Re: Evangelicals, Mormons rip Beck

On Mar 12, 8:30 pm, "DGDevin" <dgde...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
You've gotta love how [right wingnuts]  throw each other under the bus
whenever
possible.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/christians-urged-to-boy...

March 11, 2010, 4:05 pm
Christians Urged to Boycott Glenn Beck
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

4:51 p.m. | Updated Last week, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck
called on Christians to leave their churches if they heard any preaching
about social or economic justice because, he claimed, those were slogans
affiliated with Nazism and Communism.

This week, the Rev. Jim Wallis, a liberal evangelical leader in Washington,
D.C., called on Christians to leave Glenn Beck.

"What he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith, and
Christians should no longer watch his show," Mr. Wallis, who heads the
antipoverty group Sojourners, wrote on his "God's Politics" blog. "His show
should now be in the same category as Howard Stern."

Mr. Beck, in vilifying churches that promote "social justice," managed to
insult just about every mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic,
African-American, Hispanic and Asian congregation in the country - not to
mention plenty of evangelical ones.

Even Mormon scholars in Mr. Beck's own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, said in interviews that Mr. Beck seemed ignorant of just
how central social justice teaching was to Mormonism.

The controversy began when Mr. Beck said on his radio show: "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.

"Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If I am going to Jeremiah
Wright's church," he said, referring to the incendiary black pastor who led
the church attended by the Obama family members when they lived in Chicago.
"If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another
parish. Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me, are you down with
this whole social justice thing?' "

Religious bloggers, from the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the liberal
Jesuit magazine America, to Joe Carter, at the conservative magazine First
Things, took Mr. Beck's decree as possibly an attack on Catholic teaching,
and definitely an affront to Christianity.

Father Martin wrote on the Huffington Post: "It is not enough simply to help
the poor, one must address the structures that keep them that way. Standing
up for the rights of the poor is not being a Nazi, it's being Christian. And
Communist, as Mr. Beck suggests? It's hard not to think of the retort of the
great apostle of social justice, Dom Helder Camara, archbishop of Recife,
'When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor
have no food, they call me a communist.' "

Mr. Beck himself is a convert to Mormonism, a faith that identifies itself
as part of the Christian family, but which is nevertheless rejected by many
Christians. Two Mormon scholars said in interviews that social justice is
integral to Mormon teaching too.

Kent P. Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University,
said in an interview: "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, said: "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 said that Mr. Beck's comments were particularly ill-timed because
just this year, the church's highest authority, the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles, issued a new "Handbook of Instructions" to church leaders in which
they revised the church's "three-fold mission" and added a fourth mission
statement: care for the poor.

Convenient that Beck has no shame - otherwise he'd be dying of
embarrassment right now.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Beck steps in it
    ... Christians Urged to Boycott Glenn Beck ... called on Christians to leave Glenn Beck. ... Mr. Beck, in vilifying churches that promote "social justice," managed to ... Even Mormon scholars in Mr. Beck's own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of ...
    (rec.music.gdead)
  • Christians urged to boycott Glenn Beck
    ... Christians Urged to Boycott Glenn Beck ... Mr. Beck, in vilifying churches that promote "social justice," managed to ... Even Mormon scholars in Mr. Beck's own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of ...
    (soc.culture.irish)
  • Evangelicals, Mormons rip Beck
    ... Christians Urged to Boycott Glenn Beck ... Mr. Beck, in vilifying churches that promote "social justice," managed to ... Even Mormon scholars in Mr. Beck's own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of ...
    (alt.guitar.amps)
  • Re: Evangelicals, Mormons rip Beck
    ... Christians Urged to Boycott Glenn Beck ... Mr. Beck, in vilifying churches that promote "social justice," managed to ... Even Mormon scholars in Mr. Beck's own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of ...
    (alt.guitar.amps)
  • Conservative HERO Glenn Becks under attack.......
    ... Glenn Beck's War on Easter Backfire ... Christians will, in the spirit of the season, forgive Glenn Beck's war ... After all, when someone is as wrong as Beck, it is cruel to pick on ... Sojourners has launched a "Tell Glenn Beck I'm a Social-Justice ...
    (rec.sport.pro-wrestling)