Political, not theological

If you read Stu Burguiere guest editorial (http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/04/what_glenn_beck_meant_about_social_justice.html)you would understand the difference between Beck's and Wallis' View point. Beck basically says that charity comes from local individuals or private/church groups while Wallis and those with socialist beliefs say it should come from government.

This comment is directed to all the people who think Glenn Beck is racist hateful person. Give specifics of his hatred I watch him everyday and I don't see it or here it.

I really had to laugh. For you, of all people, to complain about anybody being snarky and combative is like Goebbels complaining about anti-Semitism.

It seems like Mormons typically fall into two categories: either they're snarky and combative like Eichendorff, or they're saccharine cheerleaders like blandinbasement.

Is there anything between the two poles of this continuum? Based on the posts I read here, doesn't seem like it.

GREAT ARTICLE!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is doing a Day of Service in every stake in the South this Saturday. The purpose of this organized effort is to get members thinking about serving in their communities (community organizers ;)...as members it is not enough to merely suggest charity over the pulpit-- we must give our time and talents.

Those who support government programs and those who do not is irrelevant to the core issue: am I doing all I can to help those in need? ... See More

One fault of many on the conservative side--which is why they fail to galvanize the middle and convince the left of our concern for the poor-stems from a common talking point of the right: our freedoms come from God. HOWEVER, they fail, in discourse, to emphasize the personal responsibility that comes with such freedoms. When we selfishly employ our agency, our freedoms diminish.

I do not believe it is against conservatism to embrace government solutions to societal ills---as long as we are devising these policies in a provident way.

The church provides a GREAT model for how to do this...which is why, as members, we need to be more involved in our communities to inject this model at the civic level. Many churches are doing what they can, and we all would benefit from meaningful alliances to tackle these issues in our communities. Many are already doing a great job.

and here is the classical debate I have with mormons all the time:

person a: here is the evidence
mormon: that is not valid evidence because I don't see it
person a: that is your bias for choosing not to see it
mormon: that is your bias against me for not wanting to see evidence that I know is false.
person a: here is more evidence
repeat.

That is why the mormons are like the islamists, the christians, the nazis... They believe themselves to be right regardless of evidence. (ie coffee is good for you, alcohol is good for you, beef is bad for you, if the institution of the prophet can be wrong about polygammy, blacks and the mark of Cain... their prophecy is that of a few men getting together to make up a rule, not a god given truth... thus the church is created by men for their own needs - not divine.)

sorry, I know, I know, I must be wrong and the church is god's loved non-abomination on the earth, and jesus was not a delusional misfit who created hell on earth for the Hindus, greeks, romans, vikings, celts, native americans, mayans, aztecs...

repeat.

hariaum

Why am I not surprised that you would refer to MediaMatters.org? That's like jumping into the sewer. I prefer to evaluate Beck by the statements I actually hear him make, not ones corrupted by some contemptible smear machine like MediaMatters.

Eichendorff,

There's a whole collection of Beck's more scalding comments at http://mediamatters.org/research/200704120010.

He is one sick dude.

Beck's strong Testimony:

"Obama is a Communist. Yes, I know this is true"

Sis Stake RS President: please don't spread your opinion. If you actually watched and listened to Glenn Beck on a regular basis, you would know that he is not racist and has a strong testimony. I am sure there are those in your community who say you belong to a cult. It dosen't make it true. Start watching and and stop talking. You will soon realize he is speaking about free agency and protecting our right to have free agency.

Thank you judyat121, stake relief society president. I was so glad to read your comment. Glenn Beck is disgraceful. He is an embarrassment and it is disappointing that Michael Otterson defended him.

To the Stake Relief Society president, I have listened to Glenn Beck a great deal. I have yet to hear him say anything nasty or racist about anybody. You might try giving some examples, and then we'll be able to tell if you are being truthful.

I appreciate the remarks of Mike Otterson and have read additional postings.

"Social justice" is a broad term--and if we take it to mean what one definition purports: the way in which human rights are manifested in the everyday lives of people at every level of society," many of us would have an interest in and passion for a protection of individual 'inalienable' rights and a voluntary movement towards a more helpful, caring society. Many, if not most of us ,care about meeting the needs of those who are poor or who have significantly less and yet who work for a fulfilling life ... Giving without being commanded is ubiquitous. Many of us, Christians in particular, tithe and pay additional offerings to assist the poor and the needy. We covenant to do all we can to alleviate distress and to "lift the feeble hands."

