Clinton and Obama to Discuss Faith and Politics

Tonight Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who are the candidates for the democratic party nomination for President will participate in separate interviews in "The Compassion Forum". Also invited was the presumptive republican party nominee for President, Senator John McCain. To date, McCain has declined to attend.

CNN will televise the ninety minute forum beginning at 8:00 PM ET. The moderators will be CNN's Campbell Brown and Jon Meacham of Newsweek.

Faith in Public Life, a national non-profit and non-profit organization is the sponsor of this event. It will take place in Brubaker Auditorium at Messiah College located in Grantham, Pennsylvania. The college has a press release on their website.

Other sponsors include the "Council of Christian Colleges and Universities", the 'One Campaign", and "Oxfam America".

Some of the topics will be Poverty, Human Rights, and the AIDs crisis. The Church Communications Network will re-broadcast the interviews on June 20th to 1000 congregations nationwide.

This should be an interesting forum as the separation of church and state has long been an acknowledged principle in American politics. While at the same time, Americans have been curious as to the faith of their political leaders.

In the 1960 presidential election, the catholic faith of democratic candidate John F. Kennedy became an issue he would eventually address in a satisfactory manner to the nation.

This Forum may have even more relevance in light of comments attributed to Senator Obama at a private San Francisco fundraiser on April 6th which were recently made public. You can read more about his comments here.

Following the interviews with Clinton and Obama, CNN's John King will be joined by members of the faith community who will provide commentary and analysis.