The two candidates will make their first joint appearance this Saturday at Saddleback Church, hosted by Rick Warren. The website for the event can be found here. NPR reports:
Warren has said that the conversations will focus on issues such as
poverty, AIDS, climate change and human rights. The forum also gives
the politicians the chance to appeal to religious voters. The most recent poll
from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows that white
evangelicals are more undecided now than they were at this point during
the last two election cycles.
And also this, from a Q&A with the Pew Forum’s John Green:
Beyond what it may say about the role of religion and the campaign, the
event seems to serve the purposes of both the Obama and McCain
campaigns. As you know, there has been a lot of back-and-forth between
the campaigns about joint appearances. This is the first one that’s
happened. It could also be that some of the people who put this
together, including Rick Warren himself, were a particular draw.
In the course of further discussion, Green compares Rick Warren’s recent place in political discussion to Billy Graham:
One of the reasons Warren has the kind of attraction to Obama and
McCain is that he is not as political as some pastors are. He cares
very much about issues like AIDS in Africa. The better parallel is
between him and [Billy] Graham. Graham was friends with many presidents
and close to the Bush family. Graham did this in a very bipartisan way
but always managed to stay above the rough and tumble, because he
always talked about issues, and he based his appeal on personal
relationships.
Read more here. Mark Stricherz of getReligion.org offers some further thoughts about Rick Warren. It is also interesting that the abortion debate does not appear to be on the agenda, particularly given some statements by Obama, not to mention proposed changes in the Democratic platform on the issue.
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