The most lasting impact of the recent nationally televised interview Rick Warren did with Senators Barack Obama and John McCain may not have to do with the two presidential candidates. It may be its effect on, and the impression people have of, evangelical Christianity.

Rick Warren, already in the process of becoming one of the most significant faces within the evangelical world, went a good distance toward becoming one of its most recognizable and influential leaders. And because of the tone, grace, and sensibilities with which he approaches politics, Warren is replacing the “religious right” model with a new, better, and, I think, more Christ-based paradigm.

To understand why, it is worth reading Warren’s Wall Street Journal interview with Naomi Schaefer Riley. In it, we learn that unlike other prominent religious leaders, Mr. Warren won’t be endorsing anyone this fall. He places an admirable emphasis on civility and mutual respect in public discourse (his feelings of respect and even affection for both McCain and Obama were evident). Warren’s effort to move evangelical Christians away from what he calls the “combativeness” of the religious right is welcome and long overdue. And his call for conservative Christians to broaden their agenda to include issues like fighting poverty and disease, as well as environmental conservation, rings true to me.

“I don’t just care that the little girl is born,” Warren tells Schaefer. “Is she going to be born in poverty? Is she going to be born with AIDS because her mom has AIDS? Is she going to never get an education?”

At the same time, there is a tendency for the mainstream media to exaggerate how much the evangelical community is shifting in its attitudes on key political issues and its worldview. According to Warren, “A lot of people hear [about a broader agenda] and they think, ‘Oh, evangelicals are giving up on believing that life begins at conception. They’re not giving up on that at all. Not at all.’”

When asked about the assertion that the Democratic party is changing its abortion platform, Warren replies, “Window dressing. Too little, too late.” And when asked about the opposite claim by the Rev. Jim Wallis, Warren is admirably honest and dismissive. “Jim Wallis is a spokesman for the Democratic party,” according to Warren. “His book reads like the party platform.”

Warren has a sophisticated view of the role churches can play in shaping our culture and, while not himself reflexively hostile to government—he praises the Bush administration for its global AIDS initiative, for example—he understands that the Church can shape attitudes and serve the poor and dispossessed in ways the government often cannot. After having attended a recent gathering at the Aspen Institute, for example, Warren commented that many secular liberals there thought “the answer to everything was a government program.”

Warren begs to differ, and the remarkable work of Saddleback Church is the best evidence he can amass to prove his case.

The last quarter-century have shown us that striking the right balance when it comes to Christians being responsibly involved in public affairs without being consumed by them is not always an easy task. Even Billy Graham slipped up for a time, having gotten too close to Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, causing those closest to him to fear he was injuring his ministry.

A passionate commitment to issues has sometimes led Christians in the public square to demonize those with whom they disagree, which has badly harmed their witness. And of course the allure and temptations of power can corrupt even those with good intentions. It doesn’t help when Christians who weigh in on matters of policy are often uninformed, misinformed, or say silly and even malicious things.

Rick Warren, along with Tim Keller and some others, are helping evangelical Christians to be associated again with intellectual and moral seriousness and fidelity to their faith. That is very good for Christianity, and very good for America.

Yesterday I wrote on the excommunication scene in the movie Beckett. Last night while looking up the exact definition of anathema, I found the actual text of the old rite of anathematization, the gravest form of excommunication:

“Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N– himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate. . . .”

In the film, it all ends there. Lord Gilbert is condemned to eternal fire. The honor of God is defended. So be it.

But the actual declaration continues: “so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.” The whole point of the act is made clear: Excommunication is the last resort to bring about repentance and salvation. It should be a punishment given in mercy and for good, not out of vengeance.

Though Becket’s declaration of excommunicaton ends in judgment, the story continues. For as he proceeds to confront the sheriff sent to arrest him, the chorus of monks begins the Miserere of Psalm 51–a reminder of their own sinfulness and an example of the right response to it.

The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at his moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling.

With these words, quoted from the closing message of the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II opened his Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women.

“The Dignity of Women”: It’s a phrase one often hears thrown around, usually with little reflection about its philosophical or theological depth. But this fall, Oct 3–4, the Columbus School of Law and Ave Maria School of Law will be hosting a conference to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of this letter and to continue a serious study of its implications for women and men today. Scholars from around the country–Sr. Prudence Allen, Brad Wilcox, Gerry Bradley, and Helen Alvaré, among others–will convene to discuss such topics as “the nature and significance of the feminine vocation to the meaning of equality, societal attempts to redress the disorder between men and women, the importance of the dual dimensions of motherhood-virginity, and the relevance of the Church-Bride Mystery.”

Come October, I’ll be visiting my alma mater, Catholic University, and its neighboring John Paul II Cultural Center to fill you in on the conference highlights. But FT readers in the DC area are strongly encouraged to attend and hear the discussions for themselves!

It looks as though amateurs such as myself will soon have an easier time accessing one of the most interesting collections of documents from the Second Temple period: The Dead Sea Scrolls. As the New York Times reports:

JERUSALEM — In a crowded laboratory painted in gray and cooled like a cave, half a dozen specialists embarked this week on an historic undertaking: digitally photographing every one of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the entire file — among the most sought-after and examined documents on earth — available to all on the Internet. . . .

Jonathan Ben-Dov, a professor of biblical studies at the University of Haifa, is taking part in the digitalization project. Watching the technicians gingerly move a fragment into place for a photograph, he said that it has long been very difficult for senior scholars to get access to these scrolls because of great demand and risk to the documents.

Once this project is completed, he said with wonder, “every undergraduate will be able to have a detailed look at them from numerous angles.”

The discovery of the first of these documents in the middle of the Israeli desert back in 1947 was a great event—and now amateurs can examine them, too, in the desert of the Internet.

An aside on religion in contemporary society from David Lebedoff’s The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War: “The mainstream churches are losing members and often seem devoted to causes more worthy than holy.”

That sums it up well.

Nathaniel’s nice reflection on Thomas Becket this morning put me in a medieval mood. While Dante also had plenty to say about those who are anathema, the following poem is decidedly more romantic:

Love and the gentle heart are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind’s reasoning.

Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.

Then beauty in a virtuous woman’s face
makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart,
so that the eyes’ desire’s reborn again,
and often, rooting there with longing, stays,

Till love, at last, out of its dreaming starts.
Woman’s moved likewise by a virtuous man.