This is something else. Messiah College, my undergraduate alma mater located near Harrisburg, Pa., is going to be hosting the “Compassion Forum” in the evening of April 13th (nine days before the Pennsylvania primary). Invited are Obama, Clinton, and McCain for a conversation on important moral issues that bridge the partisan divide. Check out this bit from the announcement on Messiah’s news blog:

The Compassion Forum will be a unique event—not another traditional debate. Each candidate will participate in a separate substantive conversation. The Forum will be moderated by Jon Meacham, editor of “Newsweek,” author of “American Gospel,” and a respected scholar on faith and American politics. Conversation topics will focus on compassion and social justice issues such as U.S. and global poverty; AIDS; climate change; Darfur; and human rights.

The compassion, reconciliation, and social justice issues to be discussed at this forum are relevant to the mission and values of Messiah College. As host organization, Messiah will be able to create important educational opportunities for our students related to this event.

It is sponsored, in part, by Council of Christian Colleges and Universities, the ONE Campaign, and Oxfam America.To my knowledge, the campaigns haven’t officially accepted the invitation yet, but it sounds like it’s assumed they will. I hope they do. It is pretty darn interesting. Presidential candidates come to an Anabaptist school to talk about how issues important to people of faith. Anabaptists have come a long way in their interaction with society and politics. Of course, most of the students at the school are not actually Anabaptist and many probably don’t know much about Anabaptism, but the school is intentional about its Anabaptist values (even if its not as explicit about them as, say, Goshen). I wonder what the campaigns will do when they learn that Messiah doesn’t have a flag pole on campus (oh, heresies of heresies).

What I’m not looking forward to are more jokes about the name of the school or references to the whole Monica Goodling fiasco.

I was first tipped off by these two stories (and my alumni email update).