The presidential candidates were on stage together for just a moment, but John McCain and Barack Obama offered an arresting contrast Saturday night both stylistically and on sensitive issues, most sharply on abortion.
In the two-hour forum at Orange County's Saddleback Church, Obama told Pastor Rick Warren that it was "above my pay grade" to define when a baby gets human rights, while McCain quickly answered, "At the moment of conception."
The Republican candidate had the easier task in the back-to-back interviews before about 2,800 members of the evangelical church in Lake Forest. He drew frequent applause with crisp answers intended to reinforce his conservative credentials.
Obama offered more nuanced and analytical answers on some issues important to conservative voters: abortion, same-sex marriage and stem-cell research.
But Obama, a Christian who until recently attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, was more revealing about his faith.
Explaining what it meant to him to be a Christian, the Democrat talked of "walking humbly with our God." "I know that I don't walk alone, and I know that if I can get myself out of the way that I can maybe carry out in some small way what he intends," he said.
He used a line from the New Testament to answer Warren's question about what had been America's greatest moral failure. "We still don't abide by that basic precept of Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me," Obama replied.
Asked about his own moral failure, the Illinois senator cited his use of drugs and alcohol as a young man: "When I find myself taking the wrong step, I find that a lot of the time it is because I am trying to protect myself and not do God's work."
McCain, an Episcopalian who attends a Baptist church in Phoenix, has frequently been criticized by evangelical leaders for failing to speak as openly about his faith as Obama and for relying on well-worn stories about how he found God as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He did not diverge from that practice Saturday night.
Asked what it meant to be a Christian, McCain said: "It means I'm saved and forgiven."
He quickly moved on to a story about a prison guard who approached him and secretly drew a cross in the sand. "For a minute there -- there was just two Christians worshiping together. I'll never forget that moment," McCain said.
Without elaboration, he said that his greatest moral failure was his first marriage.
