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HOUSES OF WORSHIP: From Gospel to Government
...A final weakness of Christian progressives is one shared by some Christian conservatives: the impulse to leap directly from the Bible to contemporary politics. Few are as blatant as Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine and a darling of Democratic leaders. In his best-selling book "God's Politics," Mr. Wallis discerns from a short passage in Isaiah a blueprint for government welfare spending. "The starting point to check how our society measures up to Isaiah's platform," Mr. Wallis writes, "is by examining our federal budget." Or, as the Christian Alliance for Progress argues, rather confusedly: "In his sermons and in his parables, Jesus teaches that poverty can certainly be an effective weapon of mass destruction."

Their Web sites are awash with this kind of talk. In all of it, there is little room for political philosophy, or civil society, or even an appreciation of the different roles of church and state. Whatever the argument -- whether it's a big government approach to poverty or a pacifist stance on terrorism -- Bible verses are at the ready.

Call it fundamentalism from the left. If religious progressives help the Democratic Party to "find religion," we're going to see a lot more of it. Heaven help us.