"I want to bring you to what happened at your church. Sam Brownback first said something—Barack Obama was there—you did not rescind his invitation—and responded. "
Russert then played a videotape of World AIDS Day and the meeting Warren hosted with Senator Brownback and Senator Obama, where both called Warren's church "my house."
"A liberal and a conservative, both saying God’s house is my house," Russert pointed out.
Warren responded: "Yeah. I called it the face of compassionate conservatism and the face of compassionate liberalism. And what they had in common, was compassion, which is the Jesus part. For pro-lifers to attack me is ludicrous. If you’ve read “Purpose Driven Life,” chapter two and chapter 22 specifically says that God had a purpose for your life before you were born, and that abortion actually short-circuit’s God’s purpose for your life. So there are accidental parents, but there are no accidental children. You may not have planned your kid, but God did. So everybody knows where I stand on that.
"But there it goes back to the stability issue that I deeply believe is missing in our world. And that is, you don’t have to agree with everything a person believes in order to work with them. And we need leaders who work for the common good, not a single-issue people. I feel deeply about pro-life, very deeply about it. I’m a staunch pro-lifer. But I will work with anyone on anything if we can work together. If you can only work with people you agree with on everything, you’ve ruled out the entire world. Because nobody agrees with you on everything. I can’t even get my wife to agree with me on everything.
"So, for instance, Francis Schaeffer talked about the difference between being an ally and a co-belligerent. For instance, I’m a co-belligerent with the feminist movement on a number of issues. When feminist movement say, “We’re opposed to pornography because it objectifies women,” I’m saying, “I’m in your camp on that.” Now, I don’t agree with most of the feminist agenda, but I happen to agree with that, so I’m a co-belligerent with them on that. I don’t agree with everything my gay friends agree with, and they don’t agree with everything I, I believe in, but if they want to work on AIDS, we’ll work with them. We’ll work with anybody. That’s this civility of, to quote that great theologian Rodney King, “Can’t we just get along?” And have—look at what’s the common good.
"And I really think in the next election, people are looking for that kind of leader, and both Sam and Barack are men of civility."
