First of all, Tea Party, welcome to DC! Thanks for choosing the anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream Speech” to celebrate your divisive version of politics on our National Mall (and even more appropriately, in front of the memorial for the President who ended slavery).
Your fearless leader, Glenn Beck, is holding this rally with the message of “Restoring Honor.” This message is well and good, ostensibly non-partisan. However, there are a few things you might want to know about Mr. Beck. Before I talk about these, I’m sure that many of you consider Martin Luther King Jr. to be at least something of a hero, as his fight for civil rights fits in with your stated goals of liberty. However, you should know that King’s speeches were not limited to his “Dream” speech- he talked about a lot more than race. In fact, his son did an excellent job explaining this in a recent op-ed:
He did, however, wholeheartedly embrace the “social gospel.” His spiritual and intellectual mentors included the great theologians of the social gospel Walter Rauschenbush and Howard Thurman. He said that any religion that is not concerned about the poor and disadvantaged, “the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them[,] is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.” In his “Dream” speech, my father paraphrased the prophet Amos, saying, “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
The title of the 1963 demonstration, “The Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” reflected his belief that the right to sit at a lunch counter would be hollow if African Americans could not afford the meal. The need for jobs and shared economic prosperity remains as urgent and compelling as it was 47 years ago. My father’s vision would include putting millions of unemployed Americans to work, rebuilding our tattered infrastructure and reforms to reduce pollution and better care for the environment.
Ah, yes, that “other” part of King’s message. Social justice can be a polarizing concept- it forces us to realize the inequities in our society, and the vast changes needed to address them. However, as King often pointed out, and as his son reprises here, civil rights are sort of hollow without social and economic justice.
This concept of social justice brings me back to your fearless mouthpiece, Mr. Beck. Back in March, he had some harsh words for those who preach the social gospel:
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. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If I’m going to Jeremiah’s Wright’s church? Yes! Leave your church. Social justice and economic justice. They are code words. 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?” I don’t care what the church is. If it’s my church, I’m alerting the church authorities: “Excuse me, what’s this social justice thing?” And if they say, “Yeah, we’re all in that social justice thing,” I’m in the wrong place.
Now, let’s leave aside the fact that Mr. Beck’s religion, Mormonism, values social justice and has repudiated these comments. Let’s think for a second about what “running from social justice” really means. Again, I find myself unqualified to speak, but thankfully, my pastor, Reverend Karen Brau, is more than qualified. A little context for this short sermon: that particular day in church, we had done a social justice-themed Stations of the Cross, and this included hearing testimonies of three homeless women from N Street Village, a homeless organization connected to my church- these are the women that Rev. Brau mentions toward the end of her sermon. I urge you to go listen here to a 4 minute clip (starts at the 22 minute mark). Here are the key points:
Running from social justice means running from specific things. Running from social justice means running from specific people. You take the prophetic out of religion and you’re running from Moses. You take the “walking humbly” out of religion and you’re running from Micah. You take the feeding, clothing, sheltering, radical hospitality incarnational love in action out of religion, and you’re running from Jesus.
Now, this message is obviously targetted at Christians, people who value Moses, Micah, and Jesus. However, it need not be limited to that:
You take the real life struggle of economically poor women, who have been formerly homeless, who are in recovery, out of religion, and you are running from Cheryl Barnes, Renee Mary Virginia, and Diane Curry.
So, Tea Partiers, I hope you’ll take a reflective stance when attending your rally tomorrow afternoon. I hope that you’ll be thinking of the “Dream” speech to begin with, but more than that, I hope you’ll realize what King’s vision for social justice was. I hope you’ll realize the Christian faith that many of you confess affirms that vision, and that running from social justice is dissonant with that faith. As Rev. Brau said,
You take the social justice out of religion and it might smell sweet, but it’s spiritually stale and stuck.
“… if you spend your time in discussions on religious doctrines and dogmas, it will take you nowhere toward Truth. It is all rigmarole and will waste your precious time, which might better be used in thinking of God, meditating and creating love. Love is the sum and substance of all religions and the only essential of all creeds. Leave the rigmarole alone.”
Meher Baba
in Bhau Kalchuri
_Lord Meher_, Vol. 3, p. 1020
http://www.lordmeher.org/index.jsp?pageBase=page.jsp&nextPage=1020
Economic problems make people angry. They look for a scapegoat at which to vent their anger. Their anger is hatred. This gives hate-mongering bigots a forum. Perhaps the most noteworthy case was Hitler, who convinced Germany the Jews caused their misery.
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America always has had its share of hate mongers — the Ku Klux Klan for instance — but these days hate-mongering dresses up as “patriotism.” Rather than white robes and bonfires, the new hate-mongers wear business suits and rant on Fox News.
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With the recession making everyone angry, the latest target at which to vent that anger is the Muslims. So we have the ridiculous “discussions” about how far from “ground-zero” a mosque can be — for the sake of “sensitivity.” (No one seems concerned about the sensitivity of the Muslims, who by the way, are our fellow Americans).
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And no one seems concerned about the sensitivity caused by the Christian bombers of the Oklahoma City federal bombers. Shall no Christian churches exist nearby?
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Now we have Glen Beck, who had the audacity to say to Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-MN), a Muslim, “Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” The absolute gall of that jerk, to demand of an elected Representative that he should prove his patriotism to a rat like Beck.
