Warren responded: "Well, in that same war, of course, Churchill and Roosevelt sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” on a battleship, where they played and met. So, yeah, things have changed, there’s no doubt about that. People don’t really realize how—that even under the basis of so much of what’s happened over history, there has been a spiritual basis. A couple of years ago, Tim, I was at the Aspen Institute speaking, and the great historian, Dr. Arthur Schlesinger, got up, and he made this statement that George Bush, our current president, was the most religious president in history. And I was up next and I said, “Well, I admire Dr. Schlesinger, but I have to disagree. The most religious president of history was Lincoln.” You go and read his second inaugural address, it’s a sermon, it’s just flat—no—Bush or Clinton could have never gotten away with what, what Lincoln said at the second inauguration. It was just a flat out Christian sermon."

Russert asked Warren: "Do you believe we, too often as Americans, invoke the notion that God is on our side?"

"Oh, without a doubt. And, I tell people all the time, I’m not called to save America, I’m called to save Americans. Jesus didn’t die for a country, he died for individuals. But, you know, I debated some leaders in China about this just a few years ago. We actually had a dinner in People’s Hall, and some of the Cabinet members had invited me to this dinner, and as we talked, I (told them) you know the problem with China is you want to have the economic freedom of the West without the moral underpinnings of it. And I said, it isn’t going to happen, because there are three freedoms you have to have to have the success of the West. Number one is freedom of religion. It’s the First Amendment, OK, and the freedom of religion. The second is the freedom of information and freedom of speech. And the third is freedom of markets. And what you’re trying to do is put freedom of markets into China without freedom of religion and freedom of information, and it isn’t going to work, because capitalism without either Judaism or Christianity or moral basis is pure greed. It is the moral basis beneath it that says, “Oh, I need to take care of my employees. I don’t just become a robber baron.” And when you take capitalism, as for instance, and put it into Russia without the moral basis, you get oligarchies. You get a bunch of thugs who rip off the country as much as the communists did.

Rick Warren thanked Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, who also appeared on Meet the Press, for putting faith on the front cover of his magazine, "because I think Newsweek has done a really good job of this. Most of the major questions of the 21st century have a faith component, have a religious component to it. Will Islam modernize peacefully? What’s going to replace the, the, the vacuum in China now that Marxism is dead? Will America return to some of its roots historically? So you’ve done a good job on that by putting a lot of faith issues in the magazine.