Showdown at Saddleback

This evening, in a ground-breaking campaign event that has gotten little notice from the media herd, Barack Obama and John McCain will each appear at the same event and answer questions from a Pastor.

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Each Sunday 126 million Americans leave their homes to attend a church. To put that number in perspective, note that in July 138 million Americans were employed, 28 million leave their homes to see a movie each week, and 97.5 million watched the Super Bowl on TV last February. Fifty-six percent of Americans tell pollsters their faith is “very important.”

Yet, there is rarely any news about faith or church life in the national media, except the occasional scandals about delinquent clergy or creepy cults. Active, committed Christians and observant Jews are a huge sub-culture that’s virtually invisible to the media except during election campaigns when uninformed talking heads presume to know them (us, actually) as simpletons, whose votes are determined by irrelevant “social” issues.

But Today, history will be made as both candidates will appear at the same church on the same day and submit to questioning by an Evangelical Pastor.

Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, in the Los Angeles suburb of Lake Forest is a giant in the Evangelical Christian world. To tens of millions of Christians, the name Rick Warren is as familiar as the name of the President. He started his church in an apartment 25 years ago with his wife and three other people. Today, 22,000 people attend every Sunday.

In 1995 he wrote “The Purpose Driven Church,” a book for church leaders on how to start and/or grow a Christ-centered, Bible believing church in contemporary America. In 2002 he published another book, “The Purpose Driven Life,” which to date has sold over 30 million copies. Pastor Warren has produced workbooks, videos, and lesson plans to help churches around the world attract and teach new Christians.

Pastor Warren is in the vanguard of a recent trend in evangelical churches to deemphasize controversial social and political issues such as abortion or homosexuality in the hope of attracting more people and thus saving more souls. The theory, which makes sense, is that when a person’s dominant cultural influences, over a lifetime, have been from Hollywood, public education, academia and the media he or she is unlikely to respond positively to a church outreach that begins with preaching against abortion or gay marriage or unmarried couples living together and having children.

The theory is theologically sound as well. Jesus taught that we are all sinners. He sought out and actively mingled with people who were shunned for their sins by religious leaders of the time, and did not classify some categories of sinner as less worthy of forgiveness and salvation than others.

Pastor Warren has seemingly performed a miracle in persuading both candidates to appear at his church on the same evening. Senator Obama will appear first and answer a series of questions. Senator McCain will join him on stage for a brief handshake, and then Obama will leave and McCain will respond to the same series of questions.

Today, Pastor Warren said many people are put off by debates between left and right and that his goal is to find common ground. If he succeeds, he will have performed another miracle. In recent decades, “common ground” has most often been code for more government control, less individual liberty, and more resources devoted to leftist causes.

Warren will probably give each man an opportunity to describe his faith in his own words, and he’ll probably deemphasize the hot buttons the media associate with Christian believers. He’ll also avoid cleverly worded “gotcha” questions designed to trap the candidates.

Pastor Warren’s approach may shame the news celebrities who are slated conduct three Presidential debates in October into asking more relevant questions.

We’ll have commentary here at Liberty Works right after the event.