churches need. Neither insists on ideological purity from the other in order to forge an alliance on points of agreement. Both seem willing to break out of the narrow, divisive definitions of liberal and conservative. Both seem genuinely interested in finding common ground for real problem-solving.

Mixing progressive and conservative themes, Warren presents a gentler face of evangelical Christianity than did the past decades’ leading voices of the religious right. He has condemned the use of torture, joined the fight against global warming and advocated compassionate ministry to those with AIDS. He opposes same-sex marriage but has said divorce is a greater threat to the American family.

For his part, Obama built a broad-based political movement on the promise of awakening a spirit of unity in which new coalitions cross old divides. In The Audacity of Hope he writes of the need to fight the temptation in politics “to assume that those who disagree with you have fundamentally different values — indeed that they are motivated by bad faith, and perhaps are bad people.” Modeling the opposite assumption, choosing to see the good, Obama and Warren each describe the other as a friend.

Cynics might dismiss the friendship as pragmatic, since both stand to gain from it. Warren bolsters his credentials as America’s national pastor. Obama gets to rub shoulders with a hugely popular religious figure.

Yet the Obama-Warren connection could serve as a blueprint for a constructive relationship of religious and secular leaders. Both men know the pitfalls: The furor over the inaugural prayer reminds Warren, if he needs it, that no pastor ought to get too cozy with a president. And Obama, in The Audacity of Hope, recognizes that he must not exploit religion, because for a politician “nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith.”

Faith with authenticity and politics with integrity are keys to the common good of a nation. On Inauguration Day, a pastor and the president will demonstrate unity in diversity, an essential value of democracy and of Christianity.