George W. Bush Receives International Medal of Peace

I have a lot to say about Rick Warren. This is Part I of a look at the problem you should have with “America’s Pastor”.

Today is the 20th annual World AIDS Day, a day when individuals and organizations from around the world come together to bring attention to the global AIDS epidemic. To celebrate, Rick Warren of Saddleback Valley Community Church in California is scheduled to present President Bush with the first “International Medal of PEACE” on behalf of his “Global PEACE Coalition”.

No, seriously. The current President Bush, right. Yes, peace. Quit looking at me like that.

Okay, let’s unpack that a little bit.

The Global PEACE Coalition (WARNING! FLASH HEAVY SITE!) is a Rick Warren missions-oriented project that purports to help solve the five problems that he says plague the world today. For his purposes, Warren and the Global Peace Coalition have placed all of the problems around the world into one of five areas: Spiritual Emptiness, Self Serving Leadership, Extreme Poverty, Pandemic Diseases, and Rampant Illiteracy.

They solve these problems by using a handy-dandy patent-pending Rick Warren acronym that spells out the word PEACE:

• Promote reconciliation
• Equip leaders
• Assist the Poor
• Care for the sick
• Educate the next generation

(See anything missing? Human Rights? Equality among the people? Ending war?)

To be fair, it does seem that Warren’s group has been busy around the world on AIDS prevention. I gotta give him that. They even seem to support (Somebody correct me if I’m wrong!) an approach that includes a non-abstinence-only stance, though with the requisite admonitions about monogamy and marriage. But at least he’s facing the fact that abstinence-only is not a working solution.

The problem is that Rick Warren is using his platform and the general perception of him as an apolitical middle-of-the-road religious leader to declare that soon-to-be-ex-President Bush fulfills the PEACE goals, using as evidence the $18.8 billion spent during the GWB administration on AIDS prevention.

But according to the Government Accountability Office report of 2006, “The Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator requires that 20 percent of all AIDS spending go for prevention. Half the prevention budget must be spent to stop sexual transmission of HIV. Two-thirds of that spending, in turn, must be used promoting abstinence and fidelity.”

According to Paul Zeitz, director of the Global AIDS Alliance, this becomes “unworkable” because of cultural norms in most of the countries receiving funding. (For cryin’ out loud, it’s unworkable because of cultural norms right here at home!) What’s worse, the abstinence-only requirement caused cutbacks in programs that could have used the funds.

As you can see, scratching the surface just the tiniest bit reveals that the GWB administration hasn’t been particularly effective in the fight against AIDS, and has even hampered the goals of Rick Warren’s Global Peace Coalition. So why give him an award?

Come back tomorrow for more on the trouble with Rick Warren.