Quotable

Megachurch grand poobah Rick Warren talks to conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt about his religious beliefs...

Well, the greatest churches in the world that have ever existed are in existence right now. Christianity is growing. There are two religions that are growing. Islam is growing, and Christianity is growing. Christianity is growing at a much more rapid rate than Islam. Islam is growing primarily through birthrate, okay? Christianity is growing through conversion rate. And so there are…and the greatest rates of growth are in China, in Southeast Asia, in Africa, and in Latin America. I take usually an around the world tour each year where we go visit our network. I, Hugh, over the last 30 years, I’ve trained over half a million pastors in 162 countries, so we have these networks pretty well connected, and I go back to regularly check on, kind of like Paul’s missionary journeys, go back and see how they’re doing, and encourage, and see what they need, and we learn a lot from them. And it’s the best of times, and the worst of times. Right now, we are in a stage here in America where we’re going to decide a number of major factors. One of them is will America return to the historic roots, Christian roots, that are foundational for every one of our institutions. Or will we go the way of Europe, and go secular. The bottom line is that secularism doesn’t last, because no faith will always be filled by something else, and so that’s why Islam is making strong inroads into Europe, because faith of any kind will always beat no faith.

Envartung (Expectation), 1976, Color and black and white photographic object, 57 inches in diameter. From an exhibition titled 'It's you. Not me' underway at the Andrew Kreps Gallery, Chelsea NY