The Church of St. Beck: Can "Divine Destiny" Help Restore Honor To The Christian Right?

 

Will 

Gay Marriage 

And 

Mormonism 

Sever Ties?

August 28th, the day Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally hits the nation's capitol, may become a notable date in history: it will be the first time that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin will meet to extol the glory that was our country and what we should do to regain its former stature among nations and among ourselves. It will be notable because it surely will not be the only time these two world-renowned people will be together under the shadow of Abraham Lincoln to put forth their philosophies and theologies. History is ready to enshrine their wisdom.

Then again...

Ben Dimiero, Media Matters:

Beck's messianic religiosity took the next logical step this week, when he announced a new event scheduled on the eve of the 8-28 rally. Employing his characteristic humility, the event will be titled "Glenn Beck's Divine Destiny" and will feature "nationally-known figures from all faiths." Beck describes the evening as an "eye-opening" event "that will help heal your soul."

"... from all faiths." Will that panoply of religion include Islam? For Beck's sake, it had better not. It shouldn't include Hinduism. Or Buddhism. Or Mormonism. Or even Judaism (to any extent - tokens may be accepted since he's actually had several rabbis on his radio show). The guest list MUST be packed with such notables as Tony Perkins (FRC), Bryan Fischer (AFA), Lou Engle, Rick Warren, Richard Land (SBC), Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr. and (if he's feted enough), Pat Robertson. If Glenn Beck wants to solidify his power-base, he needs these men and needs to keep within their boundaries. Through his historian-guru, David Barton, Beck has firmly placed the Christian Nation ideology on the political map. With rallies like this one, however, he must make certain that the meme is stretched to mean "Christian-Only Nation."

There will be points that Beck will need to punctuate or else the Tony Perkinses and Franklin Grahams will walk away and leave a very unpleasant tension in the air:

• First: America is a Christian Nation. Beck's "historian" David Barton must be able to point to every founding father and declare that without a doubt he was a Christian and that this country was founded solely on Christian principles.
• Gay rights are not Civil Rights. The fact that August 28th is the 47th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have A Dream speech will not be lost on the multitude, hopefully sprinkled with African American pastors.
• America must repent. It must feel utter remorse in the fact that it let hedonistic and immoral forces take over the country.
• If America does not stop the machinations of the Obama administration, it will be doomed to become a totalitarian, Socialist - and Godless - state.
• The Freedoms of Religion and Speech are being strongly curtailed and, if we do not act now, Christian churches and congregations will be persecuted.
• Traditional marriage is under attack by a small but powerful minority of homosexual, Socialist activists.
• The current administration seeks to uphold immoral laws allowing abortion.
• Our justice system has been corrupted by the ideologies of lawless Socialists.
• If our country does not turn away from Socialist ideas, Socialist science, and Socialist education, then it is doomed both spiritually and physically.
• Muslims - especially the ones who practice Islam - should be looked upon as potential terrorists.

I don't think the Beckian concept of "social justice" will be featured, since all of Beck's apostles know it by heart.

I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, the idea - hang on, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!

That now-famous statement has been enshrined in the halls of the Christian Right while being scorned from the pulpits of the progressives. With that one statement, Beck defined both sides: Progressive=evil, Conservative = good. 

Beck's definitions are not, however, quite balanced: "conservative" should be replaced by "regressive." And then "Restoring" would make more sense, for according to the Right's philosophy, we must reach back in time to retrieve the principles, to take back the Christian morals that we don't have today. And Beck's definition of "honor" is also amiss: isn't hypocrisy one of the opposites of honor? Isn't hiding behind the Bible, cowering behind the pulpit and evoking the First Amendment to justify hate speech dishonorable? Isn't bloviating about religious freedom while (literally) demonizing other religions dishonorable? What is so honorable about turning one's rights into something to be feared? And what is so unifying about "us" versus "them"? Restore Honor, by its very name says that "we" are better than "them."  

That begs the question: who's honor needs to be restored? 

Cracks In Divine Destiny

Unfortunately for Glenn Beck, his ship of Divine Destiny this Friday has already had some serious bailouts:


Brannon Howse, of World View Matters:

He has swerved into theological and doctrinal realm in the last few weeks. He’s said things on the air that makes my skin crawl. . . a ‘works based’ theology that is based in Mormonism. . . . We are not serving the god of Mormonism that says you can be like God… a religion that said Jesus and Satan were brothers. . . . Leave your pagan—your cult—religion. . . .

It's important to know that Howse was a big supporter of Beck and David Barton's "Christian Nation" meme, but the prospect of Mormonism creeping into Beck's "Daily Prayer" (on radio) and into his new found religionist theories makes many Christians' "skin crawl".

