Chicago Tribune - May 15, 2003
Nara Schoenberg, Tribune staff reporter

"Guys, Afghanistan is a pimple on the nose of the world," Stearns, the president of the Christian relief organization World Vision U.S., told his colleagues. "The AIDS epidemic is going to get everyone."

Stearns was an advocate for the victims of the global AIDS epidemic four years ago, pressing for his organization to make AIDS its No. 1 priority. And, if anything, he's more of an advocate today, as World Vision presses forward with a national AIDS awareness campaign.

"In 100 years," Stearns says, "the only lens that historians will use for the 21st Century will be AIDS. . . . Our grandchildren will ask, Where were you when 100 million people died?"

Stearns' story is, in many ways, uniquely his own: the journey of a determined agnostic who became a devout Christian, a successful businessman -- CEO of the fine-china maker Lenox Inc. -- who took a $600,000 pay cut to serve the poor, a white-bread American who found his mission in the jungles of Uganda.

But, if Stearns has followed his own path, he is also part of a broader shift in the evangelical Christian community, one that could exert a major influence on U.S. foreign policy in the years to come.

Never big players in the U.S. AIDS fight, and in some cases highly critical of the gay men who were most affected, evangelical leaders have been relatively quick to embrace the global AIDS cause. Evangelicals strongly supported Bono's "Heart of America" AIDS tour. They've reportedly influenced President Bush, who in January proposed $15 billion in funding for AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.

And, as in the case of World Vision, they've stepped up their efforts to raise money and awareness.

"I would never have dreamed I would be leading a nationwide, even a global initiative, on AIDS," says Stearns, 52, whose organization is one of the top three international aid groups in America, as measured by private donations, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. "If you had told me this six years ago, I would have suggested you seek counseling."

A tall, pale figure with close-cropped white hair, ice-blue eyes and rimless glasses, Stearns has the steady voice and understanding gaze of a small-town minister. But his dry sense of humor is pure corporate CEO: He at one point refers to some powerful colleagues in the charity world as "the heads of the five families."

His tendency to say what he thinks when it might be more diplomatic to keep quiet marks him as more a crusader than a cleric.

"When you're a man on a mission, when it's grabbed your whole life and you've personally paid the sacrifice -- he doesn't view it as sacrifice, but we would -- then you have earned a right, perhaps, to get in people's face a little bit," says his friend Jim Gwinn, president of Seattle's CRISTA Ministries.

"He can make you squirm," Gwinn adds, laughing. "Oh, yeah, he can. Even his good friends, he can make squirm. But it's a nice squirm," based on Stearns' willingness to pursue his beliefs to their logical conclusion.

Long before he found his mission in life, Stearns had this streak of moral absolutism in his personality. In fact, he had it before he found religion.

As a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school in the 1970s, Stearns put his faith in science, not God: "I'm not going to believe in this Easter Bunny stuff," he would say to his college sweetheart, Renee Legg, a devout Christian. "I mean, I really need to know this is true. I can't just say, 'Sounds like a nice story. I think I'll believe it.'"

After a series of emotional debates, he told Legg that he could never agree with her on matters of faith.

Actually, being Rich Stearns, he expressed himself a little more forcefully: "You have got to make a choice. It's either me or God."

Legg chose God, and the two broke up.

A few months passed, and Stearns went home to Syracuse, N.Y., to spend Christmas break with his father, whom he describes as a thrice-divorced alcoholic "who struggled with most issues in his life." Stearns got so bored he began reading old books from high school, among them "Basic Christianity" by John R.W. Stott.

He read all night, and when he put the book down, he says, he was trembling: "I was being confronted with something very real and very powerful." Over the next three months, Stearns read about 20 books on religion and related topics. Then one day in his dorm room, he closed a book, his search completed.

"I made a commitment," he says. "I drew a line in the sand and said, 'Well, God, if this is true, then the implications are tremendous. Because you're not one thing in my life; you've got to be the main thing in my life.'"

Climbing corporate ladder

Stearns married Legg, now 49, who became a lawyer and then a full-time homemaker. The couple gave money to Christian charities as he climbed the corporate ladder, eventually making $800,000 a year as CEO of New Jersey-based Lenox.

By 1998, the Stearnses had five kids, a dog named Snickers and a 10-bedroom house in the Philadelphia suburbs.

"There was definitely a feeling of, 'I've finally arrived,'" Stearns says. "I've made it to the top of the mountain. I love this company; everything's great.'"

