For those who would accept the spin that religious-left activist Jim Wallis is some kind of nonpartisan centrist, consider his interview on the radical Pacifica Radio network on Wednesday. He came on the Democracy Now! show to praise Barack Obama and his fluency with faith chatter and his faith-based initiative proposals. Host Amy Goodman asked Wallis how he came to know Obama:

I have known Barack for ten years, when he was a lonely state senator back in Illinois. And we used to have these conversations about—we were both progressive in our faith, and we were out, and the religious right was in at that point, so we talked about how that we didn’t think that, you know, tax cuts, capital gains tax cuts and endless wars overseas would be Jesus’ first priority.

Here comes the straw men — as if President Bush announced that the first big endorser of tax cuts and wars was Jesus Christ. Wallis was clearly trying to balance his boosterism of the religious left and Obama’s fervor with the secular radicals who were listening. Obama grew up secular, but now he’s not but he knows religion has no monopoly on morality:

You know, it’s funny how the press is seeing this as a religious outreach. That’s the whole spin. Well, Barack was a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago, working with congregations, so this stuff’s in him. It’s sort of his background. And he doesn’t come from a religious family. And he knows. I always say that, you know, religion has no monopoly on morality—I want to say that over and over again. He knows that. He comes from a family that was deeply moral, but wasn’t religious. Yet, he had a conversion. He became a person of faith. And he saw the difference that this can make at the grassroots level.
So he wants to, you know, have his faith and form his moral compass, but in a way that’s consistent with democracy and pluralism and diversity. We’re not a Judeo-Christian nation anymore. There are more Muslims than Presbyterians, but don’t tell the Presbyterians, they haven’t figured it out yet.

Here comes the straw men again: conservative Christians aren’t practicing their faith in a way that’s democratic or pluralistic. (Certainly, Christians can pledge their obedience to church orthodoxy that’s not religiously democratic or religiously pluralistic, but Wallis is making orthodox Christians sound like democracy-bashers and pluralism-crushers in the wider political sphere.)

Finally, you know you’re listening to a left-wing radio show when you here Obama compared to Abraham Lincoln:

You know, in a religion, it either leads us to an easy certainty or a deeper reflection, and we’ve had a lot of the former for a long time now, a very deep certainty that this is a Christian war in Iraq and all the rest. And I think it is better when it leads to a deeper reflection and maybe some humility, maybe more like Lincoln than George W. Bush.