Coupled with Beck's promoting Mormonism is the even worse possibility that he might also promote the tolerance he showed for same-sex marriage on Bill O'Reilly's program:

O'Reilly: ... Is it going to harm the country?

Beck: I believe that Thomas Jefferson said: "If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket what difference is it to me?

Alan Keyes on Restoring Honor:

The MSM will undoubtedly tout attendance at the event as evidence of support for his patently false view that promotion of "gay marriage" poses no threat to our Constitution, sovereignty and liberty; that the majority of Americans are willing to allow the legal abandonment of the natural family and a redefinition of rights that makes them figments of government power rather than authoritative assertions of God's will for justice.

Famous CR homo-Islamo-everyone-who's-not-CR-phobe Bryan Fischer:

Count Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck as the latest deserters in the culture war and in the battle for sexual normalcy. They have flinched at "precisely that little point which the world and the devil are ... attacking," and so have forfeited the right to consider themselves any longer culture warriors.

Glenn Beck's Minister Of Chauvenism

Of course, a laissez-faire attitude towards gay marriage will oppose Beck's most ardent promoter, Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego and one of the men who spearheaded Proposition 8. 

Below is an audio clip from one of Beck's most recent radio shows which can serve as a guide to what thought processes will be used during the two-day fete. It really bears listening to, because Garlow regurgitates all the points above with (unfortunate) sincerity and piety. His sermon is  supposedly based on the book of Hosea (on which he so proudly says that he based his master's thesis).  Garlow then uses the usual supposition that no one actually reads the Bible (let alone an obscure  book like Hosea) and procedes to carve out his own fictitious story that Hosea forgave this wanton wife and she obediently followed him home.  Look it up in the KJV (Hosea), and see if there's any way you can conceivably make out his story from what is written.

The above anecdote serves to tell us the kind of "honorable" men Beck has been surrounding himself with.

Beck's homespun demagoguery is at times reminiscent of Andy Griffith's character in A Face In The Crowd. In the clip below, Griffith gloats to the late Patricia Neal about his political power. The horror on her face looks familiar, because you can see the same horror in the faces of Beck's critics: here is a man who has is enraptured by his own effect on people. With Beck, the medium has become the message.

I ask that you would come and bring your family, bring your children, this is going to be a historic day, it is going to be a day that I think will shock those naysayers, those people on the far left, those people who think we are going to dishonor...it is about Restoring Honor.

So whose honor will Divine Destiny Beck restore? The country's? The Christian Right's? His own?

When musing on Glenn Beck's many scattered (and even contradictory) philosophies, someone used the old saw "a broken clock is right twice a day." That may be true. However, a brocken clock is also wrong 1438 times a day. Whatever happens on Satruday, let's not give Beck too much credit.*

Listen to internet radio with glennbeckprayer on Blog Talk Radio

Here’s the clip, via Media Matters:

*After all, he'll have Palin with him, too.

The Second Original Sin

An Obscure Biblical Doctrine 

Spread By Today's Christian Right

I was born in an infant asylum. OK, a orphanage.* A Catholic orphanage.** I was a bastard. OK, to be more PC:  illegitimate. It was only by the grace of Edna Gladney*** that "Illegitimate" was not stamped on my birth certificate, but that's another story. I then went on to a Catholic grade school that took pleasure in immediately informing us kids that we were born in sin. Original Sin. Two strikes against me? I was born in a mess of bastards in addition to a blot on my "permanent record"?

The guilt set in early.

Later on, I found out that the guy who founded and fostered the idea of Original Sin, Saint Augustine of Hippo, had an Oedipus complex and such massive guilt about it that he figured everyone should share in the pain. Nice work, Augustine. You set the stage for Western Civilization's cockeyed world view: everyone's born with a black mark against them. "We're ALL sinners" has been used to soften the blows from street preachers and pulpit pimps the world over. It sounds more egalitarian than just pointing the finger and casting the first stone.

In Augustine's view (termed "Realism"), all of humanity was really present in Adam when he sinned, and therefore all have sinned. Original sin, according to Augustine, consists of the guilt of Adam which all humans inherit. As sinners, humans are utterly depraved in nature, lack the freedom to do good, and cannot respond to the will of God without divine grace.

But (horrors!) what if there is more than one Original Sin? What if a certain sin could be passed on from one person to the next - like a cold?

I think there is such a sin, and it is so bad that its effects can be horrific. However, the reason we don't hear about it from our pulpits is because of the method of contagion: for the method is just as bad as the sin itself.

