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Have you spoken to the President since the inauguration?

No.

Are you backing away from involvement in politics?

I never have been involved in politics. The only reason why we did the Civil Forum last summer was because I happened to know both of the guys and I knew they would probably trust me to ask legitimate questions and not ask gotcha questions. I've never endorsed a candidate and I never will. Someone asked me, "[Are you] a consultant to the President?" And I said, "Absolutely not." My role is to pray for the President, my role is to pastor any leader who wants my help.

I don't go fishing for those roles, but when guys call me and want to talk about personal issues, I will do that. I'm not a policymaker, I'm not a pundit. In fact, I don't have any interest in it. It's not on my agenda.

Speaking of the Saddleback Civil Forum, Obama responded to your question about when human life begins by saying that it's above the President's pay grade. But in his first 100 days, he overturned the Mexico City Policy, reversed former President Bush's policy on stem-cell research, and appointed a pro-choice politician to lead Health and Human Services. What do you make of that?

Barack Obama knows we disagree on a number of issues. I talked to him about it before he decided to run for President, and I told him that I think his views on abortion are wrong. You can like somebody without agreeing with all of their policies. Most people know that I was a friend of President Bush. I didn't agree with everything President Bush did.

President Obama has not named anyone to run PEPFAR yet. Will Saddleback's HIV initiative be willing to work with a leader who puts greater emphasis on condoms and not fidelity and abstinence?

We'll work [with] anybody on areas we have to find agreement with. This is a thing that everybody has to learn. For instance, there are people who don't want to work with Catholics because they don't believe in any birth control. Well fine. I actually admire them for their conviction. It's not my conviction. There are 600,000 Buddhists, 800,000 Hindus, and a billion Muslims, and over 2 billion Christians. If you say that people of faith cannot do humanitarian care because of their beliefs, you just ruled out most of the world. The actual number of atheists is quite small outside of Europe and Manhattan.

That's why I can work with gays, who I don't happen to agree with, for instance, on what they view should be defined as marriage. In fact, when we began to develop our ministry with AIDS, we were far more willing to work with other people than people were willing to work with evangelical Christians. It was reverse discrimination.

When you received backlash for praying at the inauguration, it seemed like some evangelicals who had been critical of you in the past were quick to defend you. Did you see it that way?

I don't know. To me, it seemed rather quiet. There was a constant barrage of people saying all kinds of things because I had misstated myself. There's a real fear of many Christian leaders to deal with tough issues. I think there's a fear of, "I don't want to get caught up into that." They saw what was done to me. Even in the past week, we saw that happen to T. D. Jakes and Tony Dungy, who have been brought into an issue. You can discuss any issue except sexuality. That's off the table. It's the one area that is taboo.

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April (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53