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WASHINGTON -- Religious left activist Jim Wallis (author of the best-selling Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It) threw a party in Washington, D.C. and many liberal politicians came. Hillary Clinton was there, as were Howard Dean and Barack Obama. Marian Wright Edelman waxed poetic about "the children."

"Pentecost 2006" was the Wallis convocation, a joint affair last month of his Sojourners magazine and "Call to Renewal" political organizing arm. Pentecost, of course, is when the Holy Ghost fell upon the New Testament church in Jerusalem.

But there was no speaking in tongues at Wallis's Pentecost. Instead there was a lot of tongue wagging, mostly at Republicans. "Poverty is NOT a Family Value" was the theme.

Like most religious left outfits, Wallis's groups want to disengage churchgoers from concerns about abortion and homosexuality and refocus them on poverty and the environment. Wallis, the old Students for a Democratic Society hell-raiser from the 1960s, has tempered his rhetoric. But he still looks to the federal welfare and regulatory state as the source of secular salvation.

Wallis's soul must have been stirred by Howard Dean's nostalgic call for a return to the 1960s. "We're about to enter into the '60s again," Dean enthused, "Into the age of enlightenment, led by religious figures who want to greet Americans with a moral, uplifting vision."

Unfortunately, the Bush regime, like the old Eisenhower dictatorship, is blocking the immediate path.

"We're here [today], back in the '50s in the McCarthy era," Dean complained, "In the time when there wasn't [sic] civil rights, at a time when there was an authoritarian government that felt they deserved everything and that nobody needed to know anything."

Dean was savvy enough to issue some words of warning about reliving his generation's golden days "The problem is, when we hit that '60s spot again, which I'm optimistic we're about to hit, we have to make sure we don't make the same mistakes." He evidently was referring to some of the failed dreams of the "Great Society."

"When I heard the hallelujahs," Dean told the liberal religious activists, "I know I am at home, finally, [with] a group of people that want to praise the Lord and help their brothers and sisters." It is doubtful that Dean ever heard any such shouts at his stodgy Vermont Congregationalist church.

Dean shared hope for America as a "moral nation," with national health care, an increased minimum wage, and a protected estate tax. "The folks in this church are ones who live their faith through works -- that is the mark of a real Christian," he assured his audience.

DEAN, AS FAMOUSLY REPORTED DURING his 2004 presidential bid, switched from his Episcopal to a Congregationalist Church in a dispute over a bike trail. Hillary Clinton, the lifelong Methodist, seems to take her denominational commitment more seriously. Jim Wallis enthusiastically introduced her as "someone who quotes Matthew 25 often, and she quotes it right!" By this reference, of course, Wallis meant that Clinton rightly understands Christ's supposed commands about enlarging federal welfare programs.

"I missed the Sunday school lesson about how we help the poor by giving tax cuts to the rich," Clinton observed sarcastically. "The budget is a moral document!" Clinton insisted, repeating an old religious left refrain. "Behind those numbers are decisions. How are we going to give a boost up the economic ladder when too many tools have been removed to make that happen."

Like others at the Wallis event, Clinton warned against the seductive allure of the religious right. "Don't let people get away with nice words," she implored. "Don't let them quote scripture to you."

Clinton's colleague Barack Obama also warned the sheep to be wary of the false shepherds. "We are tired of seeing faith used as a tactic," the senator from Illinois lamented. But Obama also expressed more comfort with religion as a guiding moral force than many on the left.

"More people believe in angels than evolution," Obama admitted about Americans. "Not every mention of God in public is a violation of church and state," he asserted, citing the appropriateness of voluntary school prayer and the "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. "We need Christians, Jews, and Muslims on Capitol Hill to make objections for morality," Obama enthused, citing the faith that guided Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. They recognized that "law is a codification of morality."

topics:
Health Care, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Religion, Abortion, Environment, Constitution, Law, Military, NATO