The issue becomes complex when "rights" becomes obfuscated and confused and hidden in language that means far more than inalienable ones. It often refers to "rights" conceived, rights constructed, rights that are about entitlements that aren't entitlements. Where the line is drawn there affects what we perceive as social justice and what our response to it as we hear the call for it. Social justice 'can' mean to some, forced redistribution of wealth, government regulations on more and more aspects of personal lives, beyond what is needful, new rights given to make way for minors to act as adults and decide on things they are not prepared enough or equipped enough to decide on, and groups who call for egalitarian treatment based on preferences that are then identified for rights. In those cases, when the call for social justice comes, one hesitates before applauding.. Where in the spectrum of social justice ideology does one stand?

I think Mike Otterson addressed well the particular phrase up for take here.

Having met Glenn and knowing a little about his very generous giving, and seeing his comment on the ideological battleground, I would say that it's wresting to say that he doesn't care about the need to distribute and give money freely, according to the conscience, confirming Mike's statement. Glenn has indicated himself that he, like many of us, does not (don't) want to see greater and greater government regulation over how we make those allocations that are personal and collective, but voluntary.

Thanks for this forum.

Because I am a Stake Relief Society President, I am often asked to represent the Church on a panel to discuss a new building, or the work of the Church in Haiti, etc. And normally someone asks why the Church does not "reign in" Glenn Beck, since he gives the Church such a bad reputation. I try to explain we do not require particular political views, etc., but it is hard for anyone to defend his very nasty and often racist comments. I think he hurts the work of missionaries.

So Brother Otterson found one his convert Elders to be a sensitive and decent man.

Could this be because most Mormons, especially in Otterson's ethocentric Mormon Utah, generally agree with Beck's right-wing hate mongering, intolerance, sneering, jeering and smearing?

Growing up in Utah, Mormons scapegoated anything and everything as the fault of the "godless communists" As we all know, Saint Ronald Reagan single handedly eliminated the Communists, so Beck and the latter-day Sons of the Pioneers conveniently just replace the word "Communist" with "Socialist" and continue to smear with that moniker.

The US Government could help a lot more poor people if this Church would pay the taxes it owes America after it violated it's tax exempt status by initially giving money directly to anti-gay rights political campaigns in Alaska and Hawaii and then formed a huge, multi-state PAC to push Prop 8 in California.

"By their fruits ye shall know them" and Elder Beck doesn't fall far from their tree.

From a convenient aspect morality can be divided into political and social and religious realms. That is usually to the convenience of the argument.

The reality is that morality is not divided. If it is moral to help someone, the agency by which help is adjudicated is not relevant other than by efficiency and all should be striving for high efficiency.

To divide morality into political or religious distinctions is to abdicate the churches role, and failure, to provide moral guidance and true charity. Any church that builds vast temples, trust funds, a treasury... to save for a future that is uncertain, violates the belief that God is with us always. It is when you don't believe in god and god's power, that you amass wealth and not give it away to the poor, the hungry, the beaten wife, the persecuted gays... There is no charity in amassed wealth. Or rather, charity is deferred for the sake of acquiring power.

A nation state needs to acquire power. How it does so is a political and economic decision based on moral principles of its leaders. A church acquire power to enforce its vision. So when a church declares that it is socially just... while ignoring history of the oppressions it caused and causes, it is not a moral act, it is a defiance of the faith in God - for a fistful of dollars. (and so of course it wants to confuse power and morality, politics and theology)

hariaum

I appreciate Rev. Otterson's thoughtful response, but I respectfully suggest that his reasoning is flawed in practice.

Reverend Otterson posits that although charity to the poor is an undeniable tenet of most religions, it may not be government's role to support those tenets, however noble. This is a perfectly honorable and respectable position, and I would support it if it were applied uniformly in practice to all relgious tenets.

But as we know all too well, other perceived religious tenets include the condemnation of abortion and homosexuality. If religion ought to have no hand influencing the government's treatment of the poor, doesn't consistency require that religion also take a back seat in the debate over whether government could ban abortions or create homosexual civil-unions?

One of the best statements I ever heard on the subject of social justice was made by a screen writer and mouthed by actor Clint Eastwood. He said, "A handout is what you get from the government; a hand-up is what you get from a friend."

