Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times Sen. McCain, left, Dr. Rick Warren, center, and Sen. Barack Obama address the audience at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. today. McCain and Obama are meeting on the campaign trail for the first time tonight.
CAMPAIGN '08
Barack Obama, John McCain discuss faith, issues at Saddleback Church forum
Email Picture Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times Sen. McCain, left, Dr. Rick Warren, center, and Sen. Barack Obama address the audience at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. today. McCain and Obama are meeting on the campaign trail for the first time tonight.
Pastor Rick Warren conducts back-to-back hourlong interviews with the candidates, and some stark differences emerge.
The Republican candidate had the easier task in the back-to-back interviews before about 2,800 members of the evangelical church in Lake Forest. He drew frequent applause with crisp answers intended to reinforce his conservative credentials.
Obama offered more nuanced and analytical answers on some issues important to conservative voters: abortion, same-sex marriage and stem-cell research.
But Obama, a Christian who until recently attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, was more revealing about his faith.
Explaining what it meant to him to be a Christian, the Democrat talked of "walking humbly with our God." "I know that I don't walk alone, and I know that if I can get myself out of the way that I can maybe carry out in some small way what he intends," he said.
He used a line from the New Testament to answer Warren's question about what had been America's greatest moral failure. "We still don't abide by that basic precept of Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me," Obama replied.
Asked about his own moral failure, the Illinois senator cited his use of drugs and alcohol as a young man: "When I find myself taking the wrong step, I find that a lot of the time it is because I am trying to protect myself and not do God's work."
McCain, an Episcopalian who attends a Baptist church in Phoenix, has frequently been criticized by evangelical leaders for failing to speak as openly about his faith as Obama and for relying on well-worn stories about how he found God as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He did not diverge from that practice Saturday night.
Asked what it meant to be a Christian, McCain said: "It means I'm saved and forgiven."
He quickly moved on to a story about a prison guard who approached him and secretly drew a cross in the sand. "For a minute there -- there was just two Christians worshiping together. I'll never forget that moment," McCain said.
Without elaboration, he said that his greatest moral failure was his first marriage.
The candidates met briefly between interviews. Obama greeted McCain with a handshake and hug.
They did strike some common themes, such as the importance of rising above self-interest to serve one's country. But they also offered starkly different answers to Warren's question: "At what point does a baby get human rights?"
Obama said: "I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade." He added that he supports the landmark decision Roe vs. Wade but said the issue has "moral and ethical content" and stressed his commitment to reducing the number of abortions.
McCain, however, immediately responded that a baby's rights begin at conception. Perhaps seeking to tamp down alarm among conservatives over his recent comment that he's open to a running mate who favors abortion rights, he continued: "I will be a pro-life president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies."
After sustained applause, Warren quipped: "OK, we don't have to go longer on that one."
Though the candidates came down on opposite sides of the California initiative that would ban gay marriage, both stressed that they opposed same-sex marriage. Obama called marriage "a sacred union," drawing applause when he added, "God is in the mix."
Obama and McCain gave sharply divergent answers on which justices they would not have nominated to the Supreme Court.
Obama named Clarence Thomas, who he said was not a "strong enough jurist or legal thinker," and Antonin Scalia, though he said he didn't doubt "his intellectual brilliance."
Rick Warren
United States Presidential candidates Senators Barack Obama and John McCain each participated in a live forum broadcast from Saddleback Church in Lake Forest. The forum, moderated by pastor Rick Warren, was scheduled to showcase the candidates to an evangelical segment of the population, who account for 26.3% of the American public.

During the forum the candidates were each individually asked a series of identical questions by the pastor, with Senator Barack Obama going first and Senator John McCain taking his turn second.  Senator McCain traveled to the church and waited in a green room while Obama was speaking, and by agreement did not listen to the questions or Senator Obama's responses. On some questions the candidates differed in their interpretations.

When asked whom they believed were the three wisest people to rely on as president, Obama answered that his wife and grandmother were at the top of his list along with a mix of Republican and Democratic Senators. McCain comprised his list of a range of people: the architect of the troop surge in Iraq, General David Petraeus; Democratic Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis; and the former CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman.

In response to being questioned about their toughest decisions in life, Obama answered that deciding to oppose the Iraq War in 2002 was his toughest, while McCain cited his refusal to leave his men behind in a POW camp in Vietnam when given the chance.

On some philosophical questions the candidates differed in their moral stances. When asked when they believed individuals should be given human rights, Obama responded that the question was "above his pay grade" while McCain decisively replied that he believed it should occur "at the moment of conception." On the concept of evil, Obama related it to the situation in Darfur and on America's streets. McCain related it to radical Islamic extremism relaying that he believed evil should be "defeated." He then promised that as president he would hunt Osama bin Laden to the "gates of hell."

On a few questions the candidates had similar responses. They both answered that the biggest moral dilemmas in their lives were personal mistakes they had made when they were younger. For Obama, it was his drug use, for McCain it was his failed first marriage.

Both candidates were on the stage together briefly between the interviews and shook hands and hugged in a moment symbolic of Warren's call for civility at the beginning and end of the forum.