A Pastor's Response to Glenn Beck's Call to Leave 'Social Justice' Churches

Reporting my parish would do little good, as the Catholic Church worldwide preaches working for social and economic justice as integral to our gospel call to faith - Mr Beck is expecting the entire Catholic Church to just get up and go? Sorry to disappoint, but it's not going to happen.

On the other hand, those who DO choose to report their parishes for preaching these issues might have the opportunity to learn where the Universal Church actually stands, and begin to act more in accordance with the official tenets of our faith (after getting over the initial shock, of course) rather than the dogma of the Republican and Tea parties.

It could be a good thing :).

Glenn Beck is not the only one spreading the atmosphere of paranoia on TV and radio waves. I could name a handful of radio talk-show hosts in my listening area, who are with the full blast of militancy, spreading fear of communism, socialism and fascism with a language that equally confuses political and religious concerns. One of them (in the Houston listening area) comes on air every day in the early afternoon hours on a Christian radio station, promoting that he stands for a "defence of the truth, American freedom and Constitution, and Israel...", claiming that "his name is written in the Books of Life". Yet at the same time he has no problem in making statements such as: "One day we will beat our swords into plowshares but meanwhile we need to have our swords on ready". (He did not mean "spiritual swords"). This one I heard a couple of days ago: "Moslems worship a demon.... Our president George Bush worships our God. President Obama worships a Moslem god..." It is scary to listen radio and TV hosts who claim to be born-again, and yet they are spreading a message of hatred in a major way.

I would never be called a Beck defender, but I do find it pretty irritating how people have thrown everything--from charitable giving to after school mentoring to government run health care--under the banner of 'social justice.'

One can certainly show Biblical care for the poor without supporting government bureaucracies and coercive income redistribution. People like to conflate these things so it looks like opposition to big govt is sinful disobedience.

Also, as the commenter above wrote, Beck is a Mormon. Why should Christians care about what churches he says we should or shouldn't attend?

As an occasional viewer of Beck, I know that he identifies social justice with socialism, and he is probably aware of its history. The term came into use during the great fundamentalist/modernist debates a century ago. Modernist/liberal "Christians" had decided that none of the Bible is correct, so Christ isn't God and there is no salvation or hell. The only job for the church is to eradicate poverty and the preferred means was forced redistribution of wealth through the state, that is, socialism. They called their agenda "social justice" because according to Marx, and all other flavors of socialism, the wealthy had stolen the wealth of workers and that's why they're poor. Since then "social justice" has always and everywhere been identified with forced redistribution of wealth via the state. Very few people don't understand that.

And that is the "social justice" that Beck opposes. As for helping the poor through charity, I'm certain that Beck favors it very much. He and other talk show hosts sponsor a charity to help children of soldiers who died in combat. He also favors laws that prevent preying on the poor, or anyone, through fraud or theft.

I'm not going to get hot-and-bothered about this -- I see a silver lining. It just might represent a way to separate the sheep and the goats, to find out just who's serious about following Jesus and who's just playing church. After all, He made clear that there will be a number of people who will be unpleasantly surprised at the final judgment.

The phrase "social justice" doesn't have to relate to politics or government unless you choose to make it so. It doesn't even have to be related to Biblical love -- but it is unless you choose to take it out of that context. It is something our faith, since its inception, has been committed to. We're called to act as persons committed to the call of God, wherever that leads. That call includes social justice, along with prayer, worship, sacrifice -- and love.

I misclicked when I indicated I liked this comment. It is way off base, and I hope Fundamentalist is misinformed rather than deliberately spreading falsehood. Have you ever read Walter Rauschenbusch? The "trouble" with social gospelers is that they take seriously the words in red in the NT and take seriously the eighth century prophets Isaiah, Amos, Micah. Social justice has not always and everywhere been identified with forced redistribution of wealth via the state since the rise of the social gospel. That's just not true. I wish there were some way I could eliminate the tag "ckgmail liked this." He didn't!

Just curious, but I wonder what would happen if you or someone else wrote the hosts in question, and called them out on their flat-out untruths. Just as the Sojo blog does not permit bearing false witness by erecting straw-men, it would be interesting to see what would happen if such hosts were actually contacted. (I recommend writing, rather than calling because the voice is a poor transmitter of information whenever something more than a soundbite is needed.)

The result may well surprise us pleasantly. I know I got a very warm response w/r/t health-care reform, when I wrote a pro-life group reminding them that the pro-life cause goes way beyond the GOP, and that they shouldn't parrot GOP talking points without question.

Excellent points. Social justice is so much more than certain favored government actions. But one thing that seems obvious to me is that some aspects of social justice do require government action or inaction. Examples: just immigration policy, just tax policy, just road policy, just development policy, and just environmental policy. But yes, social justice goes way beyond just governmental action. After all, a good question to ask is always "what can I do about it?"

One thing I'd like to point out is that there is this ever-present dichotomy within the church between social justice, and leading individuals to salvation and sanctification. Honestly, a church cannot do just one and call itself complete. The push for social justice can easily degenerate into pep rallies for whatever social cause is most popular at the moment; a sort of secular "do-goodism" is the result. (Imagine if the church became a de facto wing of the Democratic Party, in the same way that certain churches became a de facto wing of the GOP.)

OTOH, salvation and sanctification are of course very important, with eternal implications. But part of sanctification includes moving away from the focus on simply oneself, and actually reaching out to others. As James pointed out, faith without works is dead.

