Glenn Beck's rally

Someone needs to start it.

His speech (via C-Span):
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/08/28/HP/R/37513/Restoring+Honor+Rally+Dr...

Other sources:
* http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/28/at-rally-beck-positions-himself-as-new-...
* http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/us/politics/29beck.html?_r=3

Tea party gets religious? Conservative Christians make cozy with Mormons?

Chilling. I wanted to be the first to say that. It can't happen here, can it?

Only watched the first fifteen minutes so far (not sure I'll bother with the rest), but when did the religious right become polytheists? That pilgrim-descended pastor kept referring to "Gods" in the plural, much more often than in the singular. I certainly liked the nod he gave to the Quakers.

Overall, seems like just a lot of ho-hum politicking as usual. The military worship doesn't seem to be much more than you'd see from an equivalent Democratic political gathering. Doesn't compare with MLK's march in any interesting way except that the frightened little boys and girls who think this to be "chilling" will end up lookling just as retarded as those who said the same about MLK back in the day.

Saw the first 12 minutes. What a prayer (5:30 etc.)!, I guess (the) God(s) have lined up immediately, mightily impressed.

I wonder, was Beck always such a religious man, surrounded by pillars of judeo-christianity and reading Bible stories to children on his knee? If so, then why join the pulpit-ejaculators?

I think it is interesting the degree of religious content, the lack of direct political content and the enormous efforts to add "diversity" to the thing. Once can certainly accuse Beck of twisting MLK, and of co-opting his legacy--indeed I think the whole linkage very distasteful indeed--but there is something bracing about a big right-wing rally with a parade of black speakers and guys speaking in Amerindian languages. (Note: I skipped over Palin. I can't bear to listen to her.)

To Beck, I find him, and what he says, a peculiar combination of terrifying and appealing. He's all over the place, like a big, slobbery puppy who bites things--will bite your throat and then try to play ball. (His speech starts somewhere after the 2 hour mark.) His scariness for me resides primarily in the realization that he means everything he says, whether its his eirenic comments today about American values not dividing us or the ability of everyone to make a change, or his prior assertions that Obama is a racist and Marxist, and that McCain would have been worse--a racist, a Marxist and um, something worse than that? He is a wildly influential, true believer prone to going terribly, terribly off the rails. That's scary.

It's going to be interesting to see if this brings on a general shift in the tea-party. While tea party supporters are no doubt, on average, more religious than other Americans or even Republicans, that hasn't been part of their message. I think that could be pretty bad stuff, both for limited government and for Christianity in the US, if both are tarred by their association with this populist, know-nothing and highly divisive movement. But it may well happen and, in a way, it will mark the Tea Party's domestication. The Republican Party has been an coalition of economic and social conservatives for decades now. If the Tea Party becomes that too it may lose much of its force.

I think the Mormon angle is also interesting. There is a great realignment going on when it comes to religion. Doctrine, even such formerly absolute lines as that between Mormonism and Christianity, has increasingly vanished from discussion, and the opinions on hot-button social issues has become paramount. As a Catholic far more comfortable with the idea of gay marriage than with Calvinist—let along Mormon—theology, I find this a very negative turn. But it's clearly the way things are going.

>5 timspalding: While tea party supporters are no doubt, on average, more religious than other Americans or even Republicans, that hasn't been part of their message. I think that could be pretty bad stuff...

And bankrolled by billionaires!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html

Talk about unholy associations--politics, religion, $$. I'm feeling a need to reread Eric Hoffer's The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.

Revving up for the next presidential election I suppose. Showing masses of disgruntled people so as to influence the direction of the GOP being the target. I don't think they'll be going third party anytime soon. Some of the shine and charisma having come off the Obama's which in a way is only natural having won and now having to govern. IMO Beck & co. may be popular with their disgruntled but they're not very likeable to anyone else. What they're selling is a panacea of what America use to be and there's really never any return to the past. Don't like the intolerance vibe--which has a lot of religious overtones. Not very watchable political theatre either.

Having said that Reagan and the Bush's were all disasters--particularly Bush II. Clinton was pretty bad and Barack's frankly been a disappointment. I wonder when we're going to get back to producing and manufacturing in this country again. People need to work--young people especially. Got to turn that around or we're going to spin our wheels forever. To me all the taxation that the Tea Partiers go on and on about is very much secondary to that. The idea of putting people to work by the way broadens the tax base.

Glen Beck doesn't toe a party line, and the fact that he does mean what he says is why he appeals to so many of us. I am frankly tired of the blase' and superior tones in most of the previous remarks, you guys seem to be parroting the ideas and tones of the talking heads on the main networks. Beck doesn't claim to be a leader of a political movement or even to have original ideas, he is simply trying to restate classical conservative views and remind conservatives of our roots. I don't like everything he says, but I respect his right to state his views, and I admire his guts and his blazing sincerity.

As far as billionaire bankrolling goes, #6, better check out Tim Gill and his buddies before you buy that op-ed piece by Frank Rich. Actually it is not a crime to receive money from wealthy people who support your cause as long as proper reporting laws are followed, so I confess I didn't really understand Rich's beef, just sighed at his sneers. Do some research on Tim Gill, Mr. Rich, and then write a similar piece, and I will pay more attention to you.

#9--FWIW we had this Messianic kind of Obama run for presidency and when he's elected after his 2 year roadshow there are great expectations. Might as well add that the September '08 banking/financial market collapse made those expectations so much more compelling. Since taking office he's not accomplished a lot to turn things around--however much the GOP opposition has stymied him is another question.

