{"id":140,"date":"2006-12-25T21:09:41","date_gmt":"2006-12-26T02:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/2006\/12\/25\/kay-warren-and-saddleback-church\/"},"modified":"2007-01-03T15:05:46","modified_gmt":"2007-01-03T20:05:46","slug":"kay-warren-and-saddleback-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/2006\/12\/25\/kay-warren-and-saddleback-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Kay Warren and Saddleback Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kay Warren, wife of Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life<\/em> and founder of the Saddleback Church, was recently interviewed in Newsweek. The Warrens earlier this month hosted a summit<\/a> attended by more than 2,000 on the role of the church in fighting AIDS. As I recently posted<\/a>, Warren invited Senator Barack Obama whose views on abortion fell foul of some of the evangelical base.<\/p>\n

The Warrens, like Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse, are battling the stigma in the Christian community that those suffering from AIDS are deviants who brought the disease on themselves. Kay said in the interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We live in a broken, sinful world. We all make mistakes, but at the same time God cares passionately about everyone he has made. You never find Jesus asking people how they got sick, not once does he ask that. When sick people came to him, he simply said, \u201cHow can I help you?\u201d And that\u2019s where we\u2019re trying to go. That needs to be the first question out of our mouths.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kay Warren spoke of why the church has a special role to play in the fight against AIDS:<\/p>\n

And we also have moral authority. Government doesn\u2019t have moral authority; nor does the private sector. And on top of that, the church has a motivation that\u2019s different than anyone else\u2019s. The government may feel responsible to protect its citizens; the private sector gets involved because of a profit motive. But people who follow Christ, we have a motivation that outlasts all of those, and that is the motivation of love.<\/p>\n

It is because this is not a political issue, it\u2019s a moral one. If you have one ounce of compassion in you and have ever met people who have been stigmatized like that, and looked into the eyes of another human who is suffering, it\u2019s almost impossible not to care for them. It\u2019s a moral response from one person to another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While we may disagree about the right mix of policies–condoms, abstinence, fidelity–that can preven the disease, I applaud the Warrens for their willingness to take this issue to a mass audience. One of the most interesting elements the Warrens emphasize is the importance of using their faith to challenge systems of privilege in developing countries that prevent women from protecting themselves from sexual abuse. This is a very significant, albeit difficult, challenge, but I’m glad the Warrens have gotten religion on HIV\/AIDS and wish them success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kay Warren, wife of Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life and founder of the Saddleback Church, was recently interviewed in Newsweek. The Warrens earlier this month hosted a summit attended by more than 2,000 on the role of the church in fighting AIDS. As I recently posted, Warren invited Senator Barack Obama whose views […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-and-policy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/politicshiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}