The Cost of Paranoia

David Brody writes regarding Glenn Beck’s address in Washington:

There are going to be conservative Evangelicals who get caught up in the fact that Glenn Beck is a Mormon and they’ll be concerned that he’s up their preaching about God. They’ll say that his rhetoric may confuse people because he doesn’t view God the same way Evangelicals do. That’s true and valid but look, here’s the deal: Glenn Beck IS NOT your Senior Pastor. He’s not the Apostle Paul or Billy Graham even though Beck’s message on Saturday may have sounded like all three of them combined. If Glenn Beck went up there talking about the tenets of his Mormon faith, that would be one thing. If he started to whip out the Book of Mormon and started reading from the biography page of Joseph Smith then there would be a problem. But he didn’t. When he talked about God and Moses and the Apostle Paul, we Evangelicals know that he’s talking about the one true God: The God of the Bible. If others interpret it differently there’s nothing that can be done about that.

Glenn Beck did something very important this past weekend. He injected God directly into the equation. It is now part of the national discourse. He used his influential megaphone to give God the glory. And while Glenn Beck’s view of God may be different than that of Evangelicals don’t you think it’s about time someone with true influence stood up and wasn’t ashamed to say that putting God first in your life is the only way to real change? After Beck’s rally on Saturday, you can be sure that more people may start to inquire about who God really is. They really may start to search. Glenn Beck deserves credit for that. God can and will use anybody so that people will be drawn to him and If those folks who are searching for answers approach us, are we as Evangelical Christians ready with an answer? We better be.

Brody’s words are well-taken. In recent days, I’ve read some reports of people who got hung up about Beck’s Mormonism and the role it played in this weekend’s rally. I think such complaints show a lack of understanding of American history.

If you go back to the Founding era, you’ll find many men of disperate theological pursuasions who played a role in the country’s history. Benjamin Franklin, whose call to prayer at the Constitutional Convention has been read time and time again this year and also helped promote George Whitefield’s revival meetings that led to the first Great Awakening, was agnostic in terms of the divinity of Christ. There were certainly a large number of theological divisions among the Founders, even those who were Christians. Doubtless, I think it would have been possible to derail the Revolution if you’d got people to fight over predestination.

Throughout American history, it’s been the case that on every issue of  justice, that you’ve had a degree of inter-religious cooperation. Think the Underground Railroad with cooperation of other religious groups with Quakers. Or think of the Civil Rights movement and the involvement of Jews, Anglicans, Baptists, and others working together.

There are many important theological differences that can be discussed between a wide variety of groups. However, many of them have no relevance to public policy debates. Over the years, in political groups I’ve interacted with people who have very different theological perspectives but on our the samde side politically, whether its Jewish people, Catholics, Mormons, Calvinists, or Baptists, it’s quite a spectrum. It’s part of the reason I’ve stated that the threat of a theocracy is nothing more than a leftist boogeyman. A theocracy requires a single unifying theology, and it’s not to be found among religious conservatives. 

If there’s a uniting thought within religious conservatives, it is that God is the source of our rights, and that we are accountable to Him. Of course, I’ve seen many cases where some people just can’t handle dealing with people of other religious perspectives. The lady who recruited my family into our local pro-life group quit it because she became convinced that she couldn’t in a group that included Catholics. When I was starting a Teens for Life group, I’ll never forget calling up a Baptist Pastor who told me that the pro-life movement was nothing more than a Catholic plot to unite the church, and therefore he wouldn’t participate. I have to wonder if that pastor needed help pulling a drowning man out of the water whether he’d worry about the drowning rescue  being a Catholic plot.