Rob Blackhurst

Everybody sing Ee-Oo," orders the clean-cut singer at the front of the vast auditorium. Ten thousand Californian voices sing back in a stadium rock call and response. A reptilian rock veteran, who looks like he's been out too long in the West Coast Sun, crunches out a bed of power-chords on his Gibson Les Paul. A familiar chord progression - borrowed somewhere from the back catalogue of eighties soft rock – begins. Ecstatically, the singer launches into a Rock anthem that, for once, is true to its name: "If you're alive and you've been redeemed, rise and sing, rise and sing".

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Some of the dressed-down Sunday audience at the Saddleback megachurch in Orange County raise their hands in the air in a half-rock, half religious salutation. The band attack three hits from the parallel world of Christian radio -all snare drums and guitar solos more excitable than the Long Beach surf. Then a junior Pastor comes out for the warm up act. He holds up a bumper sticker. "I've seen in the car park that some of you still haven't got your sticker for our Easter Service in Angels stadium. Pastor Rick is going to personally put one on your car if you haven't got one".

Eventually, during another euphoric rock song, Pastor Rick Warren, America's most important religious leader since Billy Graham, emerges from the wings. As ever, he's wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, a trimmed CEO beard, and probably a little more weight than his doctor recommends. His words are warm as the Orange County spring sunshine and delivered as if he is sitting across the kitchen table. The large Flat-screen TVs show close ups of his face. "How many of you know about the Jonas Brothers?" There is a round of applause when he praises the Disney boy-band's purity rings that mark their abstinence from pre-marital sex. "I hear that they are causing a new Beatlemania out there. And guess what? They are going to be with us at Angel stadium". The crowd goes wild.

His sermon, though team pep talk would probably be a more accurate description, is a thoroughly practical piece of wisdom telling fathers to pay their children more attention. "It is not enough to support them financially. You have to give them time." Clips from a Biblical movie play on the screens in which Jesus on the cross is telling John to look after his mother after he has gone. Warren tells of when his father in law was dying of cancer, he sat him down and said: "don't worry. I commit to take of care your wife". The congregation pick up Saddleback branded pencil and a fill-in-the gaps worksheet in front of them and to write down today's lesson: "To Love Jesus I must "Learn to Care for My Family". The only sharp-edged part comes when he warns that a Christian's true family is other Christians while blood family is temporary and subject to death and divorce.

This talent for presenting simple biblical lessons in tune with the suburban age was behind "The Purpose Driven Life" - Warren's 40-day plan for "Christian Living in the 21st Century" -which is on the shelf of every evangelical household in America. Though almost unknown in Britain, it has best-selling hardback non-fiction book in American history since publication in the mid-nineties. Though its first line is "It's not about you" it borrows all the techniques of the genre – with short lessons to memorize at the end of each day, goals and a taste for acrostics. It comforts the stressed out and time-poor that they can be doing the Lord's work while "writing a computer programme, growing a crop, selling a product, or raising a family". There is no need to find a prayer cushion: you can talk to the Lord while "shopping, driving or taking out the trash". And, in tune with the confessional age, it advises you to treat God like a friend who can "handle honesty".

This book propelled Warren to A-list status in America and turned him into a spiritual version of Oprah with his own trademarked "Purpose-Driven" brand. There are books, "Drivetime Devotional" podcasts, CDs, appearances at the Wal-Mart Carol Service and on the cover of Time magazine. Politicians –especially Democrats - feel the need to bend their knee before Warren if they are to be taken seriously by wealthy, politically active evangelicals.

The benighted John Edwards made sure everyone knew he had a leather embossed copy of A Purpose Driven Life. And Warren was the first religious figure to host a Presidential debate at his Saddleback church where he asked Obama and McCain questions on abortion, stem-cell research and their faith in front of an audience of churchgoers. The President saw the value in bathing in Warren's approval when he chose him to offer prayers at his Inauguration.

