The Weird Theology of Glenn Beck and His Cohorts

The New Christian Right and Christianity

By Robert Fantina

April 22, 2010 "Counterpunch" -- It is an unfortunate truth that organizations ranging from the mildly amusing to the extremely dangerous have all co-opted the term ‘Christian.’  Christian Right, Christian Coalition, etc., all use the term without, apparently, knowing what it means. It has reached a point where even Christians cringe when they hear the word in political commentary.

A few examples will suffice.

• There is currently a case working its way to the Supreme Court involving the Christian Legal Society chapter at Hastings, a branch of the University of California. Hastings stopped funding this organization in 2004, when the society required its members to sign a statement of faith, and excluded all those who would not do so. Also excluded automatically are homosexuals. 
• The Christian Coalition, on its website, has ‘Action Alerts,’ opportunities for its adherents to further the causes it espouses. As of April 19, 2010, two of the top three ‘Action Alerts’ pertain to opposing health care (‘Last Chance to Say ‘NO’ to Healthcare Takeover;’ ‘Critical House Vote Coming up on Obamacare’), and the third to discrimination against gays and lesbians (‘Help us Defend ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’).
• Sarah Palin, the current darling of the Christian right, preaches abstinence as the most effective sex education, says that U.S. military “is a source for good throughout the world,” and, during her embarrassing campaign for vice-president, talked about how God blessed the U.S. with oil.
• Glenn Beck, also wildly popular with the so-called Christian right, has said that people should leave their churches if those churches preach social justice. 

It might now be worthwhile to appeal to the Bible, to see, as closely as possible, how Jesus Christ, whom these worthies purport to follow, either did, or might have, responded in the areas mentioned above.

The Pharisees and Sadducees, learned religious and political leaders at the time of Christ, were shocked that he associated with ‘sinners’ and society’s outcasts. One such ‘sinner’ was the woman caught in adultery. Rather than accuse her, he accused her accusers. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8; v. 7). When her accusers slunk away in humiliation, he spoke tenderly to her, and offered his divine forgiveness. “Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8; vs. 10 -11).

Also outcast from society were lepers. They begged from afar, but were not permitted contact with family or friends; their entire community consisted only of other lepers. Jesus did not shun them, but healed them.” And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed” (Matthew 8; vs. 2 – 3).

Other beggars, some blind from birth, some lame, deaf or mute, approached him, and were not rejected. He did not, like some right wing ‘Christians’ did during the health care debate, shout them down, or spit on them. Rather, he brought them to him, and healed them.

The christian right (the lower-case ‘c’ is not a typographical error; this writer is seeking some way of distinguishing those who demonstrate true Christian values from those who use the name but lack the values) is often angry; Mrs. Palin has recommended that they all reload, perhaps hoping for another ‘unifying’ event like the Kennedy assassination almost 50 years ago. During the 2008 presidential campaign, even the Republican presidential candidate, the elderly, doddering Senator John McCain, could not stop people at his rallies from venting their rage and racism, calling then candidate Senator Barack Obama a terrorist and a child-killer, and calling for his death.

When did Jesus get angry? There are few, but notable, recorded evidences of his anger in the Bible. One situation was when calling out the learned scribes and Pharisees, for their hypocrisy. “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation” (Matthew 23; vs. 13 – 14).

 Might he not have something to say about today’s hypocrites, among whom are right-wing politicians who are forever quoting the Bible, attending prayer breakfasts and disdaining all ‘sinners,’ at the same time that they are having extra-marital affairs? Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, telling the world that he was hiking down the Appalachian trail, when in actuality he was flying to his mistress’s bed in Argentina, and Senator John Ensign of Nevada, sleeping with his top aid’s wife, come to mind. And can one possibly forget Newt Gingrich? Mr. Gingrich was calling for the impeachment of Democrat Bill Clinton, wringing his righteous, family-values hands over the horror and sin of Mr. Clinton’s extra-marital affair with Monica Lewinsky, at the same time that Mr. Gingrich was sleeping in both his wife’s and his mistress’s beds.

Jesus Christ also became angry when finding merchants in the Temple; they had, he said, made his house a den of thieves. He forcefully and physically ejected those who had done so. “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves”  (Matthew 21; vs. 12 – 13).

