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BY BOB BARNES

In his May 4th column in the UMConnection, the Rev. Ira Zepp uses his critique of Rick Warren?s ?The Purpose Driven Life? as a springboard to reflecting on the ?priestly and prophetic? sides of religion.

At the end, Zepp asked, ?Is there some way we can combine love and justice, prayer and politics, the personal and social into the original Christian praxis, a unity of contemplation and action??

Given the fact that the great theological task of our conference is finding a way to blend our evangelical and social expressions of discipleship, I would like to offer a response from my own more conservative perspective.

For starters, I appreciated the fact that Zepp acknowledged the contribution of Rick Warren to the church as a whole. Unfortunately, this did not stop him from badly misunderstanding what those contributions are and confusing them with ?popular? religion. 

Zepp explains his frustration at the use of first and second person pronouns (I, me, you, your) at the expense of the third person (us and they) in Warren?s writings. Using this observation, he leapt to the stereotype that Warren embodies ?individualistic Christianity.? In fact, the opposite is true.

Rick Warren?s greatest contribution to our generation of Christians is not his work as an evangelist in the tradition of Dwight L. Moody or Billy Graham.  Rather, it is his ability to help the church speak to people about how being part of the body of Christ is part of being a Christian. 

Warren may speak the language of our modern, self-centered world but he is constantly and intentionally moving people towards a fuller understanding of what it means to be in Christian community.  That is why Warren?s second purpose is that we are created for ?fellowship,? a topic he devotes a full seven chapters to.

In short, Warren is like a missionary who has taken the time to sociologically understand the culture he is working in. (My favorite moment of the entire Forty Days campaign was listening to Warren explain to my congregation that some people only want to ?date the bride of Christ.?)

I make this pedantic point because many times in our connectional life together evangelicals are reduced to stereotypes, often with far less charity and insight than Zepp provides. If we are ever going to learn to work together this has to stop. And conversely, more conservative conferences must learn to better understand their liberal brothers and sisters.

This brings me to what may be the true crux of Zepp?s critique. He laments that Warren limits his presentation of mission to personal acts of charity and writes little of transforming society through laws and the political process.  He then cites a number of writers who address these matters and interestingly all of them are Democrats, save where their views are to the left of that great party.

This raises a question. Do Rick Warren and those who read his works need to become Democrats to be prophetically involved in the transformation of our culture?  You can?t say that the evangelical right is not involved in politics. They have their issues (which are far more varied than abortion and homosexuality) and their influence (which is demonstrably greater than the religious left). Perhaps the real problem Zepp has with Warren?s lack of ?justice? is that evangelicals tend to work for justice through the ?wrong? party.

As a Republican and evangelical United Methodist I have no hope (or real desire) to see Rush Limbaugh invited to Conference as a guest speaker. I am holding out, however,

for seeing liberals and conservatives learning to blend their passion into a journey together; but that will only happen when we make it happen, on purpose.  Step number one is learning to listen to each other a little better.

One small addendum: Rick Warren is not as involved in partisan politics as much as many church leaders on the left are, not to mention the right. Maybe that?s not a bad thing. After all, Jesus didn?t tell us to go and campaign but to go and preach the Gospel.  Maybe if we seek first the Kingdom, the White House and the Congress will be thrown in for good measure.

The Rev. Bob Barnes is pastor of Bedington UMC. He can be reached at