by watching YouTube videos of Martin Luther King’s speech and going about my daily routine. I feel sorry for anyone who feels compelled to watch The Beckoning, for to me it means they are a lost soul, damaged by the drumbeat of disinformation that is the sole reason for the existence of Fox News, Beck’s true homeland.
For someone to watch the 8/28 rally by Beck and Palin and whomever else is attempting to “restore honor” to America and then send in money to help our Veterans (after all the costs of the Restore America rally are recouped first, of course) has to be willing to suspend the disbelief necessary to swallow the fear and hate filled message that a cheap carnie huckster is selling. A man who is a modern day version of Elmer Gantry, using religion to empower his own lust for political power and monetary gain:
Speaking at an event at the Kennedy Center Friday night, Beck emphasized the religious aspect of his message, The Washington Post reported.
“We are 12 hours away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” Beck said, according to the Post. “It has nothing to do with this city or politics. It has everything to do with God almighty.”
“This is the beginning of the great awakening of America … We must give voice to what God says we must do,” he added. “My message to you tonight is stand where He wants you to stand and trust in the Lord. If He tells you to do it, do it. If you can’t figure it out, He will. Just do it.”
Watch this video from Media Matters of Beck’s Kennedy Center performance last night. Zero in on how Beck uses the idea that people of faith were behind all the great movements in America from ending slavery to the Civil Right movement.
Of course, what Beck fails to mention is that most of his followers had ancestors whose faith preached that slavery was correct and biblically approved. Some representative quotes:
Every hope of the existence of church and state, and of civilization itself, hangs upon our arduous effort to defeat the doctrine of Negro suffrage – Robert Dabney, a prominent 19th century Southern Presbyterian pastor
… the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example – Richard Furman, President, South Carolina Baptist Convention
For it was the faith of the abolitionists in the North, whose descendants are the Unitarian-Universalists (indeed, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a prominent abolitionist who began as a Unitarian Minister) and the United Church of Christ (i.e., liberal churches) that opposed slavery and led the fight to bring an end to its atrocities. The same churches who later helped lead the movements for female suffrage and women’s rights, and in the modern era gay rights. The people of faith who see equal value in all God’s children regardless of color, gender or sexual orientation.
On the other hand it was the Southern Baptists and other white churches of the South who supported slavery that are the forerunners of today’s Christian Fundamentalist Movement.
By the late 1970s and in particular by the 1980 campaign of Ronald Reagan for the American presidency, fundamentalists entered a new phase. They became nationally prominent as offering an answer for what many regarded as a supreme social, economic, moral, and religious crisis in America. They identified a new and more pervasive enemy, secular humanism, which they believed was responsible for eroding churches, schools, universities, the government, and above all families. They fought all enemies which they considered to be offspring of secular humanism, evolutionism, political and theological liberalism, loose personal morality, sexual perversion, socialism, communism, and any lessening of the absolute, inerrant authority of the Bible. They called Americans to return to the fundamentals of the faith and the fundamental moral values of America.
Leading this phase was a new generation of television and print fundamentalists, notably Jerry Falwell, Tim La Haye, Hal Lindsey, and Pat Robertson. Their base was Baptist and southern, but they reached into all denominations. They benefited from three decades of post World War II fundamentalist and evangelical expansion through evangelism, publishing, church extension, and radio ministry.
Beck distorts the truth again when he appropriates the legacy of the Black Southern Churches and their allies from the North, Jewish and Liberal Christian congregations, who led the fight against segregation and discrimination against African Americans during the Civil Rights era, while the white Southern Churches still defended Jim Crow and the right to discriminate against Blacks in all aspects of life.
These are the same churches that remain predominantly segregated today:
Sociologist Michael Emerson estimates only 5.4 percent of U.S. churches are racially integrated, meaning no one group makes up more than 80 percent of the congregation.
“If you go back historically, the leaders of denominations have been denouncing racism and separation for at least 100 years, and the people in the pews have been ignoring those pronouncements for at least 100 years,” he said. “There’s a complete disconnect.”
Just as the nation’s sanctuaries are segregated, many of the nation’s denominations remain relatively racially separate. A look at statistics for some of the nation’s predominantly white Christian denominations indicates there sometimes has been only a 1 percent or 2 percent increase in the number of African-Americans in the last decade or so. Officials of predominantly black denominations say white membership remains a mere “sprinkling.”
Beck wears his religion as a cheap suit, just as he uses his lies about the nature of his “movement” being a revival and a renewal of the cause of “civil rights.” His appeal is predominantly to conservative whites, and his idea of civil rights excludes Hispanics, atheists, Muslims and other non-Judeo-Christian religions, LGBT communities, liberals and most African Americans (i.e., those who don’t vote Republican). In short, Beck is a modern version of that classic American archetype, the snake oil salesman, the con man up on cheap stage whose real product is himself.
More than his rivals, Beck has led the way in turning himself into a multifaceted brand. Besides the radio and TV shows, he goes on concert tours, he write books, he sells fans access to an “Insider” account for $74.95 a year and he sells his own advertising on his website.
“He’s a model for a 21st century talk show host and businessman,” Harrison said.
Well that and Goldline.
