The friendship was unusual from the start. Rick Warren was the conservative white pastor of a 20,000-member evangelical church in Orange County, Calif. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was a liberal black politician and a rising star in the Democratic Party.
After meeting in Washington, D.C., in January, they started calling regularly. When Obama was writing his best-selling book, The Audacity of Hope, he asked Warren, himself a best-selling author, to review the chapter on faith.
As Warren planned his second international conference on AIDS at his Saddleback Church, he asked Obama to address the group during a session today titled We Must Work Together....
