I’m on vacation in Chatauqua, N.Y., but unfortunately, not on vacation from politics. Barack Obama was here before I arrived at this quiet enclave on the shores of Lake Chautauqua in the southwestern corner of New York state, 30 miles from Lake Erie.

I’ve learned from previous summer visits here with my wife’s family that a Southern Baptist church is not to be found. I guess that’s why they’re called Southern. So after shopping around for a friendly clime for Sunday worship, I’ve given up and settled for the nondenominational service at Chautauqua Institute, a gated community noted for its high-brow classical music roots and strongly liberal-left political discussions.

I’ve heard a few good sermons here: last year the Scottish chaplain to the Queen; the year before a black minister from Maryland. But this year it was “Barack at Chautauq.”

So far as I know, his name was never mentioned out loud, though I did arrive five minutes late so I may have missed the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, pastor of the Chautauqua Institution, leading the congregants in a chant of “Yes, We Can!”

I did hear her remind those gathered on the bare wooden pews of the open-to-the-outdoors amphitheatre that this is “the political season,” perhaps a gentle forewarning for the main speaker.

The Rev. LaVerne Gill, retired black United Church of Christ pastor from Michigan and currently Chaplain Administrator for the Chautauqua United Church of Christ, Inc., read the Scripture from Luke 18:1-8, Jesus’ parable of the widow and the unjust judge.

The main speaker was the Rev. Timothy Carl Ahrens, pastor of First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ in Columbus, Ohio. Are you beginning to see a United Church of Christ theme here?

In case you somehow missed the youtube “G— D---- America!” ranting sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor for 20 years at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, don’t worry. No such wild rantings came forth from Ahrens, a calm, reasonable white minister, who also sounds totally unlike Father Michael Pfleger, the post-Wright visiting white minister of youtube and Trinity UCC pulpit fame.

But have no doubts that Ahrens is a fellow traveler with Obama, Wright and Pfleger. The Chautauqua program notes “Rev. Ahrens has been heralded as one among five pastors keeping alive the social justice tradition of the late William Sloan Coffin.”

Coffin, you may recall, was the Yale chaplain who took a leadership role in the anti-war movement of the ‘60s, among other causes du jour popular among the liberal-left. His anti-war antics continued to his death in 2006, including opposing the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf to liberate Kuwait after Saddam Hussein’s invasion from Iraq.

So there’s the common tie that binds Obama, Wright, Pfleger, Coffin and Ahrens, “the social justice” gospel.

Ahrens used his text, Luke 18:1-8, to illustrate the “social justice” gospel, turning Jesus’ words inside out and backwards to make his point.

To paraphrase the parable, a persistent widow seeks justice from an unjust judge, who finally gives in and grants her request just to shut her up.

Jesus tells us what the parable means in the opening verse, 18:1, “And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint.”

Then Jesus sums up his point again in the closing verses, 18-7-8, “Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”

So the point of the parable is persistent faith, like the widow used on the unjust judge until he finally gave in. Then Jesus turns from the unjust judge to God the Father, and says God will not only hear the cries for justice from his own, “I tell you he will avenge them speedily.”

The parable concludes with Jesus asking that when he, the Son of man, comes to the earth, will he find this kind of persistent faith on the earth? Or will he find the “social justice” gospel?

Ahrens answered “no” to Jesus’ question and “yes” to my imagined latter question, turning the persistent widow into “an organizer,” a forerunner, we must presume, of the young college graduate who came to the south side of Chicago to work as a “community organizer” and launch his career in liberal-left politics.

In furtherance of the “social justice gospel” in his church and city, Ahrens said he has “organized, mobilized and agitated” in Columbus, Ohio.

And just in case anybody didn’t get how radical his gospel is, Ahrens made it clear by adding he is “sick and tired of the religious right” and that part of the church in America.

Ahrens said Columbus “has the highest poverty rate in Ohio” and that his church ministers to “the least, the lost and the last” in his city.

But then he as much as admitted that government “social justice” programs have not helped lower the poverty rate in his city, saying political leaders have “wasted the tens of millions we have trusted to their care.”

So what is the solution to replace these failed government programs, such as welfare, that have resulted in more poverty, not less? More “tens of millions” must be demanded of these “unjust judges” he said. “Give them a black eye until justice is done.”

He then misinterpreted another act of Jesus, saying he “liberated the poor by turning over the tables of the money changers in the temple.” Wow, welfare in the Bible!?

And I thought that Jesus was chasing the thieves out of his father’s house of worship.

Ahrens urged “political action” in the churches, warning, “some of your congregants will not like this.” No kidding.

And in case anybody missed the “gospel according to Barack,” Ahrens called for churches to be “holy and special agents for this change.”

So instead of doing as Jesus said, calling on God for justice, who he promised will “avenge his own elect… I tell you he will avenge them speedily,” the gospel according to Ahrens, Obama, Coffin, Wright & Pfleger says to demand justice from the unjust judges.

Now there’s some real change. But I sure don’t want to believe in this “other gospel.”