Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor

Sep 3, 2010. The "Restoring Honor Rally" was held Aug 28, 2010 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. by political activist and commentator Glenn Beck who wanted a day of divine intervention to "restore honor" to the nation.

Beck put a heavy religious cast on his remarks stating, "For too long, this country has wandered in darkness. A sinister and Godless other is trying to transform our country into something no longer recognizable as America.” So whom did Beck want his followers to blame for leading us away from God and for tarnishing our honor? Could it be…SATAN? Certainly not Obama! But then think again!

By suspicion, fear, resentment, and innuendo; Beck has been placing Obama into a type of Christianity he says Americans do not recognize. A day after the rally Beck was on Fox News saying Obama's religion was “Marxism disguised as religion. It’s a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it.” But then a lot of Beck's followers believe Beck's religion is perverse. I say this not to criticize Mormonism. No good Christian has the right to hold in judgment whether or not his fellow man is or is not Christian or a good or bad one. And here’s the paradox; while many of Beck’s conservative Christian followers believe the Mormon denomination is non-Christian, they denounce Mitt Romney for being a Mormon while finding it totally appropriate for Mormon Beck to demonize Obama’s Christianity. Beck is not only wrong about Obama's religion but wrong to use religion to take him down. The Constitution says, "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

In Early March 2010 Beck called on Christians to leave their churches if they heard preaching about social or economic justice, saying they were code words for Communism and Nazism. In attacking churches that espouse social justice, Beck is actually encouraging Mormons (including himself) to leave their church. This actually fits right in with the teachings of his church in that the founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, asked God which church he should join, and God the Father and Jesus Christ both appeared to him telling him not to join any of them as all Christian churches were wrong. Beck is one step away from condemning all Christian churches since there are probably a few that are not Communist or Nazi.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/us/12justice.html

While Beck's rally was primarily religious, his 9 Principles and 12 Values were right out of the Alcoholics Anonymous playbook, a 12-step program for addiction healing. And who is more familiar with this than Beck? His history of alcoholism and addiction is well documented. For him, his assertion "For too long, this country has wandered in darkness” grows not from creeping communism brought on by Obama, but by his addiction. Conspiracy theories and paranoia are not unfamiliar to those who have wrestled the demon alcohol, but to his great credit, Beck has skillfully morphed this into a $35 million per year demagoguery by playing on the fears, emotions, and prejudices of conservative Christians. In times of economic stress, demagoguery can easily take root in the fertile grounds of fear and hate, and no one more than Beck knows how to cultivate his crop of followers than by nourishing their minds with fighting, biting words to "take back the country." Jeff Schweitzer, former White House senior policy analyst and author, says “That any American would follow this megalomaniac is sad testimony to our poisonous decline. I weep for our country with clenched angered fists of frustration. We can be so much better than this.”

Demagogues generally put fear into the hearts and minds of their followers, and that is exactly what Beck does nonstop: “I love my country and I fear for it… the government wants to control every little bit of your life ....I am sick and tired of the progressives in this government trying to dictate how to raise your kids ..Here’s what you need to start doing: join the Tea Party - call Gold Line [Beck’s sponsor]…We are a country that is headed toward socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination…..There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America done through the guise of an election….The president is a Marxist who is setting up a class system….The government is a heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state….The health-care bill is the beginning of reparations… I believe this guy [President Obama] is a racist with a deep-seated hatred of white people.” His followers just eat it all up without stopping once to think that maybe they should question some of his hate filled rhetoric.

Martin Luther King completed his “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963, exactly forty-seven years ago at the same "Restoring Honor Rally" location with "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Beck concluded his rally with a call for white people to reclaim the civil rights movement. He said, "Blacks don't own Martin Luther King." To the ears of his followers, this sounded more like taking back what’s rightfully theirs as that dream deeply rooted in the white American dream sang out, “Thank God Almighty, our Messiah is here to restore white Christian supremacy.”