The Second Original Sin is like the First for it is found at birth. Second birth, that is. It is the Original Sin peculiar to the Born Again Christian. I am writing of course, about the sin of Intolerance.

"But not all Born Agains are intolerant!!"  No, they are not. But that is simply because some are de-programmed not to be so later on. Intolerance is born along with the Born Again. Simple, but true. I suppose some people might argue that a Born Again chooses to be intolerant, but that would be counter-intuitive to a Christian. No, it's a simple fact that all Born Agains are born with the black mark of intolerance until they can prove otherwise.

Think of it: a Born Again does not think, but KNOWS that he is saved by Jesus Christ the son of the One True God. The Born Again also KNOWS that others have not been saved. The Born Again is flush with the knowledge that God loves him and counts him as a true Christian: the insufferably righteous phrase "It's the Christian Thing To Do" is proffered every time, everywhere. The Born Again KNOWS that his distinct spiritual philosophy is true and others are false and evil. The  Born Again is always on the lookout for sinners in every nook and cranny with the hope that he can save them, thereby chalking up one more saved soul on their spiritual scorecard. The Born Again avoids people who have shunned his offer of salvation or dares to counter his divine reasoning. The Born Again is a novice at demonizing, but an eager pupil: the sin of Intolerance does not need much encouragement. Under the guise of "love" a Born Again is allowed to bludgeon a person's life and loves with impunity. The duty of the Born Again is to make you feel as shameful and guilty as possible.

And along with that grave sin of Intolerance come its sister sins of righteousness: righteous arrogance, righteous indignation, and righteous stupidity****

The ministers who hang every sermon, every word on John 3:5 are the conductors of the Original Sin of Intolerance, passing it on ... no ... BESTOWING it as a great gift to the Born Agains. The most obvious and vocal example is Lou Engle who manages to make Intolerance sound very virtuous and very righteous:

In speaking of the legalization of same-sex marriage in California, Engle has alleged that "What happened to California will release a spirit that is more demonic than Islam, a spirit of lawlessness and anarchy. And a sexual insanity will be unleashed into the Earth." Lou Engle has also said: The most "dangerous terrorist" is not Islam but God. One of God's names is the avenger of blood. Have you worshipped that God yet."

Born Agains (especially Born Again ministers) like Lou Engle will always be tainted with the sin of Intolerance because they embrace it and consider the sin to be a badge of honor. Of course, we call it Intolerance, while they call it Righteousness.

And it is not, as some people think, easy to be saved from the sin of Intolerance. Salvation involves opening the mind that the ministers and mentors closed. It involves looking at others without being judgmental in any way. It involves honoring the right of individual thinking. It involves pure love. 

I know that sounds naive: salvation from Intolerance can't win against Engle's imagery of blood, war and martyrdom. Maybe it is.

But it's the only way of erasing the black mark of the Second Original Sin.

Just a thought.

* The sobriquet "asylum" was not always paired with "insane," although some of the orphans may have differed. 

** I popped out of my mother's womb into the arms of a big, strapping nun. I know I screamed "PUT ME BACK!!" after I saw her, but not having mastered sounds much less the English language, it came out as a cry the ancient nurse/nun ignored.

*** Edna Gladney's life was immortalized by actress/diva Greer Garson in the movie Blossoms in the Dust." Gladney looked nothing like Greer Garson, but was able somehow to get the disgustingly boorish and "conservative" legislators of her state to remove the word of shame. The state was Texas, of course.

****There is also an obscure sin of righteous halitosis that effects some Born Agains who become ministers and people who hang around water-coolers.

Starting the Year With A Bloody Muckraking Headache: Taking On The Christofascists

Or, How I Had A Good Time In Spite Of All The Bloodshed

OK, so I didn't have a good time. Not really. I spent New Year's Day revisiting some of my old material, my old gripes, my old passions, my old fears. And you know what?

They're still here.

They haven't changed. Oh, in the last three years the main characters have changed somewhat: they've gone from mostly Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to a variety of Christofascists: Mike Huckabee, Ann Coulter, Glen Beck (marginal, but nonetheless a presence hard to avoid), Rod Parsley, Rick Warren, Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly, Benedict XVI, etc. But widening the field has only pumped up the volume: there are more people bloviating over social issues and politics than ever before and covering/reading about/expounding on them is very acidic to my brain as well as my stomach. And their venues for screeds and harangues have not really changed either: separation of church and state, same-sex marriage, abortion, politics, war, morality, etc., etc. I'm working on a particularly difficult piece right now, - Islamophobia - and as with other subjects, this one is going to create more muckraking (for me), more rhetorical bile (from Christofascists) and more written displeasure (from everyone). It takes on Anti-Semitism, death tolls,, persecution, and religious history (which my detractors will insist is revisionist). It will definitely get responses of "NO!" "Not True!" "Un-American!" "written by an idiot," "inconsequential bile."