So when a headhunter called, suggesting that Stearns, a longtime World Vision contributor with extensive business experience, might want to become the next president of the organization, he laughed and said no. He wasn't qualified, he said. And he wasn't interested.

Still, Stearns who grew up relatively poor -- his father, now deceased, went bankrupt and at one point the family was evicted -- was intrigued by the work that World Vision was doing for people in need. It wasn't long before his conscience kicked in, asking him if he should be doing more for the poor than just donating money.

Within five months, he had quit his job, handed in the company Jaguar and taken a 75 percent pay cut to work at World Vision headquarters in the Seattle suburb, Federal Way.

Two months after that, he was in Uganda, visiting three brothers, ages 13, 11 and 10, who were living alone because their parents had died of AIDS.

"I was so uncomfortable. I felt like an imposter," he says. "I'd never been to Africa. AIDS terrified me: Can I shake hands with these people? Can I hug them? I had all of the stereotypical fears that people have."

The three brothers were living in a mud-brick shack with a dirt floor and a thatched roof. There was no electricity or running water. The nearest neighbor was a mile away.

Yet the boys were surprisingly upbeat, with the 13-year-old telling Stearns that he wanted to grow up to be a doctor, so he could help people like his parents.

Recalling the scene today, Stearns starts speaking and stops. He closes his eyes, fighting back tears. "I still get a little emotional about it," he says. "The [oldest] boy's name -- I don't think coincidentally, was Richard. Same as my name. And I think, um, I think that was God's way of showing me, this is where I'm calling you. This is where I want you to be."

This year, World Vision U.S. is spending $90 million in 17 African and Caribbean countries with high HIV rates, compared with $60 million in 1998, according to spokesman Dean Owen. In addition, the organization recently launched a national public awareness campaign, which includes a 15-city tour featuring AIDS advocates, experts and Christian musicians.

World Vision hasn't played a major role in such high-profile developments as President Bush's proposal for $15 billion in global AIDS funding, but along with other religious organizations, it has been helpful in focusing attention on the issue, according to Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a major AIDS-care provider.

"You know where they're a big player?" Weinstein says of World Vision. "They have really focused a lot of attention on the [AIDS] orphan issue and vulnerable children."

One of the biggest names now in the international AIDS fight, evangelical division, is Franklin Graham, Billy's son and the president of the Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse. But devout Christian supporters of the cause also include smaller organizations, grass-roots community coalitions and fledgling student groups.

Their interest is born, in part, of experience. Many evangelicals have strong missionary and humanitarian ties to Africa, the heart of the global AIDS crisis. More than 29 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are living with HIV, or 9 percent of the adult population, according to the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.

30 percent infection rate

In four countries in southern Africa, the rate of HIV infection among adults now exceeds 30 percent, and in one of those nations, Botswana, it is approaching 40 percent.

"The churches in Africa have been screaming for help" on the AIDS issue, says Clive Calver, president of World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Calver praises Stearns personally and says his organization brings valuable resources in the global AIDS fight, including staff positioned to lobby Washington politicians. The U.S. World Vision organization, of which Stearns is president, has an annual budget of $553 million, and the combined annual budget for all World Vision offices (World Vision India, World Vision U.K., etc.) in countries worldwide is $1 billion, Owen says.

The various World Vision organizations have a combined staff of 18,000 in nearly 100 countries, including 13,000 workers who deliver services to the poor in the field.

"For us to suddenly see World Vision coming in and getting concerned about AIDS, with all that they can do . . . is just fantastic," Calver says.

Stearns says he knows there's a lot of work to do on the AIDS issue, perhaps an overwhelming amount of work. But he remains optimistic, encouraged by the progress he has seen in communities where agencies such as World Vision have gained a foothold.

And, being Rich Stearns, he remains drawn to the tough questions, the ones most of us do our best to avoid: What if the AIDS orphans were standing on American doorsteps, Stearns wants to know, instead of on dirt floors halfway around the world?

What if the world's wealthiest nations can't, at this point, solve the whole AIDS problem? Does that mean we have no obligation to help those we can?

"I often try to think, 'What if these were my kids?'" Stearns says. "How would I feel? What would I hope for if my kids were living alone, or malnourished, or we didn't have enough food to eat?'

"I would hope that somebody, somewhere, would do something that would help me to get my family back on its feet."

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