Well, this is embarrassing. Last month, evangelical pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren announced that he was going to hold a forum at Saddleback Church with the presidential candidates. Warren hosted a similar event in 2008 with John McCain and Barack Obama, at which he interviewed each of the men separately in front of a large audience. The forum was covered by all the major media outlets, and Warren basked in his self-appointed role as America’s leading religious figure.

Yesterday, Warren declared that he was cancelling this year’s candidate forum because the presidential campaign had become too uncivil. It was a ridiculous excuse and a transparent attempt to save face. In reality, there was no event to cancel.

The first sign that Warren has misjudged his influence should have been the fact that he never had a firm date for his forum. In the July conference call with reporters to announce his plans, Warren said that he still needed to finalize an exact date but was looking at the week of August 20. He also noted that while he had held favorable conversations with both campaigns, neither candidate had yet agreed to attend. By comparison, Warren only unveiled plans for the 2008 forum after weeks of intense negotiations with both sides and after getting commitments from both campaigns to participate. He also announced the scheduled date for the event.

Despite Warren’s efforts to make it seem as if he was selflessly cancelling an appearance with both presidential candidates in order to avoid contributing to a toxic political climate, the evidence strongly suggests that there wasn’t any Saddleback forum this time to cancel. The Associated Press reported this morning that neither campaign was planning on attending any event at Saddleback. Saddleback’s own events calendar does not list any candidate forum. (And lest you think a listing was removed when the forum was “cancelled,” the calendar does note that the cross-training fitness class originally scheduled for today has been cancelled.)

According to a Fox News blog, “Romney campaign officials say the campaign had not accepted the invitation nor put it on any schedule. At the time the proposed Warren forum was first publicized, the Romney camp said it was not planning to attend.” There is also no evidence that the church held a public lottery for tickets to the forum, as Warren originally said in July.