...and their point? They want to make sure that everyone knows that they hate me. They read my articles, spurred on by an insulting or titillating title, then spend their time telling me as well as others how wrong I am. Oh, they've been getting more sophisticated: they use spell check ... sometimes. And they've referred to other articles (usually in the op-ed section of their local paper). But they still write in generalities. I'm waiting for the day someone writes something of substance using concrete evidence. Apparantly I'm worth the effort for general outrage but not for researched, substanciated outrage.

I looked back at one article in particular and want to share it. It was written within several weeks of Katrina and it featured, of course, Robertson and Falwell. Their responses to disasters and acts of terrorism are still mimicked by Christofascists today: God's wrath resulting in nature's destruction, economic crises, hard times.

God's Ambulance Chasers

By DAN VOJIR

I've just come from another "beer bust" for Katrina hurricane victims. Given the magnitude of the charity the U.S. has shown for them, this might become a usual pastime for more than several months. The difference with these beer busts is that they are sponsored by gay bars.

What this brings to mind is the point that true compassion knows no "orientation" boundaries, while the doctrines of many churches lead us to believe that food and shelter for the suffering are given a decidedly "Christian" slant. Some fundamentalists, such as Repent America's Michael Marcavage and Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church), are, in fact, enjoying their role as God's Ambulance Chasers: Marcavage offers "prayers" but no help, while Phelps' website has a headline "Thank God For Katrina!"

Other Christian pleas are more indirect in their conditional compassion: Falwell Ministries requests people to "send a special gift to support our volunteer-driven, faith-based response to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina" and touts the work of Southern Baptist Conference, the infamous fundamentalist denomination that reviles homosexuals, feminists and (still) Jews. Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing works in conjunction with FEMA while cloaked with an air of righteousness. It's a sort of poor man's Salvation Army and reminiscent of the lyric from Guys and Dolls: "Halleluiah, place a nickel on the drum, save another drunken bum! Place a nickel on the drum and he'll be saved!"

Even Barbara Bush had an air of sanctimoniousness about Katrina's devastation with her "underprivileged anyway" words of patrician moral wisdom. At another time and place, I believe the quote was actually "Let them eat cake!"

I guess it all comes down to the irony of ironies: legions of queers are much quicker to respond than FEMA or faith-based charities and far less toxic to the conscience.

Viva MEXICO CITY! The Catholic Church's New Satan!

Changing The Definition Of Marriage!!

Mexico City: the eighth richest city in the world, home to one of the world's largest GDPs, capital of the world's second largest Roman Catholic Church enclave is about to become the new Satan to the Vatican. Today, December 22, Marcelo Ebrard, Head of Government of the Federal District (loosely translated in the US as "mayor" but with considerably more national power) will be signing a bill of total equality for same-sex marriages:

Pam's House Blend:

The bill calls for changing the definition of marriage in the city's civil code. Marriage is currently defined as the union of a man and a woman. The new definition will be "the free uniting of two people."

The change would allow same-sex couples to adopt children, apply for bank loans together, inherit wealth and be included in the insurance policies of their spouse, rights they were denied under civil unions allowed in the city. ...

wikipedia:

The 2000 census reported that Mexico had some 101,456,786 Catholics among the population aged five and above, which equates to around 91% of the total population, making the second largest Roman Catholic country in the world after Brazil.

LGBT community:

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights in Mexico have expanded in recent years, in keeping with worldwide legal trends.

...[However]The social environment in most of Mexico remains repressive, and often dangerous. Machista ideals of manly appearance and behavior contribute to extreme prejudices against LGBT people, especially effeminate men, and often to violence against them. Lack of interest in investigating such cases is common and police often assumes that homosexuals are responsible for the attacks against them. The Roman Catholic teaching that homosexuality is a sin further contributes to intolerance, and is seen to provide moral sanction for mistreatment.

But the capitulation of Mexico City to justice and tolerance will sound a loud alarm to the Catholic Church: Pope Benny will not be amused. Prior to this, he called Mexico a country that has been "forged over the centuries in a fruitful relationship with the message of salvation proclaimed by the Catholic Church."And as Mexico City goes, so will the rest of the country - eventually taking away much of the church's hold on the country ...and its money.

The Vatican must act quickly on this one - and diplomatically. It can't exactly call Mexico City a commie-pinko hot-bed of leftist lust and depravity yet it must support Mexico's hinterlands and its overall intolerance of gays.

This should be an interesting week. And fun, too!