Nevertheless, there are good reasons why the government should give that handout. Where liberals have strayed in recent years is to institutionalize perpetual handouts instead of making it part of a temporary program to get people back on their feet after some severe setback that life has dealt them- illness, being raised by criminals as a child, divorce, unemployment from a layoff, or other factors beyond the control of the individual. Yet it is in these areas- specifically- that conservatives are wrong for opposing government giving that handout, even when it is limited in scope and temporary.

As for social justice, the society we live in today is beyond anything imaginable to Jesus and his followers. Could Jesus have imagined highways or high-speed rail networks? Could Jesus have imagined sewage-treatment plants, toilets and hot/cold running water? Could Jesus have imagined a public education system through the level of universities? I doubt it. So, we have to deal with these facts of modern life as WE think they should be dealt with, not some imagining of what we think Jesus MIGHT have thought if he were here today.

The problem with people like Beck is that they have an overly simplistic view of the world. We live in a world in which various institutions and powerful individuals need to have their power and influence balanced and regulated, for the common good. Often times, the only thing that can do this- imperfect though it may be- is the government. And I fear the unchecked power of large corporations and special interest groups much, much more than I do the feeble powers of the Federal government trying to keep these ruthless people and institutions under some semblance of order.

iamweaver

So...
What you are saying is that Jesus was wrong in the changes he made that superceeded the old testament (the laws of Moses).

Let a life.

Mark
Always seek the truth.

Michael Otterson for President! What a great, well thought out and comprehensive post. No one (including Beck) is saying that churches shouldn't preach and encourage their members to assist the poor; in fact churches that do not do this and spend goodly sums of their donated funds to assist those in need are not truly Christian. The rub is when churches actively get involved in the political process, support specific candidates and their beliefs; a la Jeremiah Wright. Churches that actively lobby and encourage the government to do more for the poor, need to first look internally at their own efforts.

Jesus told people to give away all they had in service to the poor and then they would understand his an be saved. I personally urge everyone to do this (I haven't if you're wondering)... thats a ballsy thing to do and if you do I will never doubt your faith. If you don't I won't necessarily say you don't believe though.

Here's my thing, and Glen Beck's too: It does't mean a damn thing if your willing to give up someone else's money. "Let's tax the rich and give it to the poor! Fulfill the message of Christ!" Ehhhh, not quite.

Job was a rich man but God found him ritious in his testing. At the time of Jesus to be rich almost always meant you made your money on the backs of the poor. Today not so. I'm in school to be a transactional lawyer, to allow companies to contract and provide middle and working class jobs in response. It's highly unlikely that I'll be really rich but over $250,000 a year is highly possible if I can keep up with the workload at a large firm. Would I have made my money on the backs of poor? My father owns a mechanical contracting company and pays all his workers 35- 80 thousand dollars a year; on the backs of the poor? NO

Now my great-great-great grandfather owned slaves on a plantation on the eastern shore - HE made his money on the back of the poor not the wealthy mega-farm owner out in Kansas providing food for an entire nation.

What happened to separation of church and state? If social justice is a premise of Christianity then why is it being suggested that we use federal funds to promote Christianity. I don't understand how all of the sudden it's ok to force ones religious views on the entire nation and redistribute the wealth, aka social justice? In doing so isn't the government discriminating against all other non-Christians?

"Glenn Beck and Jim Wallis haven't sat down together to talk through the issues amicably"
====

And that will never happen. Beck is a guy whose sole purpose is selling himself to make a huge amount of money. He's just another Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh. He found a target audience that likes his right wing clown act and is doing all he can to milk it by saying outrageous, illogical, non-factual and often hate mongering things to make money. Having a logical "amiable" conversation is the last thing he wants. Unless he can make money doing it.

He's allowed to sell it, after all, there is a sucker born every minute. But the rest of us can just ignore.

As noted, Beck is a famous Mormon so Otterson's commentary is unfortunately biased since Otterson is the LDS's official PR guy.

Then there is the Mormon "Church":

Moroni was another angelic myth or would a better description be "one of the many hallucinations seen by founders of the major religions" or " a clone of the fictional Gabriel" or "Moroni the golden hornblower", or "son of Mormon, the propheteer/profiteer", or "actually Nephi", or "good buds with John the Baptist, Peter, James, John, Moses, Elijah, and Elias all who ministered to Joseph Smith as angels" or as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_Moroni

"Some scholars have theorized that Smith became familiar with the name "Moroni" through his study of the treasure-hunting stories of Captain William Kidd.[2]

Because Kidd was said to have buried treasure in the Comoros islands, and Moroni is the name of the capital city and largest settlement in the Comoros, it has been suggested that Smith borrowed the name of the settlement and applied it to the angel who led him to buried treasure—the golden plates.