Based on this, one might logically consider that Jesus Christ was not as enamored with the almighty dollar as his alleged followers today appear to be.  One of their more modern heroes, former President George Bush, provided huge tax breaks to the nation’s wealthiest citizens.  Without exception, today’s christian right opposes President Obama’s efforts to let those tax benefits expire.

And what of Mr. Beck, urging Christians to leave their churches if they encourage social justice? Mr. Beck is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (possibly the only thing he has in common with this writer). Two LDS scholars, quoted in the New York Times on March 11, weighed in on Mr. Beck’s bizarre remark:

• Kent P. Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University, said this: “My own experience as a believing Latter-day Saint over the course of 60 years is that I have seen social justice in practice in every L.D.S. congregation I’ve been in. People endeavor with all of our frailties and shortcomings to love one another and to lift up other people. So if that’s Beck’s definition of social justice, he and I are definitely not on the same team.” 
• Philip Barlow, the Arrington Professor of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, further stressed the point: “One way to read the Book of Mormon is that it’s a vast tract on social justice. It’s ubiquitous in the Book of Mormon to have the prophetic figures, much like in the Hebrew Bible, calling out those who are insensitive to injustices. A lot of Latter-day Saints would think that Beck was asking them to leave their own church.

Mr. Barlow also pointed out that just this year, the Church issued a new ‘Handbook of Instructions’ to Church leaders. A major revision was adding a fourth layer to the three-fold mission of the Church. That added mission is simply this: care for the poor.

One might say that minor, anecdotal evidence has been presented here. In response, this writer invites these christian zealots to show him where Jesus Christ ever opposed helping anyone in need. At what point did he disdain the lonely? Where in the Bible is it recorded that he held himself aloof from any common sinner? Where did he court the favor of the rich, and turn his back upon the poor? Yes, he harshly criticized the hypocrisy of the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, but while he condemned any sin, he was unfailingly warm and loving to the sinner.

And that, of course, brings up yet another problem with the christian right. In Luke 6: v. 37, Jesus is quoted thusly: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” That statement seems to imply strongly that judgment is left for someone other than the Sarah Palins of the world. For Christians, mankind’s role, it seems, is to follow the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, and leave the determination of sin to him alone.

This writer understands, but also occasionally finds reason to resent, criticism of Christianity and Christians, when it is directed against all who proclaim to be Christians. There is nothing in the Bible to support Christianity as intolerant, judgmental, violent, fearful and paranoid. Rather, the example of the master teacher, revered by Christians as the Savior and Redeemer, shows only love, tolerance, gentleness and acceptance. There seems to be little support for the angry, hysterical ravings of the christian right to be found anywhere in the scriptures.

Robert Fantina is author of 'Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776--2006. 

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Market-Driven Hysteria and the Politics of Death

SATURDAY 17 APRIL 2010

 

Friday 06 November 2009

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Feature

(Photo Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

If we take seriously the ideology, arguments and values now emanating from the right-wing of the Republican Party, there is no room in the United States for a democracy in which the obligations of citizenship, compassion and collective security outweigh the demands of what might be called totalizing market-driven society; that is, a society that is utterly deregulated, privatized, commodified and largely controlled by the ultra-rich and a handful of mega corporations. In such a society, there is a shift in power from government to markets and the emergence of a more intensified political economy organized around three principal concerns: deregulated markets, commodification and disposability. In spite of the current failure of this system, right-wing Republicans and their allies are more than willing to embrace a system that erases all vestiges of the public good, turning citizens into consumers, while privatizing and commodifying every aspect of the social order - all the while threatening the lives, health, and livelihoods of millions of working class and middle class people.

If we listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and an increasing number of their ilk, free-market fundamentalism is not only sexy, it is an argument against the very notion of politics itself and the power of the government to intervene and protect its citizens from the ravages of nature, corrupt institutions and an unregulated market. In this discourse, largely buttressed through an appeal to fear and the use of outright lies, free-market capitalism assumes an almost biblical status as an argument against the power of government to protect its citizens from misfortune and the random blows of fate by providing the most basic rights and levels of collective security and protection. Before he died, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated precisely for such rights, which he called a "second bill of rights," which included the right "of every family to a decent home. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health. The right to adequate protection form the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment. The right to a good education."[1] That is, those social, economic and individual rights that provide a secure foundation for people to live with dignity and be free to become critical and engaged citizens, capable of both expanding their own sense of agency and freedom while being able to work with others to fulfill the demands of an aspiring democracy.

