Andre Harper: American Principles Vs. Liberal Spin
By HHR | September 2nd, 2010 | Category: Featured, Politics | 1 Comment »
By Andre Harper
Last weekend, I had the privilege of attending the “Restoring Honor” Rally in Washington D.C. While I’m proud to be an American everyday, I was especially proud on that day. The feeling I had being amongst so many people that love and appreciate the blessings of liberty was at times overwhelming. The purpose of the event was simple. We wanted to express our love for our nation and dedicate ourselves to practicing the values that has made it so strong. Unfortunately, this simple lesson appears to be impossible for liberals and the media to comprehend.
The media coverage and the liberal spin stopped short of calling the event a Ku Klux Klan rally, attended by racist tea partiers whose sole purpose is to suppress minorities, destroy the environment and worship big business. To no surprise, all the media coverage reflected this tired narrative. As usual with the media, they got it all wrong.
There’s no denying that the majority of the attendees were white, so is the majority of America. Blacks were free to attend and many of us did but for some reason the media chose not to show us. There is no surprise that the liberals once again have terribly flawed logic. Consider this. I went to a predominantly black college. Whites are free to go to school there. Despite being heavily recruited in many cases, many still choose to get their educations elsewhere. Many black colleges offer scholarships specifically for white students. Does this make black colleges racist for not having more white students? The point is that the lack of attendance isn’t the same as exclusion.
Instead of accurately reporting that close to 1 million people attended the rally they choose to say “tens of thousands.” They chose to make this about race and politics when the goal was clearly to restore God’s place in our daily lives, not in our government. Conservatives are people guided by principles that are often rooted in the Bible. This doesn’t mean that we’re perfect, it means that we have a moral standard to measure ourselves. A standard that we all fall short of but a standard nonetheless. Liberals don’t understand this because their standards are based in the situation, the intent, the beliefs of the offender and arbitrary fairness (which is always subjective.)
In addition to ignoring the content of the rally, they chose to (in many cases) give more coverage to Al Sharpton’s counter-rally to give it the appearance of equal attendance. The goal of Sharpton’s rally was to “reclaim Dr. King legacy” because he believes Glenn Beck has stolen it. This is possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m going to start wearing a Michael Jordan jersey every day until I steal his legacy. In reality, Sharpton’s rally was nonexistent except in the media. However, his attempt at maintaining relevance provided some valuable insight in addition to a few laughs. Sharpton and his liberal allies provide a great contrast with the conservatives at the “Restoring Honor” rally.
The conservatives prayed and asked God to bless our country and thank him for his blessings. On the other hand, the liberals chose to stir up racial hostility and drive further divisions among the nation. They came to fight while the conservatives came to pray. Conservatives believe that the Lincoln Memorial is sacred ground. That’s why everyone cleaned up behind themselves and by the time everyone left, you would have never known that there was just 1 million people there. On the other hand, after Obama’s inauguration, Washington D.C. was trashed and it took days and thousands of man-hours to clean it up. One liberal posted on a lefty blog that the folks who attended the rally yesterday cleaned up on purpose to keep Park employees from being able to earn a living cleaning up that Park!! You can’t make up that kind of ignorance.
God bless Glenn Beck for making the sacrifices necessary to pull this event together. He was truly amazing and I’m glad to have been there. His vision has strengthened my personal resolve to always thank God for his blessings, to improve my life and the lives of those around me. In the near future, I don’t expect liberals to abandon their tired narratives or judge themselves by the same standards they judge conservatives. Therefore I will continue to follow the direction given to me by God and ignore their predictable criticisms because Jesus Christ was treated far worse than anything I’ll encounter. So if the Savior of the world was treated so harshly, how can I expect any different?
He can be reached at www.AndreHarper.com
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A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they’ve heard the gospel, right there in the nation’s capital.
The news media pronounces him the new leader of America’s Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America’s Christian conservatives have no problem with that.
If you’d told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages of an evangelical apocalyptic novel about the end-times. But it’s not. It’s from this week’s headlines. And it is a scandal.
Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, of course, is that Mormon at the center of all this. 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. There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barabbas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah.
Leaders will always be tempted to bypass the problem behind the problems: captivity to sin, bondage to the accusations of the demonic powers, the sentence of death. That’s why so many of our Christian superstars smile at crowds of thousands, reassuring them that they don’t like to talk about sin. That’s why other Christian celebrities are seen to be courageous for fighting their culture wars, while they carefully leave out the sins most likely to be endemic to the people paying the bills in their movements.
Where there is no gospel, something else will fill the void: therapy, consumerism, racial or class resentment, utopian politics, crazy conspiracy theories of the left, crazy conspiracy theories of the right; anything will do. The prophet Isaiah warned us of such conspiracies replacing the Word of God centuries ago (Is. 8:12–20). As long as the Serpent’s voice is heard, “You shall not surely die,” the powers are comfortable.
This is, of course, not new. Our Lord Jesus faced this test when Satan took him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth, and their glory. Satan did not mind surrendering his authority to Jesus. He didn’t mind a universe without pornography or Islam or abortion or nuclear weaponry. Satan did not mind Judeo-Christian values. He wasn’t worried about “revival” or “getting back to God.” What he opposes was the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected for the sins of the world.
We used to sing that old gospel song, “I will cling to an old rugged cross, and exchange it some day for a crown.” The scandalous scene at the Lincoln Memorial indicates that many of us want to exchange it in too soon. To Jesus, Satan offered power and glory. To us, all he needs offer is celebrity and attention.
Mormonism and Mammonism are contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They offer another Lord Jesus than the One offered in the Scriptures and Christian tradition, and another way to approach him. An embrace of these tragic new vehicles for the old Gnostic heresy is unloving to our Mormon friends and secularist neighbors, and to the rest of the watching world. Any “revival” that is possible without the Lord Jesus Christ is a “revival” of a different kind of spirit than the Spirit of Christ (1 Jn. 4:1-3).
The answer to this scandal isn’t a retreat, as some would have it, to an allegedly apolitical isolation. Such attempts lead us right back here, in spades, to a hyper-political wasteland. If the churches are not forming consciences, consciences will be formed by the status quo, including whatever demagogues can yell the loudest or cry the hardest. The answer isn’t a narrowing sectarianism, retreating further and further into our enclaves. The answer includes local churches that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and disciple their congregations to know the difference between the kingdom of God and the latest political whim.
It’s sad to see so many Christians confusing Mormon politics or American nationalism with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But, don’t get me wrong, I’m not pessimistic. Jesus will build his church, and he will build it on the gospel. He doesn’t need American Christianity to do it. Vibrant, loving, orthodox Christianity will flourish, perhaps among the poor of Haiti or the persecuted of Sudan or the outlawed of China, but it will flourish.
And there will be a new generation, in America and elsewhere, who will be ready for a gospel that is more than just Fox News at prayer.
http://www.russellmoore.com/