Sunday’s Compassion Forum, organized and co-sponsored by Faith in Public Life, brought together conservative, moderate and progressive religious leaders to ask the presidential candidates pointed questions about pressing moral issues that are bridging ideological divides in the faith community. The diversity of the Forum’s board members and political supporters speaks to the unifying power of these issues.

Unfortunately, an email sent yesterday from Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins to FRC readers contained inaccuracies and mischaracterizations of the bridge-building event.

Perkins claimed that he was not invited to the Forum. In fact, Perkins was invited to attend the Forum AND the VIP reception for faith leaders held beforehand. He never responded to the invitation.

Perkins called the Compassion Forum’s board “radical.” In fact, The Compassion Forum Board of religious leaders includes numerous conservative leaders: the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the president of the Palmetto Family Council, and the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, just to name a few. Moreover, as Perkins acknowledged, The Compassion Forum was endorsed by Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rick Santorum. Perkins ignored that the Forum took place at Messiah College, an evangelical college in rural Pennsylvania, and will be broadcast on the Church Communication Network (CCN) to more than 1,000 churches next Sunday.

Perkins claimed that “the bulk of last night's program was taken directly from the playbook of the Religious Left, focusing not on the issues closest to Christians' hearts but on climate change, AIDS, and global poverty.” Poll after poll shows that climate change, AIDS and global poverty are moral priorities for evangelical Christians. Moreover, Perkins' claim ignored the Forum’s extensive and thoughtful discussion of abortion. Both candidates were asked if they believed life begins at conception and Senator Obama was asked two additional questions related to abortion.

Notably, Perkins mentioned that he wrote a book with Bishop Harry Jackson arguing that many of the issues addressed at The Compassion Forum “demand the church’s attention” but that “our priority as Christians should be as those of the Founding Fathers; protect the sanctity of human life, preserve marriage, and defend religious liberty.” It is curious that Perkins invoked the Founding Fathers rather than Jesus and the prophets when staking his agenda, and that he chose to place abortion and the fight to “preserve marriage” into the American Revolution. It is also worth noting that on the same day that Perkins chose to attack The Compassion Forum, Bishop Harry Jackson chose to call the Forum “excellent”, “flawless”, and “great”.