Glenn Beck, Blasted Lies and Birth Certificates On Foreheads?
Vol: 107 Issue: 30 Monday, August 30, 2010
There were two competing headlines on this morning’s Drudge Report that seemed to say it all. The first was President Obama Blasts Lies, Disinformation and the second was Obama Says He Ignored Beck Rally.
According to the MSNBC interview Obama gave to Brian Williams, President Obama is tired of the lies and disinformation, saying that “I can’t go around with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead” – as if he had already dealt with that question by producing a valid birth certificate. (He has not).
Then in almost the same breath, he told Williams that he ignored the anti-Obama rally that drew a larger crowd than MLK drew 47 years ago on that same spot. MLK’s crowd filled both sides of the reflecting pool all the way to the Washington Monument – historians estimate it at about 250,000 people.
The turnout on Saturday was much larger, which is why Obama’s claim he ignored it sounds so contrived, particularly in the context of it being Obama that is railing against lies and disinformation.
The mainstream media did its best to help Obama.
While MSNBC was setting him up with his softball interview, CBS News estimated the anti-Obama crowd at just 87,000, NBC News at 350,000 while the New York Times said it was closer to 500,000.
The New York Times is characterizing the Beck rally as a ‘religious revival’ rather than political. Why is that? Because it is an effective tactic.
I explained over the weekend why it could be either religious or political but in no case could it be called ‘Christian’ because Christianity isn’t a religion, but a relationship.
The event drew Christians, Jews, Mormons, agnostics and even atheists, despite the frequent references to God throughout the event. Calling it a ‘religious revival’ instead of the political revival that it was, alienated both the political Left and the Christian Right.
Suddenly we are all beating up on Glenn Beck. Christians, liberals, socialists and the godless all in ecumenical agreement. For different reasons, but if the goal is to marginalize the opposition, then the reasons are irrelevant if the goal is met.
The political Left recoiled at the mention of ‘religion’ and the Christian Right recoiled because Beck is a Mormon. So the Left hammered away at the ‘religious’ aspect of it, describing it as having “the feeling of a church picnic, with people, many from the South or Midwest, sitting on lawn chairs and blankets.”
Christians . . . and people from Flyover Country and the Redneck South – and did anybody mention that Beck was a Mormon?
Assessment:
That’s right. As many as a half-million Americans gathered together to express their displeasure at the direction the Far Left is leading the country . . . but the big story is that Beck is a Mormon?
I am familiar with Mormon theology – I’ve read the Book of Mormon, just as I’ve read the Koran – I’d be a poor apologist for Christianity if I didn’t know what the other guys teach.
Mormon theology has as much in common with Christianity as Islam does. Both claim Jesus — but neither claim the Jesus of the Bible. The Mormon god is not the same God as the God of Scripture. Mormon doctrine bears little, if any, resemblance to Christian doctrine.
But Glenn Beck wasn’t preaching a Mormon revival. He wasn’t even preaching a Christian revival. Beck was preaching a revival of the American religion — upon which America was founded.
The majority of the Founders were Anglicans, Presbyterians, and so on, but many others were Unitarians, Quakers, Deists, agnostics and so on. The ‘American religion’s’ primary doctrine is that America is founded under the authority of “Nature and Nature’s God”.
The Founders realized that in a room with ten Christians one can usually find at least eleven different doctrines, so they abandoned the concept of doctrinal unity and settled instead on political unity as ‘one nation under God’.
Had the effort been labeled, “one nation, under Jesus” America would probably still be a British colony. Nobody would have been able to agree on anything.
Jesus Christ is not a politician, He is the Savior of mankind. Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace — hardly a fitting national symbol — especially for a nation born out of a bloody Revolutionary War.
Most Americans are Christian, but America itself cannot be. If it could be, then what kind of Christian would it be? Anglican? Catholic? Presbyterian? Non-denominational? Who would decide what America’s doctrinal position would be?
If Glenn Beck were a Jew, I doubt that the issue of his religion be an issue at all.
If Glenn Beck were to start making doctrinal statements of any kind, Mormon, Christian or otherwise, then I would jump on board with the growing number of my colleagues that are calling for Christians to reject Beck’s call for political revival.
But if Beck has made any doctrinal statements of any description, apart from acknowledging the existence of a Creator God upon Whom America should depend, I haven’t located them.
And since I agree that there is a Creator God upon Whom America should depend, I find little reason to object to that characterization.
When you get right down to it, there are but two possible positions one can take. The first is the fatalist position that says that everything is pre-ordained and that the best we can do is prepare for what is to come, according to Bible prophecy.
In this view, there isn’t really anything that can be done to change man’s future, since what is on the horizon is God’s righteous judgment. At best, what we can do is observe and give the warning that judgment is coming.
The second and more optimistic view is that there is something that we can do to save ourselves from the judgment to come by turning from our wicked ways and turning back to God.
I am a fatalist — in the end there is nothing that will forestall judgment. When the time has come, judgment will fall. But that doesn’t mean I oppose Glenn Beck’s efforts — if nothing else, it sends a message to the Left that not everybody has abandoned the values that prevent them from turning America into a socialist republic.
If it did nothing else, the Beck rally demonstrates — once again — what an unrepentant, unabashed and unvarnished liar the President of the United States is.
A half million protestors march on Washington and Obama claimed he ignored them?
I am aware of how controversial my position is compared to that of most of my colleagues. But in the final analysis, the difference between Glenn Beck’s religion and that of the President of the United States is that I know what Beck’s religion is.
And as far as I can tell, it isn’t the one that calls for America’s destruction as a doctrinal imperative.
Omegaletter 