Thinking Globally: Rick Warren Speaks To Both US Presidential Candidates

I was very interested in what might take place at this forum down at Saddleback church when I first heard about it on NPR. It would be the first time that both Barack Obama and John McCain were at the same place at the same time since becoming the presumptive presidential nominees.

I listened as political analysts broke down the situation, and tried to predict what kind of effect this event would have on their political standing. They seemed pretty receptive to the idea of this forum, and were especially pleased that Warren had stated that he intended to talk about a wider spectrum of topics than focusing on the conservative "hot-buttons" of abortion and same-sex marriage. This made me wonder if Warren was going to address these issues at all, and I was relieved to find out he did.

One of my favorite bloggers, Albert Mohler, recapped his impression of the forum HERE, and he mentioned that although he was skeptical at first, he makes note of some important developments.

With the press pushing the event as a "new face" for American evangelicals, I was not overly hopeful. Given the hype, I was positively unhopeful. But . . . the event turned to be quite worthwhile after all. I still have deep reservations about identifying the event so closely with a church, but the conversations really did get to urgently important and controversial issues, and Pastor Rick Warren handled the conversations with aplomb, demonstrating both civility and candor.

He asked about their greatest moral failure. Obama spoke of drug and alcohol use as a young person. McCain referred directly to the failure of his first marriage. When asked about the reality of evil, the two candidates revealed very different approaches. When asked about abortion and same-sex marriage, a great chasm appeared between the candidates. Obama declared his complete support for the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion on demand. When asked, "at what point does a baby get human rights?" Obama said that the question "is above my pay grade." That is a particularly evasive answer, because the President of the United States must frame policies that are predicated on some assumption of when a human being, born or unborn, deserves the full protection of the law.

He goes on to talk about how some in the secular world responded to the event, noting their intense desire to not only retain clear separation of church and state, but resist this "push for a theocratic presidency."

CNN.com also had a good review of the forum, and it posts many of the replies from both candidates. Check it out HERE.

While this post isn't focused on a different country, I still think we need to "think globally" inasmuch as the next president is going to have a profound impact on the world at large. On our own soil, we wait to see where many of the issues we hold dear will end up, even as we attempt to turn our eyes to other issues confronting the world such as world hunger, global warming, terrorism, and others.

Pray, pray, pray.