Russell Moore has a necessary word here for evangelicals excited about Glenn Beck’s God-and-country revival in Washington, DC, this weekend. An excerpt:
“Beck isn’t the problem. He’s an entrepreneur, he’s brilliant, and, hats off to him, he knows his market. Latter-day Saints have every right to speak, with full religious liberty, in the public square. I’m quite willing to work with Mormons on various issues, as citizens working for the common good. What concerns me here is not what this says about Beck or the ‘Tea Party’ or any other entertainment or political figure. What concerns me is about what this says about the Christian churches in the United States.
“It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined ‘revival’ and ‘turning America back to God’ that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.
“Rather than cultivating a Christian vision of justice and the common good (which would have, by necessity, been nuanced enough to put us sometimes at odds with our political allies), we’ve relied on populist God-and-country sloganeering and outrage-generating talking heads. We’ve tolerated heresy and buffoonery in our leadership as long as with it there is sufficient political ‘conservatism’ and a sufficient commercial venue to sell our books and products.
“Too often, and for too long, American ‘Christianity’ has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it.”
I encourage you to read the whole thing.
If you want a classic case of this in action, see this post by the head of a Christian ministry defending the “fruits” of Glenn Beck but showing a tragic willingness to twist biblical teaching in favor of advancing a political agenda.
