Rick Warren: ‘I’m embarrassed by a lot of things done in the name of US evangelicalism’

The pastor and best-selling author tells Megan Cornwell how he changed his mind on women in ministry, why he’s ashamed of American evangelicals and what convinced him that gay relationships are ‘not God’s best’

Rick Warren needs few introductions. The author of The Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan) – which according to publishers has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide – is akin to evangelical aristocracy.

English Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon led Warren’s great-great-grandfather to Christ and Warren grasped the evangelistic baton with gusto in the 1970s as a teenager in the Jesus Movement that swept America. He spent years “preaching up a storm” at youth revivals on the West Coast, only to be noticed by Billy Graham, who took the “long-haired skinny young man with wire-rimmed glasses” under his wing, becoming his mentor for the next 50 years.