I swear, my last politics-related post of the ... umm, day. but David Gushee has a good read up, reflecting on the recent Compassion Forum with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I caught only parts of the forum while trying to take care of a number of other side projects, but my own sense was that it was a pretty encouraging format to see political candidates engaging in - at least on par with the Sojourner's Forum earlier in the cycle.

One point by Gushee bears highlighting if nothing else:

The actual event involved an interesting and not totally satisfying blend of questions from CNN's Campbell Brown and Newsweek's Jon Meacham together with those of some of the faith leaders on the board. We were truly grateful for CNN's involvement and thrilled that the event was televised not just nationally but internationally by that leading network. But I personally believe that the policy oriented questions that most of us asked from the floor were more germane than most of the more personal/theological questions asked by Brown and Meacham. It seems to me more important that we know how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will address global poverty, AIDS, and torture than how they explain the existence of evil in the world or what to make of Genesis 1.