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LAKE FOREST, Calif.

He’s a megastar who leads the nation’s fourth-largest church and reaches thousands of ministers through the Internet and crusades fronting want and AIDS. That globe-trotting work and his successful book

But his willingness to soft-pedal public issues once central to U.S. evangelicals, like as counteraction to premature delivery, has opened him to art of criticising that he has strayed from his calling to make ready the Gospel.

Today’s forum also is a sign of religion’s importance in the 2008 presidential campaign, and the emergence of a new style of evangelical leadership on the general stage that is not tied to a single party and has broadened its social agenda beyond that of the holy right.

“This is absolutely a changing of the guard, and it suggests that the repaired guard of the evangelical movement is able to generate the attention and focus of both parties,” said D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University and composer of “Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite.”

Warren as to one’s person invited the brace candidates

It’s likely that fans and critics will be watching closely when Warren, 54, hosts the presidential contenders at the church complex in Lake Forest, home to 22,000 weekend worshippers.

The presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees won’t debate during the Civil Forum attached the Presidency. But they enjoin make a fleeting joint mien, their chief of the campaign, and Warren will interview each separately about the Constitution, poverty, AIDS, human rights and other subjects.

“America has a choice. It’s not between a stud and a dud this year,” Warren said. “Both of these men care not far from America. My job is to let them share their views.”

New breed of evangelicals

The event will play to one of Obama’s strengths, talking about his Christian dogmas, but it also will draw a line under the whirlpool between his views and those of the most conservative Christian voters. The forum moreover gives him a perfect setting to counter the misperception that he is Muslim. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 12 percent of respondents believe the Illinois senator is Muslim.

The benefit of the court to McCain, who attends a Baptist church, is less amount clear. While many of his views, including inconsistency to abortion, match the outlook of opposed to change Christians, the Arizona senator is far less kind reception than Obama discussing his faith.

McCain did not participate in a spring forum at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pa., where Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton discussed science of duty and their personal lives.

Larry Ross, who represents Warren, reported the pastor has been consulting other clergy and by experts in different fields to be developed questions for the candidates.

Many evangelicals think Warren’s growing profile and his willingness to welcome Obama to his pulpit are testimony that he has emerged as the most pivotal figure in U.S. evangelicalism.

The pastor, they related, is emblematic of a new breed of evangelicals who put social justice ahead of partisan politics. Some go so far as to call the plain-talking Warren, a man who prefers blue jeans and Hawaiian shirts to affair suits, the Billy Graham of his era.

“He’s a guy whose notice has met the right moment,” said Richard Land, a leading authority with the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination to which Warren’s temple belongs.

Detractors see Warren as a spiritual entrepreneur who has built his empire on what they call generic self-help ideas found in “The Purpose-Driven Life.”

“For manifold evangelical leaders, Rick Warren is each a little too naive or a little too shrewd,” said the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, a Washington group that works to meld Christian teachings into the debate over public policies.

“He is menace to water down the essential communication of evangelical Christianity,” Schenck aforesaid.

“Just a formal guy”

Warren insists he leavings firmly tied to his Southern Baptist roots.

He opposes premature labor and defines marriage as the union of a employee and a woman. He has hosted politically conservative figures, such as Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

But Warren said he also is inspired by the broader message of faith and compassion in the Bible.

The court of justice with McCain and Obama, he said, is his latest attempt to introduce civility into public deliver a discourse, even if it irks some peer evangelicals.

“Jesus told us to goddess of love our neighbor, put on the same level if they don’t agree with you,” Warren said.

“The Purpose-Driven Life,” published in 2002, helped create this reach. “It’s not about you,” Warren writes in the opening of the book, which has sold 35 million copies in 50 languages.

The senior managing editor of ChristianityToday, Mark Galli, uttered Warren “has that gift of being able to popularize ideas that are in some ways commonplace.” Galli’s magazine in 2002 described Warren as “just a regular guy who may be America’s most of influence pastor.”

Warren wants to mobilize 1 billion Christians to attack what he calls “five global giants”: spiritual emptiness, corrupt leadership, poverty, disease and illiteracy. His church has sent more than 7,000 volunteers to dozens of developing and Third World countries. Rwandan President Paul Kagame has spoken of his country becoming “the first purpose-driven nationality.”

Following the lead of his wife, Kay, Warren furthermore has championed the fight against AIDS in Africa, rallying support for U.S. relief programs.

Warren shrugs off criticism, insisting he is doing God’s work, if on a scale greatest in quantity churches can only picture to one’s self. “As a pastor, if you love people, they give by will follow you,” he before-mentioned. “I believe that Jesus Christ changes lives.”