Warren's tale is a classic American one of spiritual entrepreneurialism. He first set up Saddleback at the beginning of the eighties when, straight out of the seminary in his mid-twenties, he was looking for a market opportunity. He pored over demographic statistics to find a fast-growing area with a transient population and settled on Lake Forest, a vast suburb of McMansions, double garages, and shopping malls. He knocked door-to-door asking people if they went to church. If they didn't, he asked them why not, and listened to their answers. To all those he met, he hand-addressed an invitation to his first service.

From its first service on Easter Sunday with a two hundred strong congregation it has grown into a sprawling 120-acre campus sixty miles South of LA with an average weekend attendance of 22,000 to become the fourth largest church in the US. Though the Golden State is associated with the secular gods of liberal politics, beauty, and new-age whackery, it has more megachurches (defined as those with at least 2,000 congregants) than any other state. The sprawling suburbs between Los Angeles and San Diego have begun to be known as the Southern Californian Bible Belt: fertile fishing ground for souls that were uprooted from other churches across America by the year-round sunshine and booming economy.

Whereas once the stereotype of evangelicals as being largely Southern, rural and poor might have been true, they are now far more likely to be now educated, upwardly mobile and professional. The Saddleback car parks are filled with Pontiacs and BMW SUVs. And most are in their mid to late forties – though Saddleback, like all good brands, knows the demographic that it is targeting: young families who will pass on Christian values to their children. The church, assisted by Warren's celebrity, is adding 4000 to its rolls each year.

Saddleback, bathed in constant Californian sunshine, feels like a well-funded university campus. There are burbling crystal fountains, parasols where people can watch the service on TV while drinking coffee, and palm trees overlooked by the slopes of the Saddleback mountains in the distance. Even the baptism pool looks like it belongs in an up-market spa. Information booths give out theme-park style maps of the campus directing visitors to different styles of worship in several white Marquees. There is "Traditions" in which the mainly older crowd sing hymns; a "Praise Tent" - where an African-American woman is exhorting over some Gospel piano chords; and Overdrive – a dingy Christian Rock Tent where newcomers are offered a bowlful of ear plugs.

Disney consultants have been brought in to advise on the children's facilities: there is a resurrection tomb with a stone at its entrance that rolls away at the push of button. A stream parts like the Red Sea –though through remotely controlled plastic barriers rather than divine intervention. Then there is a bank of Wii consoles for the kids to play on. But the anxiety around children in suburban America is not far way either. All children are bar-coded so that any information on allergies is close at hand and tactically positioned "Roman Ruins" have bee placed adults peering into the children's play centre.

In the deliberately scuffed looking teenager's area there is a big wall display on AIDS in Africa. And it is here that Rick Warren has his greatest impact on evangelicals. AIDS was either ignored by American Evangelical Churches or treated, in Jerry Falwell's words as a "punishment from God", until Warren's very public volte-face. Before 2004, Warren was seen as a traditional member of the religious right, albeit in a Hawaiian shirt. He rated abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research as the critical moral issues of the 2004 election. He told his pastors that they should regard abortion and stem cells as "non-negotiable" issues. The "40 million Americans who are not here" because of abortion were, he said, a "holocaust".

But his interests changed overnight when he went to Rwanda and witnessed the decimation of community life by AIDS. Under the starlight he prayed "Okay, Lord, I missed the AIDS issue – what else am I missing". Since then he has made a hesitant journey towards the centre. He has joined the Bono/Bill Gates/Blair philanthropy club in Africa: working with the Blair Faith Foundation to distribute malaria nets in Rwanda and dispatching seven thousand volunteers from Saddleback to developing countries. His grandiose ambition is now to mobilize one billion Christians to tackle "five global giants": spiritual emptiness, corrupt leadership, poverty and pandemic disease. "I'll work with anyone to stop AIDS – Christian, Muslim, Jew, Atheist," he says: "And that really makes the fundamentalists mad".

