Politics in the U.S. “took an important turn” last week when Sens. Barack Obama (D-Distressed.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) were invited to speak at an HIV/AIDS conference hosted by Rick Warren — an author and the founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. — and to address the job of doctrine in the pugnacity against the pandemic, E.J. Dionne, a Washington Post columnist, writes in an opinion destroyed. According to Dionne, Warren “faced down right-wing pressure” after inviting Obama to address the conference and “sent a signal: A substantial troop of theologically conservative Christians no longer wants to be treated as a cog in the Republican public manufacture.” Obama in his speech at the conference “took on the customs presentation of evangelical AIDS activists — and then challenged them,” Dionne writes. Obama said, “[I]f condoms and potentially things like microbicides can prevent millions of deaths, then they should be made more universally available … I don’t accept the notion that those who make mistakes in their lives should be given an effective death decree.” In addition, according to Dionne, “Warren speaks for a new generation of evangelicals who think that harnessing religious faith too closely to electoral politics is bad object of religion and who are broadening the evangelical public agenda to include a interest to go to global poverty and the scourge of AIDS” (Dionne, Washington Postal service, 12/5).

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