Glenn Beck, Heretic?
With all due respect to my colleagues, this focus on religion and God isn’t anything new from Glenn Beck. His most recent foray has been a sustained attack this year on churches that preach “social justice,” arguing just a month ago that “Social justice isn’t in the Bible.” Beck had to alter his message slightly for this weekend’s event, both because it’s easier to rally people for God than against social justice, but also because it would be kind of awkward to spend the day hating on social justice when that was pretty much at the core of Martin Luther King Jr.’s theology.
Beck’s attacks on social justice have not gone over well with the millions of American Christians—including most Catholics—who consider social justice to be a key part of their religious tradition. But even the broader message of religious revival that Beck preached on Saturday is getting him in trouble with Christians across the theological spectrum. The most stinging criticism has come from Russell Moore, dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who warns Christians not to fall for “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.”