But in the truncated notion of freedom espoused by the right-wing extremists of a market-driven society, democracy is a deficit, if not pathology, and freedom is reduced to the narrow logic of an almost rabid focus on self-interest. This is a truncated version of freedom, defined largely as freedom from constraint - a freedom which, when not properly exercised or balanced, loses its connection to those obligations that tie people to values, issues and institutions that affirm "the existence of a common good or a public purpose."[2] This type of depoliticizing inward thinking with its disavowal of the obligations of social responsibility and its outright disdain for those who are disadvantaged by virtue of being poor, young or elderly does more than fuel the harsh, militarized and hyper-masculine logic of reality television and extreme sports; it also elevates death over life, selfishness over compassion and economics over politics. But more so, it produces a kind of dysfunctional silence in the culture in the face of massive hardship and suffering. There is more than moral indifference and political cynicism at work here; there is also a culture for which there is not much room for ideals, a culture that now considers public welfare a pathology, and responsibility solely a privatized and individual matter. This is a politics of disinvestment in public life, democracy and the common good. Hence, it is not surprising that we hear nothing from the faux populists Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and other cheerleaders for an unchecked capitalism about a market-driven landscape filled with desolate communities, gutted public services and weakened labor unions. Nor do they say anything about a free-market system that in its greed, cruelty, corruption and iniquitous power relations creates the conditions responsible for 40 million impoverished people (many living in their cars or the ever-growing tent cities), and 46 million Americans without health insurance - one result of which, according to a Harvard University study, is the needless deaths of 45,000 people every year.[3] Nor do they register any alarm over a system that, according to a recent study released by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, claims that "lack of adequate health care may have contributed to the deaths of some 17,000 US children over the past two decades."[4] What do they have to say about a deregulated market system with its corrupt financial institutions shipping jobs abroad, swindling people out of their homes and gutting the manufacturing base of US industry? What do they have to say about a political system largely controlled by corporate lobbyists? Or insurance companies that pay employees bonuses when they maintain a high level of rejections for procedures that can save people's lives. Not much. All they see amid this growing landscape of human suffering and despair is the specter of socialism, which amounts to any government-sponsored program designed to offer collective insurance in the face of misfortune and promote the public good.

For right-wing extremists, a market-driven society represents more than a tirade against "big government"; it constitutes a new kind of politics that privileges exchange values and quick profits over all noncommodified values, resists all forms of government intervention (except when it benefits the rich and powerful or uses force to maintain social order), celebrates excessive individualism and consolidates the power of the rich along with powerful corporations - currently coded as mammoth financial institutions such as the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and big banks. Moreover, the ability of this previously devalued market-driven system to endlessly come back to life is truly astonishing. How can the Dick Armey's of the world be featured in The New York Times as if their ideology and ruthlessness is worthy of a major news story? How is it that an endless number of ex- and current politicians, who are wedded at the hip to corporate interests, can be taken seriously as spokespersons for the larger public? And as the fog of social and historical amnesia rolls over the media and the country in general, it does so in spite of the current financial crisis, the debacle following Hurricane Katrina and the in-your-face payout of big bonuses by institutions that were bailed out by the government. Clearly, market fundamentalism is alive and well in the United States, suggesting that it also works hard through the related modalities of education and seduction to induce the public to conform to the narrow dictates, values and dreams of totalizing market society, regardless of how disruptive it is of their lives. Shouting against the evils of big government does little to register or make visible the power of big corporations or a government that serves corporate rather than democratic needs.

