By Alan Blanchard

A forum featuring Rick Warren with both then presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain was an unusual format.

See https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93671643

I was fascinated by how the format seemed to deny each candidate easy opportunity to play off of, focus on his opponent … it seemed like it put the candidates in a vacuum where they had to answer more directly than they would have if they had been on stage together with the moderator. I’ve never seen a format like that before.

I would have liked to have seen Warren ask a more probing question to each candidate about his faith foundation … a friend remarked he was disturbed by Warren describing each man as a Christian, lending to each an air of credibility that may or may not be accurate … of course, Christians and nonChristians alike could argue all day about what does the term “Christian” mean?

For a good book on definition of Christian, read the book “UnChristian” by the president of the Barna Group, David Kinnaman, published by Baker Books.