IN MY SHOES: Should Glenn Beck Practice What He Preaches?
On his radio program last week FOX News pundit Glenn Beck encouraged his listeners to leave or change their churches if they hear preaching about social or economic justice, saying they were code words for Communism and Nazism:
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 you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop.
Long ago, The Stiletto became offended by the politicization of sermons and other spiritual teaching and stopped attending church - except for such family functions as baptisms and weddings. Where she prays to G-d, that is her church.
As far as The Stiletto is concerned, Beck - a Mormon convert - is behind the curve, given this New York Times interview with Utah State University professor Philip Barlow, an expert in Mormonism: “One way to read the Book of Mormon is that it’s a vast tract on social justice. A lot of Latter-day Saints would think that Beck was asking them to leave their own church.”
Forget for a moment that the Mormon concept of “social justice” became expansive enough to permit black men to receive the priesthood only 32 years ago, Beck is not exhorting Christians to become nonbelievers or to quit going to church altogether. He's only asking them to find and flock to pastors who leave the politics outside the church door. What's so controversial or outrageous about that?
Editorial Note: Barlow tells The Times that just this year, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, revised the “Handbook of Instructions” to add a fourth mission: Care for the poor. Um, so that means Mormons will share the one year’s food supply (or, barrels of hard red winter wheat for the traditionalists) they are instructed to keep on hand at all times with the rest of us in an emergency?
To be fair to Mr. Beck, the terms "social justice" or "economic justice" are terms of art usually used by the hard Left and are not synonymous with politics per se. It's like using "struggle" as a verb or "the People's" anything. Only the hard Left uses either.
As to the LDS church, when we had a constitutional amendment on the ballot that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, the LDS church itself contributed half a million dollars to one side. The LDS church is very political. Disclosure against interest- to me the book of Mormon can be best read as a work of fiction with plot holes. I should send Glenn Beck a copy of ONE NATION UNDER GODS by Richard Abanes.
Reply to this