One of the candidates for president strolled onto the stage at a massive megachurch in suburban Orange County Saturday night and started joking easily with the Rev. Rick Warren, maybe the most popular evangelical leader in America — but just plain “Pastor Rick” to the candidate. He talked about his certainty that “Jesus Christ died for my sins, and I am redeemed through him,” said Americans should be soldiers in the fight against evil and defined marriage as between a man and a woman — “and God is in the mix.” This particular Christian candidate was so on his game that after a segment on domestic policy ended, Warren told him — his mic still live as the TV feed cut to commercial — “Home run.”

Oh, and John McCain was there, too.

Rick Warren‘s been one of the most prominent megachurch Pastors arguing that Evangelicals can vote for Democrats.

Partly Obama’s appearance is electoral calculation – the Democrats have been talking about how to walk the faith talk since some (misleading) exit polls in November 2004. But I have no doubt he’s sincere. So much for separation of Church and State. In another piece in Salon, Michael Lind argues for agnosticism on social conservatism as the way to go to build an enduring Democratic majority. He’s probably thinking what Obama’s thinking. But it doesn’t work like that. If you want people to vote their economic interests, you need to marginalise “social issues” not highlight them. And, anyway, there isn’t – to be truthful – an awful lot in Obama’s platform – certified and written by Ivy League economists – that’s all that different from Clinton’s Rubinomics, except for the anti-free trade rhetoric, and a dash of supply side Reich style “human capital theory”. You’d be waiting a long time indeed – til Judgement Day, perhaps – for a Democratic candidate to start spruiking the true social democratic faith. Or even the New Deal.

Sarah Posner in yet another Salon article looks at Obama’s “religious outreach”.

Elsewhere: Road to Surfdom. And SocProf on “theocracy you can believe in”.