Complementing this proposal is the theory that Smith borrowed the names of the Comoros islands and applied them to hill where he found the golden plates, which he named Cumorah.[3]"

Bottom line:

Mormonism is a business/religious cult based on Joseph Smith's hallucinations which has bought respectability with a $30 billion business empire, the BYU "mission matured" football team and a great choir.

I agree that both individuals and the government, as a collective representative of the people as a whole, should help others in need or tight spots-- but I think the government helps in the wrong way. If it acted as it should to provide leaverage for main street against wall street, there would be no working poor and it would only have to take care of those in extreme circumstances, like illness or job loss or an overwhelming family situation. But right now the average American looses half of their check to taxes for benefits they don't have access to and the rich only get taxed at 3%. There is something wrong with that. You shouldn't need two jobs just to have movie money. The poor will be with us always, but just like in Monaco, everyone should have shelter, access to transportation and communications, and food in this Country, the most prosperous on earth. Those who want to work should able to work and there should be viable options for those who can't and I don't mean people who just can't travel into an office, but still have all of their faculties and use of some body part. Socialism is not about giving everything away and everyone having the exact same thing, although is does involve compassion. It's about everyone having an equal chance to "live" and not always being in survival mode. Everyone doesn't need a big house on a hill, but no one should have to choose between food and medicine or not being able to get their child a good practical education because they can't afford the exhorbitant tuitions at private schools.

It's apparent that Michael Otterson has not only met Beck once, he's only seen his show once. Beck is constantly advocating reaching out and helping your neighbors and giving to charities. In fact, as our current government seeks to remove tax deductions for charitable giving, Glenn has been a loud voice against this. What Otterson fails to to address is the reality that, as we deflect our individual responsibilities into the nebulous collective responsibility that is the US government, we not only detach ourselves from the personal satisfactions and joy that comes from helping people directly, we add layers and layers of inefficient bureaucracy to an already bloated system. In addition, impersonal checks being dished out from Washington do little to motivate change and hard work.

Otterson would do well to read the founding fathers on such issues. Ben Franklin, who was also compassionate to the needy, knew the damage that this type of policy causes. He pointedly stated " Chas Clawson April 5 at 4:13pm
I know you don't like what the founding fathers had to say but this quote from Ben Franklin sums up my opinion on the VAST majority on welfare.
--------------
For my own part, I am not so well satisfied of the goodness of this thing. I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. -- I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? -- On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty. Repeal that law, and you will soon see a change in their manners."

My problem with posters like Michael Otterson is that they carefully ignore all of the injunctions in the Old Testament for the rulers of the nation to exercise social justice.

I'm sorry, but you don't quite get to pick and choose from the Bible in that manner, especially when the message is consistent with what we know of God. I guess that one could argue that those injunctions only apply if the government is a Theology. This is at odds with Paul's statements about God and the state, though.

Jesus' oft-quoted statement about taxes and tithing should be read within the context in which it was uttered, and not turned into some kind of overall policy statement with all kinds of added philosophies that don't match His underlying message.

The bottom line - be as Libertarian as you want - but to be consistent with the Biblical message, one must believe that the government, big or small, must keep in mind social issues within whatever bounds we set for it.

Mr. Otterson prefers to see the best in people. Who am I to dispute that? However, let not the flourish of his words overwhelm that from Jesus who didn't apply conditions like let not the government intervene.

luke 18

And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 19 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God. 20 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother. 21 And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. 22 Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me. 23 And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.

My family has been in the Mormon Church, since my so-many-greats grandfather gave Joseph shelter in Missouri when he was on the run from the persecutors of the early saints. Glenn Beck does no service to the Mormon Church and he is not a man of goodwill. He is a man who promotes hatred and division and, inspite of his weeping professions of love for the United States of America and its Constitution, undermines both.

It saddens me to see Michael Otterson portray him as something he is not. Perhaps Beck came across decent to Otterson when they met in person, but he spreads a deceitful message of hate and lies that speaks far more to who he is.

I write from Wasilla, Alaska, my home town, where it is snowing heavy today.