What is unique and particularly disturbing about this hyper-market driven notion of economics is that it makes undemocratic modes of education central to its politics and employs a mode of pedagogy aimed at displacing and shutting down all vestiges of the public sphere that cannot be commodified, privatized and commercialized. Consumers are in and citizens are out. Fear and lying are the discourses of choice while dialogue and thoughtfulness are considered a weakness. To a greater extent than at any other point in liberal modernity, this regime of economic Darwinism now extends economic rationality "to formerly noneconomic domains [shaping] individual conduct, or more precisely, [prescribing] the citizen-subject of the neoliberal order."[5] Most crucially, this struggle over the construction of the market-driven consumer subject, especially as it applies to young people, is by and large waged outside of formal educational institutions, in pedagogical sites and spaces that are generally privatized and extend from the traditional and new media to conservative-funded think tanks and private schools.[6] As corporate-controlled spheres and commodity markets assume a commanding role educating young and old alike, pedagogy is redefined as a tool of commerce aggressively promoting the commodification of young people and the destruction of noncommodified public spaces and institutions. How else to explain that it is almost impossible to read about educational reform in the dominant media except as a tool to educate people for the workforce? In other words, education is a form of commerce and nothing more. Education for democracy today sounds a lot like the idea that health care for everyone is socialism. Clearly, what we are witnessing here is not just the rise political theater or media-driven spectacle in American society, but a populism that harbors a deep disdain for democracy and no longer understands how to define itself outside of the imperatives of capital accumulation, shopping and the willingness to view more and more individuals and groups as simply disposable waste products no longer worthy of the blessings of consumption.

As moral and ethical considerations are decoupled from the calculating logic and consequences of all economic activity, the horrendous human toll in suffering and hardship being visited upon all segments of the American population is lost in the endless outburst of anger, if not hysteria, promoted by right-wing extremists - shouting for a return to the good old days when financial institutions and money markets set policy, eventually ushering in one of the most serious economic crisis this country has ever faced. As the values of human togetherness, community, friendship and love are once again subordinated to the notion that only markets can give people what they want, the culture of fear and cruelty grows in proportion to the angry protests, the threat of violence and the unapologetic racism aimed at the Obama administration. In part, this is exemplified in not only the endless public pronouncements that make a market society and democracy synonymous, but also in the ongoing celebration, in spite of the near collapse of the mortgage sector, of the excesses of the new Gilded Age. Like those dead bodies that endlessly return in George Romero's film classic "Night of the Living Dead," right-wing Republicans and Democrats are back shouting from every conceivable platform to demolish any vestige of reform that relies on "big government." The right-wing infatuation with the word "death," as in the fictitious claim about Obama's death panels, is telling - more a projection of their own politics than a serious critique of health care reform. Despite a change in US political leadership, these forces - if left unchecked - will continue to promote and fight for a transformation of democratic governance and citizenship until they are both completely destroyed.

As democracy is increasingly reduced to an empty shell and the rise of a corporate and punishing state looms heavily on the 21st-century horizon, the market-driven principles of deregulation, radical individualism and privatization penetrate all aspects of daily life. Such market-driven values and their accompanying power-shaping institutions now profoundly influence the very nature of how the American public think, act and desire. All of which are increasingly wedded to the epicenter of a grotesque consumer culture, whose underside is a heartless indifference to the suffering and hardship of the millions of people without jobs, homes, health care and, increasingly, hope. The current fight against health care reform is not really just about fixing a terribly iniquitous and broken system; it is a struggle against the prospect of a better future for young people, the poor, the excluded and those struggling to stay alive in America. What are we to make of an ideology that moves from dismantling the welfare state to embracing the punishing state, an ideology that increasingly turns its back on those individuals for whom the prisons are now deputized as the only welfare institutions left in America, or, if they are lucky, find themselves in one of the emerging tent cities found under bridges and located in other invisible landscapes - used in the past to get rid of waste products, but now used to dump poor working class and middle class families?

