Jim Devine
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:03:19 -0700
from SLATE: >> Religious Differences Split Beck, Followers Glenn Beck's event at the Lincoln Memorial Saturday may have looked from afar like a chummy meeting of thousands of Christians joining hands in prayer, but the reality is that Beck's spiritual emphasis is actually making some of his fellow conservatives nervous. That's because, for most Americans, Beck is the wrong kind of religious. He's a converted Mormon, a follower of a religion deemed a "cult" by most mainstream Christian denominations. "Glenn Beck promotes a false gospel," Christian News Wire said in a press release sent out Saturday. "However, many of his political ideas can help America." A writer for WorldView weekend agreed: "While I applaud and agree with many of Glenn Beck's conservative and constitutional views, that does not give me or any other Bible-believing Christian justification to compromise Biblical truth by spiritually joining Beck," he said. Steve Benen thinks the divisions between the Joseph Smith-following Beck and his Jesus Christ-following fans may prove to be significant. "Tea Partiers and related right-wing activists have often been split," he writes, between secular libertarians and culture war-fighting evangelicals. But even if the latter group wins the battle for the soul of the Tea Party, they'll still have to content with the split between "theocrats comfortable with a Mormon's leadership role in their so-called 'movement,' and theocrats who appreciate Beck's madness, but not his LDS membership." Meanwhile Beck, perhaps in an attempt to distract from his own religious differences with most Americans, is attacking President Obama's Christian credentials. During an interview on Fox News Sunday, the rodeo clown [??] said Obama "is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor-and-victim." He said Americans "aren't recognizing" Obama's "version of Christianity," a statement that could just as easily apply to Beck himself.
Read original story in The Washington Monthly [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_08/025440.php] | Monday, Aug. 30, 2010 << -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l