Workers
setting up for the Glenn Beck "Restoring Honor" rally taking place at
the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Saturday, August 28th, on the
47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Beck
says the timing was coincidental, but "divine providence." (AP photo)
Understanding Glenn Beckby Kathy Riordan
Three
years ago my husband and I were raising a 13-year-old niece, a niece
who happened to be, like most of my family, Mormon. Reluctantly we
agreed to let her go late on a Sunday night on an excursion with other
members of her church to hear an 'inspirational speaker' at what was
dubbed an area-wide 'Fireside' (read: inspirational speech by another Mormon
outside of a worship setting)
in Tampa, more than two hours away. Because she was going with adults
who were familiar to us we trusted their judgment, but were unhappy that
it would make a late night before a school day. When she returned, we learned
that speaker was Glenn Beck. To
say we were stunned by this, more horrified, would be understatement.
Ostensibly he was there to speak to the Mormon youth of central Florida
about his conversion to Mormonism, a conversion that occurred on the
back of recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. It occurred to
me then that to understand Glenn Beck (who for many, defies
understanding), one has to understand the nature of convert zeal and the
fine line between that and the lunatic fringe. Mormons are
accustomed to trotting out celebrity converts. Gladys Knight, who also
joined the LDS Church on the heels of tragedy and addiction (her
particular poison, gambling), became a staple alongside the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir, a high-profile African American celebrity in a church
that prior to 1978 didn't ordain anyone from her race to the priesthood.
With Glenn Beck, it's slightly more complicated. Not that all Mormons are
Republicans, or even conservatives (see: Harry Reid, another convert),
and many are honest, hard-working, admirable fellow humans, but the
majority do tend to respond to celebrity converts in a way that's far
more user-friendly than the general public. Glenn Beck has capitalized
on that, a built-in market for his ideas, his books, his causes. Somewhere
on his way into Mormonism--a religion that promises he can become 'a
god' (heady stuff for any convert)--he stopped at the shop for Cleon
Skousen, a rabid John Bircher who penned documents like "The Communist
Attack on the John Birch Society" and "The Communist Attack on the
Mormons." His books, "The First Two Thousand Years," "The Third
Thousand Years" and "The Fourth Thousand Years" were staples on
bookshelves in LDS homes in my youth until Mormon leadership eventually
distanced itself from Skousen and sent out a disclaimer on his fringe
conservative teachings church-wide. Skousen, who died four years
ago, was eventually farmed back to Brigham Young University as a
religion professor, which is where I initially encountered him in any
form other than family hearsay in the back of a station wagon. Sitting
in a large lecture hall with hundreds of other students listening to him
talk about how telephone poles and toilet seats all had 'spirits' in
what was supposed to be a class on The Book of Mormon (required of all
freshmen students at BYU) was tedious at best and frightening at worst.
Clearly, this was a person on the fringe who probably should not have
been educating anyone. This is the person Glenn Beck has chosen
to emulate on his way into Mormonism, a person whose own conservative
teachings were considered off-center by mainstream Mormonism and who
eventually was put out with a disclaimer by LDS leadership. To
understand Glenn Beck you must know this, that he has bought into a
culture which will buy his books, a culture which in its history has
shown vulnerability to fringe ideas and fringe personalities, a culture
which has taken Glenn Beck the broken addict and put him on a path to
godhood, with market success on the way. Like Cleon Skousen, however, he is
likely to become more of a pariah than a prophet. To
understand Glenn Beck, you need to understand Glenn Beck the addict,
Glenn Beck the recovering addict who wrapped it all up in a religion
that prevents him from using drugs or alcohol, Glenn Beck the
unsuccessful conservative commentator who became successful, drunk on
that success, Glenn Beck who left CNN for Fox and created his own
following, Glenn Beck the zealot, the Cleon Skousen wannabe, the
self-appointed leader of a mass movement. History teaches us something about
people like that, and the end is generally not pretty. Glenn Beck (right)
and the late conservative Mormon commentator and author he chose to emulate, W.
Cleon Skousen (left). On the Web: Meet the Man Who Changed Glenn Beck's Life
- Salon/Alexander Zaitchik Glenn Beck: Rough Stone Roaring - Sunstone Magazine
Beck, Native Americans, and The Book of Mormon - Religion Dispatches/Joanna
Brooks
How Mormonism Built Glenn Beck - Religion Dispatches/Joanna Brooks Glenn Beck
Motivates, Inspires at Sunday Patriotic Fireside - BYU Newsnet Glenn Beck to
Hold Rally on Anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Speech - AP
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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