Where is this hysteria going given that we now have in office an administration that refuses to fight for the ideals it campaigned on? We get a glimpse of where it is going in the tirades let loose recently by people like Sarah Palin, a dumber than dumb version of Ayn Rand, and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), who, when she is not calling for members of Congress to be investigated for their communist sympathies, is railing against Obama's socialism. In leading crowds in Washington, DC, recently with the chant, "kill the bill," Bachmann displays not simply an angry protest against the reform of health care. On the contrary, there is a much broader notion of politics at stake here, one in which she and others are protesting for an utterly privatized and commodified society where corporations and markets define politics while matters of life and death are removed from ethical considerations, increasingly subject to cost-benefit analyses and the calculations of potential profit margins. In this scenario, each individual is on their own in confronting the many systemic problems facing American society, each of us responsible for our own fate, even when facing systemic problems that cannot be solved by isolated individuals. This politics of hysteria and ruthlessness that is now on full display in America is not just an attack on the social state, big government, the public sphere and the common good, but the very essence of politics and democracy. This is truly a politics that celebrates death over life.
    --------

    Notes:
[1]. For an excerpt of Roosevelt's call for a second bill of rights, see Bill Moyers, "Interview with James Galbraith," "Bill Moyers Journal," (October 30, 2009). Online at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10302009/transcript4.html.
[2]. Bill Moyers, "Interview with James Galbraith," "Bill Moyers Journal," (October 30, 2009). Online at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10302009/transcript4.html.
[3]. US Census Bureau Press Release, "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008," US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC. (September 10, 2009). Available online at: http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/014227.html.
Paul Klayman, "Harvard Study: 45,000 People Die Every Year," Institute for Southern Studies (September 18, 2009). Online at: http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/09/uninsured-die-every-year.html.
[4]. Editorial, "Lack of Health Care Led to 17,000 US Child Deaths," Agence France-Presse (October 29, 2009). Online at: www.truth.org/1030099?print ,
[5]. Wendy Brown, "Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 41.
[6]. For an excellent analysis of the control of corporate power on the media, see Robert W. McChesney, "The Political Economy of the Media," (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008).


This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

How many effing links does it take?????

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

After years of misinformation and vitriol, FOX never appears ready to take responsibility for the violence provoked by the reckless "news" it tends to broadcast. Now that the political climate has turned especially heated and people have threatened violence inspired by FOX broadcasts, the mother of a man who threatened House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally made the connection between FOX and violence that responsible media analysts have long feared.

Authorities recently picked up Gregory Lee Giusti for threats that he made against the speaker. He already had an existing record of harassment and theft, but his mother had a specific theory about the origins of his inspiration for his threats against the speaker. 

Speaking to a San Francisco ABC affiliate about her son's actions, Eleanor Gusti says, "I would say this must be another one that somehow he's gotten onto either by -- I'd say FOX News or all of those that are really radical, and he -- that's where he comes from."

Indeed, the mother of a man who threatened to attack Speaker Pelosi traces his violent focus to the "radical" views of people like so many of the personalities on FOX. People such as Glenn Beck manufacture outright lies to incite their audiences, telling them that President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress tell the Tea Partiers, "You are either with the president or you're a terrorist." Not only does he lack any evidence of such a bold claim, but part of his logic for the outrage stems rationalizing the complaints against President George W. Bush for actually suggesting his political opponents were in league with terrorists.

FOX proponents may suggest Beck would not irresponsibly put forth such obviously incendiary statements about the president and the left since he so frequently mentions his love for the nation. Nonetheless, Beck himself admits that he does not "give a flying crap about the political process." Beck, like FOX more generally, focuses more on what brings in attention. As Beck says, "We're an entertainment company." It just happens to be one banking on an ideological bent.

Beck can try to explain away his remarks by telling viewers, "If you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot," but he no less bears responsibility for the actions and "radical" views he inspires, especially when he so awkwardly tries to serve up his own Gospels, anyway. As a rising star on FOX's network, though, he represents the increasingly vitriolic direction the network has taken. That the mother of a man picked up by authorities for harassing a nationally recognized politician would point to the "radical" talk of FOX as inspiration for his actions should come as little surprise. What should be surprising is the lack of responsibility the network accepts for its programming. As the threats of violence and attendant rhetoric continue, people should demand more responsibility from the supposed "news" network -- and until then, choose to Turn Off FOX.

Please send in tips and success stories to turnofffox@gmail.com, look out for us on Twitter @turnofffox, and join us at BuzzFlash in the Campaign to Turn Off FOX News. And please forward this article to a friend. You can drive the message home by obtaining a Turn Off FOX Bumper Sticker. Just Click Here.

Originally posted at Turn Off FOX.
BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

There is nothing civil about civil wars!