Rick Warren certainly did not want to share the official limelight with anybody from the religious right to the religious left. So,Jay, I wouldn’t worry too much about any conspiratorial cabal of progressives managing the conversation tonight.  (However, I understand that he has plans to meet with an eclectic group of about 30 religious figures before the candidates are interviewed.)  My problem with Pastor Warren doing the interviewing rests more with his already articulated views about some of the very issues you are concerned about.  You may recall that prior to the last Presidential election he sent out a kind of “pastoral” letter explaining how issues like stem-cell research should be front and center, non-negotiable issues upon which to make a decision to cast your vote.  And as we both know, he’s not been out there advocating for the use of all those unwanted frozen embryos for use in the research that could ultimately save the lives of thousands of us. In that same missive he actually said this and other core “religious right” issues (like abortion and same sex marriage and euthanasia–whatever he means by this- are “not even debatable”). This is all discussed in the profile of him in Fortune magazine.http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/10/31/8359189/index.htm  So even if he does bring these issues up tonight, he thinks he knows the one and only “correct” answer to any question about them that he poses.  Maybe it turns out they are “debatable” only if you are the moderator who gets a few million people to tune in–and maybe buy one of your books tomorrow.

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