McCain and Obama Meet For The First Time Tomorrow Night -- In A Church!

The New York Times:

It has taken a man of God, perhaps, to do what nobody else has been able to do since the general election season began: Get Barack Obama and John McCain together on the same stage before their party conventions later this summer.

The Rev. Rick Warren has persuaded the candidates to attend a forum at his Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, Calif., on Aug. 16. In an interview, Mr. Warren said over the weekend that the presidential candidates would appear together for a moment but that he would interview them in succession at his megachurch.

The forum still falls short of the kind of face-to-face, town-hall-style debates that Mr. McCain, of Arizona, has called for this summer before formal debates scheduled for this fall.

Mr. Warren, the author of the best-selling book “The Purpose-Driven Life,” said he had called each man personally to invite him to his event, which will focus on how they make decisions and on some of Mr. Warren’s main areas of focus, like AIDS, poverty and the environment.

The fact that they're holding their first meeting in an evangelical church may signal a few things:

1) Obama is the first major Democratic candidate in recent years who seems to have a credible chance of capturing a significant part of the evangelical vote.

2) Evangelicals may be voting Republican in lower rates and become more of a multi-issue constituency instead of only voting solely on pro-life issues. (Making them more politically relevant.)

3) It just might be that evangelicals consider Obama's Christian faith to be more genuine than than McCain's.

This will be an interesting forum and a will be interesting to see how it is covered by the press. Two things that may come from Obama's appearance may be that it will help make Democrats less anti-evangelical and evangelicals less anti-Democrat. I see both of these as mostly positive effects. It will also give McCain a chance to field his faith to a skeptical audience that may end up helping or hurting him depending on how he comes across.

Kudos to McCain, Obama, and Rick Warren for bringing this meeting together. It should be fun to watch.

Read more about the event on Saddleback's website and in US News.

P.S. -- The Democrats are shifting ever so slightly towards a more friendly pro-life position as evangelicals shift towards a slightly more Democrat-friendly position. Don't think these two aren't related. Could it be that pro-lifers would have far more impact working within the Democratic party rather than against it?