He's even begun to take on the homophobia of the African church. Some of the Church leaders who were leading the charge in favour of the Ugandan Government's anti-homosexuality bill - that could see "aggravated homosexuality" punished by death or imprisonment - had been speakers at a Saddleback sponsored seminar. Last year Warren finally published an "open letter" to Uganda's pastors calling the bill "unjust and unchristian" and condemned the "lies, errors and false reports" that he had played a role in it. At the same time, he's befriended the lesbian Rock singer Melissa Etheridge and has been categorically telling anyone who will listen that he's lost interest in the domestic political agenda: "I have no interest in politics – zero" he said last year: "Jesus didn't die to save America. He died to save Americans. You don't change hearts through politics".

This newfound reticence was evident when he seemed reluctant to get involved in the gay marriage debate before the vote on Proposition 8 – to ban gay civil partnerships – in his home state. A day before the vote he issued a statement against it to his own members – rather than to the media. Scott Thumma from the Hartford Institute for Religious Research thinks this signaled a change: "Warren didn't say anything on Gay marriage until the day before. He knew he had to come out against it. But he waited until the 23rd hour. I sense that privately he is probably quite sympathetic. My sense is that his efforts with AIDS, his efforts to reach out other populations in California, his familiarity with people like Bono, means that he's much more accepting of homosexuality than you would find in some congregations".

I visit Warren's Chief of Staff, David Chrzan, a middle-aged former policeman, in his office on the Saddleback site. Translated editions of the Purpose-Driven Life in Arabic, Mandarin and Swedish surround him. "Rick made a statement to our congregation because our people were asking. And now you can't contain it anymore because of the Internet's viral nature". He claims that the media are always looking to appoint Warren as fundamentalist-in-chief because others have vacated the pulpit: "Jerry Falwell had passed away, James Dobson had left Focus on the Family, Pat Robinson had drifted away. All the old religious leaders were gone. But Rick would say outright that he's not the leader of the Religious Right. He doesn't want to be. I've been on numerous phone calls where people say: "Rick just needs to step up. And we'd say "No. We are not going to step up to do your agenda". The bottom line for us is that everyone needs a saviour – Republican, Democrat or Tea-partier"

He freely admits that the Church got too close to the Conservative movement. "Over the last two or three decades, the church became so associated with the republicans here. You are now starting to see some of the backlash. People are saying: "Hey, we are for the church – we are not just two issue people interested in homosexuality and abortion. We believe in helping the poor, we believe in better education, we believe in lots of things that weren't part of that political platform"

As mega-church congregations grow their pastors are moving towards the centre. As Scott Thumma says: "They are steering to the middle on issues that they think are going to be controversial within their own congregation. They have children, grandchildren, Aunts and Uncles. It's one thing to speak theologically about an idea – it's another to condemn a person". And, more importantly, the broadening of the evangelical mind to include AIDS in Africa and (perhaps less convincingly) "Climate Care" is a result of the increased number of stamps in an average evangelical's passport. As evangelicals have become richer, Mission Trips to the developing world are now as common for the devout as Spring Break is for Godless American College Students. And it's not just teenagers: it is common for whole families to go out together. Saddleback is this year sending volunteers to every country in the world. When I visited, they were advertising to fill up space on trips to Tuvalu and Guinea-Bissau. Now that it's common for evangelicals to have Facebook friends in sprawling slum cities in Africa it's no surprise that the pulpit-thumping certainties have become harder to sustain.

But does all this Bono-hugging really mean that the Karl Rove's painstakingly constructed coalition – in which 78% of White Evangelicals voted for Bush – has gone forever? Is the God-Gap between the Republicans and Democrats closing? Certainly the deep unpopularity of Bush in his final years seemed to discourage a generation of young evangelicals from political activism. According to a poll by Beliefnet, a third of all evangelicals believe that political activism is "damaging to Christianity". And half of young churchgoers described present-day Christianity as "too involved in politics". And a survey asking Evangelical pastors about the political make-up of their congregation showed a dramatic decline in line with the declining fortunes of the Republicans. In 2005, 51% said that their church was made up of predominantly conservatives. By 2008 this figure had slumped to 33%.