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The Glen Becks of the world love to wrap themselves in the American flag, but they are no patriots. In fact, they are traitors to everything America stands for.
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Tea Partiers, as you gather to fawn over Glen Beck, you are fawning over a traitor — a traitor who makes a fortune posing as a patriot, and doesn’t have the courage to admit what threat to America he is.
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And, Tea Partiers, what does that make you?
[...] Memo to the Tea Party re: Running from Social Justice – Open Economics [...]
The problem (IMHO) is that many of the currently disgruntled believe that Jesus of Nazareth would have endorsed something that they think of as “capitalism.” By that I think they mean that Jesus of Nazareth would not have endorsed the taxing of the populace in order to redistribute wealth in the form of a meager social safety net (despite that little episode in which Jesus made it pretty clear that they should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and his repeated suggestions that they help the poor and give away wealth). I think it’s the secular government middleman they object to, primarily because they see it as largesse without some sort of moral compulsion to “come to Jesus” at least in a figurative sense, i.e., restore oneself to the “path of righteousness.” This is fed by stories and narrative that feature the “undeserving” or “immoral” or the merely “unsympathetic” benefiting from the social safety net.
I deduce this from thinking about the small towns in which I have lived and where there were strong social sanctions attached to charity that originated from non-governmental sources. I also deduce it from conversations with conservative friends who appear to conflate “capitalism” with an inherently moral structure that rewards righteousness and punishes sloth and wickedness. It may be, too, that some have taken a different lesson from the episode of the moneylenders in the Temple. They may have concluded that Jesus’ interference with finance was the “last straw” that (finally) cooked his goose, so to speak. If this is the case, then their rational alignment with corporate and financial power may be an attempt to avoid the Cross they claim as their avatar. But I’m no theologian.
But I’m no theologian.
I am a theologian and philosopher, and you have this pretty much correct, Maxine. It’s the Calvinist strain that runs through American Protestantism and which has shaped US economic thinking, the basis of which is “no pain no gain,” and “if it feels good, it isn’t.” It is a variation of the Protestant work ethic. The base of the GOP is made up largely of Evangelicals, and they are in this tradition.
All scripture is a matter of interpretation. In the Roman Catholic Church there is a doctrine of a doctrinal magisterium, holding that Jesus passed the mantle of authority to Peter as the first pope. Because of this hierachical rigity, Catholic social teaching is uniform and recently, the Pope has roundly criticized the capitalistic model as un-Christian.
Protestantism, of course, rejects this doctrine of the Church’s magisterium, and every one is supposedly “qualified” to interpret scripture for oneself. Moreover, there is also a doctrine of scripture alone. Of course, the reality is that Protestants are deeply influenced by their pastors, too, and particular sects often hold to a very rigid teaching in their congregations.
Many Protestant sects hold further that the literall meaning of scripture is the true meaning, rejecting symbolism as playing a key role. So if scripture is talking about money, that’s what scripture means. And because everyone is a self-interpreter of scripture, it is unnecessary to understand the context in which the gloss was given out. One can take it literally and apply it out of context in terms of one’s present situation as one sees fit.
Easy to see what happens in that case. The parable of the stewards gets interpreted as stewardship of money, and getting rich is being a good steward, as Christ wanted. I have actually heard sermons saying exactly this coming from Evangelical preachers. “Jesus wants you to be rich.” That in spite of what Jesus also said about the difficulty of a rich person in entering the Kingdom (a symbol of spiritual enlightenment, which is only gained by transcending selfish desires and actions).
Couple that with a selective reading of scripture, and ignoring what Paul had to say about the Torah being superseded by Christ, and you get a curious combination of scriptural citations and quirky interpretations that no biblical scholar would countenance that “coincidently” reflect a certain type of American mores, especially regional and rural.
The inconvenient parts of the teaching are conveniently overlooked, and the symbolic meaning of the teaching is also denied. The result is “christianism” that has very little to do with the Way of Jesus. It is not even what I would call “Christianity,” which also has little to do with what Jesus actually taught, if we have he words right, which questionable in most cases.
Christianity in general is itself level upon level of interpretation that is arbitrarily imposed, and due to being enforced for centuries after Christianity (religion) became Christendom (political), it is not questioned by most people — except the theologians and biblical scholars that study this sort of thing. Scholars like Bart D. Ehrman have recently begun to write popular material on what has been elaborated in academic works and journals for over a century.
In short, just like many key economic assumptions of neoliberalism, christianism is just made up and bares scant resemblance to facts.
Never put religion into science, and never put science into religion. Mixing fact and faith leaves neither fact nor faith, but some weird amalgam of arguement.
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The so-called “soft” sciences (psychology, sociology et al) lend themselves to faith, because rigid proofs are so difficult to find. Sadly, economics has “softened” to the point that virtually all widely-believed fundamentals actually are not based on fact, but rather on faith.
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For example: Government spending is limited by taxes and borrowing. Federal deficits cause inflation. Our children will be forced to pay for federal deficits. Without reduced benefits or increased taxes, Social Security will go bankrupt. The trade deficit is unsustainable and costs us jobs. Federal deficits reduce personal savings and crowd out private borrowing. We need China to lend to us.
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None of the above are based on fact. All are based on faith. Yet, all form the foundation of traditional economics.
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How did economics slide from science to religion? What is there about economics that makes intuitive conjecture the respected norm, while fact is rejected?
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Rodger Malcolm Mitchell