Jerry Falwell has passed away. Now Rick Warren, megachurch pastor and author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” has taken his place.

In an extraordinary feat, he got both presidential candidates to come to his Saddleback church and submit to his questioning. It would have been unthinkable for Rev. Falwell to invite a Democrat and even more unthinkable for a Democrat to show up. I am impressed that Rev. Warren donned a sports coat for the occasion, since he usually preaches in an Aloha shirt. (I wonder why he did that. Did he sense that sometimes a certain level of formality is appropriate? Why have such decorum with politicians but not for church?)

So what is this significance of this shift in leadership and in clout?

Rick Warren’s inquisition of the candidates elicited some interesting answers.

In his answers, Obama described many of his positions, even on taxes and energy, in the language of a devout Christian. When asked about his “greatest moral failing,” he discussed his teenage drug and alcohol use, attributing it to “a certain selfishness on my part. I was so obsessed with me, and the reasons why I might be dissatisfied, that I couldn’t focus on other people.”

Confronted with the same question later, McCain cited the failure of his first marriage. . . .

“I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him,” Obama told Warren. “That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis.” McCain said he had been “saved and forgiven” through his belief in Christ.

Each also said he defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, but Obama added that he supports civil unions for same-sex couples. . . .

At Saddleback, Obama did not respond directly when Warren asked him at what point “a baby gets human rights.” He said the issue is “above my pay grade,” and pivoted quickly to his quest to find common ground. He noted that he had inserted pregnancy-prevention language in the 2008 Democratic platform, which he cast as a major turn in party policy.

In his interview with Warren, McCain received loud applause from the crowd of more than 2,000 when he declared his view that unborn children deserve rights “at the moment of conception,” and offered one of the most emphatic declarations of his opposition to abortion in his presidential campaign.

“I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate,” McCain said. “This presidency will have pro-life policies.”

Did anyone hear what the two said about another topic raised by Rev. Warren, the existence of evil? Such actual theology was not reported in the “Washington Post.”

Now Ukraine wants to be part of U.S. missile defense system. Adding insult to injury, the nation is offering the West a satellite monitoring base that was built on Ukrainian soil by the Soviets.

Keith Pavlischek at the First Things blog notes that the affinities between Islam and Fascism have been noted a long time ago. Borrowing from some other writers, he offers a quotation from a prominent theological anti-fascist:

Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian who was the principal author (with Bonhoffer) of the Barmen Declaration against the Nazis, had this to say:

Participation in this life, according to it the only worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in this experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill with the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam, its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah’s Prophet.

(Church and the Political Problem of Our Day, 1939, p. 43)