But, though they won't provide the infrastructure for a Republican victory in a way that they did during the Bush years when the divisions between pulpit and ballot box became blurred, there is no great evidence that the majority of Evangelicals care any less about abortion, stem-cell research and gay marriage than they did at the height of the culture wars of the late nineties. John Green from the University of Akron says: "We have seen a broadening of the political agenda. But the new generation of leaders and evangelicals really has not become more liberal on the key moral issues. In fact, the younger generation of evangelicals is more pro-life than their parents or grandparents".

There has been a cessation of hostilities as recession and war have temporarily seen moral issues fall down the priority list – even for Evangelicals. When their flock is losing their jobs and their homes are being foreclosed, pastors are savvy enough to focus on these immediate needs. At Saddleback, the congregation has been hit hard by sudden collapse of Southern California's equity-fuelled economy. The church estimates that 10 per cent of the population is out of work. At the smart local harbour, many of the sleek small yachts are for sale and the restaurants where there were mid-week queues for clam chowder are now empty.

Hal, an Italian New York CEO started a careers program when he was out of work seven years ago. Now, he's created a mini-welfare state. Executives who attend the church offer classes in resume writing, Linked In, mock-interviews and a seminar on God's Purpose in Employment. Losing your job, Hal tells the crowd, could be providential: "Maybe this is a message from God telling you to do something different". Next to the businesses, a Prayer Table has been set up to seek intercession on behalf of the jobless.

Tonight is the monthly career mixer where the-out-of work undertake an employment equivalent of speed dating – introducing their skills to each other for two minutes in the hope that it will spark a connection. Thirty companies have set up stalls advertising job though – with the quicksand economy of Southern California - most are commissioned based sales positions or investment opportunities rather than salaried work. Chick-fil-a, the Christian fast food restaurant from Georgia is advertising for new franchise holders, but there are also "wellness companies", "ergonomic footwear" retailers, and a job selling debt consolidation. A man from a financial advisory company offers his philosophy: "Faith first, family second, and business last"

Seventy per cent of the people who come are not part of the church but the scheme has a good local reputation and claims to have found jobs for two and a half thousand locals. It's all energetically organized and well done – and according to those who attend – much more help than that offer from the Equal Employment Department. "It's a Government bureaucracy and it takes forever to get help," says an ageing man whose auto-business collapsed. Too much government, rather than too little, is blamed here for the state's plight. "Government got greedy in California and started taxing business too much so that they moved to a neighbouring state", a Pastor tells me who, with his Ray bans and leather jacket, looks like a better-preserved version of David Hasselhoff.

Another gently spoken executive in the Saddleback congregation, who works in Orange County's high-tech Aviation supply industry, was laid off last year for nine months. I remark that it must be worrying living with such economic insecurity. "We have a different perspective," he says: "As long as you are an effective steward and don't spend your pay cheque as soon as it lands, God will provide".

Overwhelmingly the Saddleback members I met were whistling the traditional tunes of the right: the deficit too high, taxes to high, Government too big, and Mexican immigration out of control– even as they displayed a new-found concern for the dispossessed in Africa. It was these issues –rather than the moral agenda – that energized their politics. Like the Tea-partiers, they are as dismissive as many long-serving Republicans as Democrats and echo their called for "fresh blood" in Washington. There was only one national politician who inspires an excitement that matches their suspicion for "off-the-scale" Obama.

According to Scott Thumma: "If Palin becomes a viable candidate then they might see her as one of their own – a Evangelical person who might get to the White House" So, despite Warren's new liberal friends, progressives who are predicting the defanging of the Christian Right should remember that we have been here before. Ten years ago, a former alcoholic who had found Jesus ran for the Presidency promising a more compassionate and consensual brand of politics.