A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they've heard the gospel, right there in the nation's capital.
The news media pronounces him the new leader of America's Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America's Christian conservatives have no problem with that.
If you'd told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages of an evangelical apocalyptic novel about the end-times. But it's not. It's from this week's headlines. And it is a scandal.
Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, of course, is that Mormon at the center of all this. Beck isn't the problem. He's an entrepreneur, he's brilliant, and, hats off to him, he knows his market. Latter-day Saints have every right to speak, with full religious liberty, in the public square. I'm quite willing to work with Mormons on various issues, as citizens working for the common good. What concerns me here is not what this says about Beck or the "Tea Party" or any other entertainment or political figure. What concerns me is about what this says about the Christian churches in the United States.
It's taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined "revival" and "turning America back to God" that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.
Rather than cultivating a Christian vision of justice and the common good (which would have, by necessity, been nuanced enough to put us sometimes at odds with our political allies), we've relied on populist God-and-country sloganeering and outrage-generating talking heads. We've tolerated heresy and buffoonery in our leadership as long as with it there is sufficient political "conservatism" and a sufficient commercial venue to sell our books and products.
Too often, and for too long, American "Christianity" has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it. There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barabbas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah.
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In the days following Glenn Beck's highly publicized rally in Washington, D.C., conservative Christians have come out expressing their concern not over the increasingly popular broadcaster, but over the apparent confusion among Christ followers.
"There is something very strange going on here. I don't understand the disconnect on the part of Christians," said Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
Americans from across the country converged on the National Mall on Saturday for the "Restoring Honor" rally led by Fox News commentator Beck. Reports indicate that the event drew anywhere from 87,000 to 500,000 people. Beck, a Mormon, was joined by a diverse group of religious leaders - including evangelical Christians - as he called on America to turn back to God.
Mohler, one of the nation's pre-eminent evangelical theologians, found that Beck's rally cries were resonating with many Christians.
"What concerned me about that event on the mall was not so much Glenn Beck and the politicians in the program; it was the picture of those religious leaders standing together," he said Tuesday on The Janet Mefferd Show.
During Saturday's three-hour event, over 200 religious leaders stood behind Beck, linking arms at certain points. Dr. Richard Land, a well-known Southern Baptist, and Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church in Maryland were among the conservative Christians standing there.
While Land does not agree with Beck's theology, he told National Public Radio that the event was about a deep concern of Americans that the country has taken "a fundamentally wrong turn and is headed in the wrong direction."
Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, Calif., who was also at the event, said the rally was about extolling virtue and honoring God.
And the event was evangelical in tone, he said in a commentary on CNN.
"Despite the pre-rally discussions of Beck's Mormonism, the rally's litany of evangelical speakers gave it the Jesus-centeredness of a Billy Graham Crusade. All theological references were clearly evangelical and biblically based," Garlow wrote.
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SOURCE: Christian Post - Nathan Black
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