This is from Hardball on March 24th.

MATTHEWS: When Ashley Smith was held hostage by the man accused in the Atlanta courtroom shootings, she read a passage from the self-help book “The Purpose Driven Life” by pastor Rick Warren to convince him, the man who was holding her, to surrender. Incredibly, it worked.

Pastor Warren is here with us for our weeklong special reports on faith in America.

Do you have any thoughts about the Schiavo case that we could benefit from, Rick?

RICK WARREN, AUTHOR, “THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE”: You know, Chris, I think there‘s a connection between a lot of these things we‘re seeing in the news right now.

And that is, one of the fundamental needs people have is this need for a reason for hope.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

WARREN: And when people lack hope, they act in hopeless ways. And one of those ways sometimes is to become an advocate of death. And that doesn‘t make any difference whether it is a boy in Minnesota or a man in Atlanta or even a husband in Florida.

In each of those cases, people were acting in a hopeless way. Terri Schiavo‘s husband has no hope that she‘ll ever recover. And so he is acting in a hopeless way.

While Rick Warren is right that people need hope, his initial exchange with Chris seems to indicate that he does not understand the facts of the Schiavo case. If one thinks that Michael Schiavo “has no hope that she’ll ever recover” and is “acting in a hopeless way” has missed the story. A cursory bit of digging will reveal affidavits, testimony, eyewitness accounts, etc that show Michael has repeatedly withheld care, withheld rehab, and has not fought for her life. It’s not that he has no hope, it’s that he does not want her to live.

He also seems to have fallen for the line that she is PVS.

Well, my question is, Chris, when there are probably millions of Americans who are willing to feed Terri, and including her parents, why he insists on pulling the plug. This is a woman who is not—this is not a right-to-die issue, in my opinion, because she is not dying. She wasn‘t dying until somebody decided to starve her to death. She‘s not brain-dead. She is in a vegetative state.

While he’s trying to make the case for her life, he has his facts wrong. The facts are more in the favor of life than he realizes.

However, a bit later in the interview, he appears to indicate some level of research:

WARREN: Well—well, I‘ll just tell you, frankly, I doubt his veracity in the things that he said. I would question why he is in such a hurry.

And then, maybe, he hits the real question in this case.

MATTHEWS: So why is he doing this, do you think?

WARREN: I have no idea. Well, I don‘t know.

There‘s 1,000 reasons could you speculate. What if she came back out of the—out of this state and had something to say that he didn‘t want said?

It’s a good question, Mr. Warren. Even though she is apparently not in a PVS, and Michael Schiavo is likely not hopeless regarding her ability to recover, you hit the nail on the head with that last question.

Others commenting on Rick Warren’s LKL appearance include
Crooks and Liars
Divine Conspirator
Three Bad Fingers