The proprietor of this blog is posting to you from sunny Southern California where I will have the privilege of covering this evening’s session with Barack Obama and John McCain at Saddleback Church. It’s an event that Fox news is hyping as “Saddleback Showdown.” Now, Loose Cannon appreciates appropriate and appealing alliteration as well as the next person, but showdown is not hardly what this event is really about…

Announced a month ago, this event is being billed by the man hosting it, evangelical pastor Rick Warren as a “Civil Forum on the Presidency.” A fair amount of snarky journalism accompanied Warren’s announcement, although it was hard not to chuckle at the Internet wag who dubbed the forum, “The Rumble Before the Humble.”

If you don’t know him by now, Warren is the founder of Saddleback, a sprawling church complex and campus in the hills of Orange County, California that boasts some 22,000 souls. It must be hard to be humble when you’re a mega-church star, a marketing genius, and one of the best-selling authors of all time. (One of Warren’s books, The Purpose Driven Life, has sold upwards of 25 million copies). Nonetheless, he tries. Warren prefers to preach while wearing Hawaiian shirts, gives away most of his money, and works extensively on a host of Third World poverty-related issues. He typically deflects acclaim for his success to his wife Kay, or to others in his ministry, although usually he credits God.

He's certainly not shy, however, and picking up the phone and dialing the private cell phone numbers of the two presidential nominees might go to a lesser man’s head. We’ll see tonight. Pastor Rick is going to moderate this session himself. In various interviews, he has said the purpose of tonight's forum is to reveal the character of the two candidates he calls his “good friends,” and not to dwell on either hot-button social political issues or the doctrinal fine points of their faith. The other day in an interview with CNN Warren explained that when he went to a doctor, he didn’t worry if the physician was a “a good Christian,” but whether he was a “a good surgeon.”

That was nicely put, and we’ll see tonight how Pastor Rick operates himself. Already, he’s challenged many existing assumptions about evangelical Christians and politics.  Stay tuned.