Beck it seems to me is also doing this Messianic thing. He's coming along to save the day and his message filtering down to me is 'if only things were like they use to be back back in the 1950's and we were all watching Leave it to Beaver we'd be so much better off' but maybe I have a skewed view of things. The religious vibe so important to his perspective--but even Obama's leaves me so f***ing cold.

In retrospect I know most people think he's a nutjob--and as it happens over the years he's gotten a ton more of the blase and superior tones that you described above in respect to Mr. Beck--in my own mind I would have better off voting for Nader again. At least he is fairly close in more respects to any of the republican or democratic points of view to the way I think. Any chance he would have won? Hah! But what does that have to do with anything?

>9 LongDistanceLibraria: Actually it is not a crime to receive money from wealthy people who support your cause as long as proper reporting laws are followed

It might be a sin, though, for billionaires to use those dollars to convince the hoi polloi to act for them by appealing to piety and pride-in-country and support-for-troops and fear-of-others, etc. The e-mails TP supporters circulate fairly shimmer with flags and eagles and praying (blonde) children.

So in other words, the Tea Partiers are guilty of being white?

EDIT: Justin Raimondo defends (and simultaneously assails) the Koch brothers, whom he worked for in the 70s.

>5 timspalding:

This may help explain the rally's lack of direct political content.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/08/27/glenn_beck_special_operat...

margd, what is wrong with trying to persuade people to agree with you? That's what we all do in this group.

There's even a pre-existing term for it, "political discourse."

Post 11 doesn't address this question.

OH GOD!!! I JUST LEARNED THAT BILLIONARE TED TURNER HAS GIVEN LITERALLY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS!!!

Given the environmental devastation of the last hundred years it appears to be God's will, and there he goes working against that will.

Robert

>5 timspalding: "Doctrine, even such formerly absolute lines as that between Mormonism and Christianity, has increasingly vanished from discussion"

You should put your superior understanding of Mormonism to work and boot those non-Christians out of the "Other Christian sects" section of the Melvil Decimal System. (It is a shame that you don't have the power to correct the corresponding egregious misclassification in the Library of Congress system.)

Um, the point of the MDS is to mimic DDC. Nor do I "control" it.

Personally, I'm of two minds about Mormonism. If you're going to have a classification system, it depends upon what the basis is. I think it belongs in Christianity in some senses of the term--for example whether a group calls itself something, and what it belongs to, historically--and not so much in others--for example, Mormonism asserts the members of the trinity are separate and distinct gods, which has no been considered a Christian doctrine for some time. Were the Marcionites Christians? Meh. Yes and no. Either way, I don't care much about it. But evangelicals have been anti-mormon for decades.

>19 timspalding:

"Um, the point of the MDS is to mimic DDC."

Oh, rats! So we're stuck with a system that fails to recognize the "absolute lines between Mormonism and Christianity".

"I don't care much about it."

Oh, well, then that makes it okay.

A "for example" would be attitudes toward baptism. The three traditional American evangelical congregations are the Baptists, the Methodists and the Presbyterians. All three re-baptize Mormons. For its part, the mormon church asserts that it is Christian, but that all other churches have committed apostasy. So, whether to call them Christian is a semantic question--and semantic questions like this have no real answers. Or it is a faith question, which has no answers either of us can compel the other to respect. But if one considers historical American evangelical thought, you would have to distort the record to assert the lines are not quite absolute, and the hostility not very strong.

Shall we go trolling through evangelical statements about the Mormons, or is your point other?

Would you accept if I added "credal christianity" or "credal Christianity and all other non-credal Christianities since Marcion" or whatever? Please, tell me what phrase you would use in its place that would not distort the significant differences, especially as between American evangelicals and Mormons?

"Between Mormons and other Christians" or "between Mormonism and credal Christianity" are both formulations that would come across substantially less like "between liberals and Americans" or "between women and humans" than did the original.

Okay, fine with me. I find "credal" underdoes it insofar as the other major non-credal Christians are unitarian christians and Quakers, and they strike me as sharing less with Mormonism than "credal" Christians. But I have no better adjective, and all three have been at one time or another high on the list of evangelical targets.

#23: I've always found the holy works to be an interesting way of separating people of the book. For the Christian branch, you've got the Protestant Bible, and with a few minor additions, the Catholic Bible, which would leave the Quakers and Unitarian Christians with the Protestant branch. The Mormon and Christian Scientist branches both show major additions to the holy work list, as dramatic in some ways as the Christian Bible from the Jewish.

Well, Christian Scientists don't add scripture per se. Baker's works are secondary, interpretive works.

To your list add Swedenborgians, who go the other way, removing books. For the New Testament, they leave only the Gospels and Revelations. A splinter regards Swedenborg's writings as scripture, but most regard them as more like Baker's works.

I also feel compelled to add that the Protestant bible is not "with a few minor additions" the Catholic one. That reverses the history of the thing. Protestants removed Deuterocanonical texts when they split off. The Catholic canon was the canon from an early date and is shared, with tiny differences, with Orthodox and other Eastern Churches. Ethiopic Orthodox accept as canonical some books that were of contested canonicity in late antiquity (eg., the Didascalia) and a few unique to them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the Deuterocanonical works also non-canonical with respect to the Tanakh?

Robert

Do current Jews accept them? No. Did Jews at the time of Jesus, Paul and the Early Church accept them--insofar as you can make any generalizations about either Jews as a body or canonicity? Yes. Indeed, while "did the NT quote from the apocrypha?" has been at issue since the Reformation and has become something of a blood-sport online, I think a fair-minded person with no knowledge of the dispute would acknowledge most of them.

That Judaism turned away from certain Jewish texts--mostly but not exclusively Greek-language texts--is certain. But should this decision be binding on later Christians when it wasn't on earlier?