The announcement that Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren will host Presidential candidates John McCain and Barrack Obama next month seemed to stir up a lot of controversy.  Whatever one thinks about the forum, Pastor Rick's Saddleback organization draws a sharp contrast to Obama's vision of the world.

Pastor Rick is emblematic of the new face of evangelical Christianity.  While many on the left are still fighting phantoms of the Moral Majority of the 1980's, Pastor Rick and modern evangelicals preach a gospel of personal salvation that is firmly rooted in the Biblical text, and that encourages individual, rather than state action and government power.

In addition to preaching the Word, Pastor Rick launched a Global PEACE Plan to combat AIDS in Africa.  The Global PEACE Plan is funded entirely by Saddleback member contributions, and staffed by church volunteers.  The Global PEACE Plan represents genuine compassion, based on voluntary contributions.

These genuine acts of compassion stand in stark contrast to the phony compassion of the Left that Obama represents.   Obama and the Left confuse genuine compassion (members of society voluntarily giving of themselves) with government coercion and phony compassion (simply showing up at the voting booth).

Pastor Rick and Obama represent two very different world views - one represents genuine faith in God, personal salvation, and genuine compassion, the other represents secular faith in government, collectivism, and the kind of phony compassion symbolized by Bill Clinton's immortal words, "I feel your pain."