"Restoring Honor" has come and gone. Having watched at least some of the festivities, I come away from it in profound disagreement with its major theme: that the state of our country can only be improved by getting right with God. But whose God? And what about the unbelievers?
For months, Glenn Beck hyped his rally on the Mall, telling us that he would reveal his Plan for getting the nation back on track.
I'm coming to you next year with a plan, and it's multilayered. The first is ‑‑ and I started working on this in August. A 100‑year plan for America. This country was destroyed, and it began 100 years ago with the progressive movement. We weren't destroyed overnight. We were destroyed piece by piece. So how do we get it back?
August 28 was to be the Unveiling of the Plan.
On August 28, 2010, I ask you, your family and neighbors to join me at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.
So what is the Plan? The plan is to get right with God.
But whose God? And what does God expect of us? Even if we say that God is the Christian God, there is much disagreement within Christianity about what God is and what God expects of us. The God of the Bible expected his followers to do things that today would be considered war crimes.
Glenn Beck, who has called Barack Obama a racist with a deep-seated hatred of white people, now says that the problem with Barack Obama is that he believes in Liberation Theology, which he say (saying that Pope Benedict supports him in this) is demonic.
Beck is a Mormon, and many Christians do not consider Mormons to be Christians. But let's put that aside.
George W. Bush was no believer in Liberation Theology, and many of Beck's followers would consider GWB to be a Christian. Some even thought, in the early days, that God wanted him to be President and had showed him special favor.
Well, how did that work out? The 9/11 attacks; Iraq; Abu Ghraib; no Weapons of Mass Destruction; Bin Laden still on the loose; eight years of war in Afghanistan; Terri Schaivo dead; no letup in the number of abortions; the botched response to Hurricane Katrina; and, as the closing act, the Financial Meltdown.
Did God really not favor George Bush? Was George Bush not right with God?
Must one be a Christian to be a valued citizen and to have a role to play in our national discourse? Must one be a Believer? What would Beck's inspiration, Thomas Paine, say?
As I recall, in The Age of Reason, he decried, "[t]he adulterous connection between church and state{.}" He also stated:
The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
and
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
and
[T]he Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe[....]
and
The [New Testament], compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act...
Somehow, I don't think that Thomas Paine would go along with Teh Plan.