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TechnoratiNEW YORK (AP) - Former President Clinton's global summit drew to a close Friday with a panel discussion featuring the Rev. Rick Warren, who said churches have a role to play in solving the world's most pressing problems.
(Photo: AP Images / Jason DeCrow)Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, speaks during a panel discussion on rural development at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting Friday, Sept 26, 2008 in New York.
"If we take the people of faith off the agenda, we've ruled out most of the world because most of the world has some faith," said the pastor of Southern California's Saddleback Church. "There's already an army ready to be mobilized, an army of compassion."
Warren, author of the best-selling book "The Purpose-Driven Life," is an evangelical Christian who has broadened the ministry of his church beyond the usual concerns of the religious right to include a focus on the environment, poverty and education.
He spoke on a panel that included two Nobel Prize winners, Bangladeshi economist Muhummad Yunus and Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist.
Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, which provides small business loans to people who can't get traditional loans, said philanthropy has to change from a system where people receive charity to one where they learn how to empower themselves. In 2007, Grameen, which is owned by the poor borrowers it serves, had revenue of $155 million.
"We have to get out of this mindset that the rich will do the business and the poor will have the charity," he said.
Maathai, who founded the Green Belt environmental movement in Kenya, agreed.
"It is very important that people do not rely on giving," she said. "We must empower these communities at the grassroot level to rise up and walk."
In urging a greater role for churches, Warren cited the example of Rwanda, which he said had few hospitals and clinics to deal with the health care needs of hundreds of thousands of people -- but hundreds of churches.
"Somehow we have to figure out how to get business and government and churches to work together," he said.
The Clinton Global Initiative began Wednesday with an all-star roster of guests including both presidential candidates, former Vice President Al Gore, Bono and Lance Armstrong.
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