Yes, Glen Beck is self-taught, directly from his locally run socialist library, in the same town that runs his socialist fire department, which he'll probably never have to use but have to pay for via his taxes anyway.

Just another example of the re-distribution of wealth, Fire departments, they should be privatized, run by Blackwater and the like, and we can just give them our credit card when we need their services, that way the rest of us can be saved the burden of having to pay to put out other peoples burning houses. Darn socialist fire departments!

I am a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and issues of social and economic justice have been the focus of several of the Social Statements that have been adopted by a two-thirds majority of voting members at our Churchwide Assemblies. "Church in Society" was the first Social Statement adopted by our Church in 1991. From the opening paragraph of this statement: "In
faithfulness to its calling, this church is committed to defend human dignity, to stand with poor and powerless people, to advocate justice, to work for peace, and to care for the earth in the processes and structures of contemporary society."

As a Mormon I am deeply offended and embarrassed by Beck's comments. Beck obviously does not understand even his own theology, let alone anyone else's. The Book of Mormon, which is supposed to be read by Mormons hand in hand w/the Bible, contains numerous passages and stories about "social justice," which many extreme right wing Mormons, like Beck (and his mentor Cleon Skousen), love to gloss over and conveniently avoid. The Mormon church recently said they are elevating "caring for the poor and the needy" (regardless of religious affiliation) to the status of being one of the main missions of the church. I applaud them for that and invite Glen Beck and his mindless minions to become familiar w/this wonderful change. Isn't "caring for the poor and the needy" a form of social justice? Beck is an embarrasment to serious journalism, to the religious among us and in particular, to Mormons. For those interested, there is even a Facebook group called "Mormons Embarrassed by Glen Beck." Glen Beck is nothing more than an entertainer looking to increase his listenership and he's apparently willing to sacrifice not only his dignity to achieve that, but his own professed religious beliefs as well. In the true spirit of the Old Testament prophets, I call on Glen Beck to repent, cease his alarmist and divisive ways before he does anymore damage and get to know his own theology.

Why give any validity to Beck by mentioning him here? He is an entertainer. He says what his audience wants to hear whether there is any truth to it or not. Beck's comment is a moot point anyway. People who don't like their congregation are going to leave anyway without any prompting from the likes of Beck.

Beck is an alarmist who throws around loaded words that he does not define adequately so you can't really get a good grasp of what he is saying. He does that deliberately so he can back-pedal if he accidentally offends others of his ilk.

What's a Moslem?

I'm wondering who appointed you the ultimate authority on what modernist/liberal "Christians" have "decided"? You are way off base, as usual, with your blanket pronouncements.

As a modernist/liberal Christian whose social action is firmly grounded in and burgeoning from my faith in God, who sees the role of the Church as much more than your judgment allows credit for, I resent your stereotyping my spirituality to try to fit myself and all those you disagree with into the box that you have constructed to allow yourself to maintain your political and economic theories and conveniently dismiss us.

Thanks.

Glen Beck is awesome!

And in fact I read that in some upscale neighborhoods in one Western state that is nearly bankrupt, people ARE hiring private fire departments. If you didn't pay 'em, they won't put out your fire. I'd rather not live in a community like that!

Unfortunately, we have to pay attention because too many of our fellow citizens are...and we will wake up one day to discover that they have believed lies and are voting/behaving accordingly.

If the term "social justice" can mean anything, and everyone can have their own private definition of it, then it means nothing at all and communication is impossible. Before we can talk about it, each and every one of us needs to define what he means by it, and then we have to preface our comments with "by my definition of social justice..."

My depiction of the use of the term above reflect the meaning of the socialists who first invented it and its most common usage. To use a term in a way other than the common usage destroys communication.

Muslim

I am a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and issues of social and economic justice have been the focus of several of the Social Statements that have been adopted by a two-thirds majority of voting members at our Churchwide Assemblies.

"Church in Society" (http://bit.ly/7yLNFd) was the first Social Statement adopted by our Church in 1991. From the opening paragraph of this statement: "In
faithfulness to its calling, this church is committed to defend human dignity, to stand with poor and powerless people, to advocate justice, to work for peace, and to care for the earth in the processes and structures of contemporary society."

A Statement entitled "Economic Life" (http://bit.ly/duxy5I) was adopted in 1999. Again, from the opening paragraph: "Out of deep concern for those affected adversely, we of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America here assess economic life today in light of the moral imperative to seek sufficient, sustainable livelihood for all."

Mr. Beck's advice has given me incentive to revisit my own thoughts on this issue, and to re-read and reflect on our ELCA statements.

I think the only problem is that Glenn Beck is right here. I've seen lots of christian groups preaching "social justice" over the years at various universities and in practice this was usually a really good sign that they had forsaken preaching the Gospel for some trendy cause.

Plus, in my experience calls for "social justice" are usually calls for the government to step in and solve a problem with other peoples tax dollars. I'm pretty sure that that sort of approach to helping the poor is anathema to the teaching of the Bible. Feel free to correct me, but i've never seen such an approach justified.

Jesus always called us to personally help out the less fortunate, never to outsource that responsibility to the state and shirk the responsibility ourselves.

Tersm like "social justice" have become so generic, as witnessed by the posts above, as to be meaningless...however, folks Like Mr. Beck use them as buzzwords to ignite an audience who are hearing what they want to hear.

I don't believe Mr. Beck is right, nor do I believe that Christians can allow people like him or others to dictate how they should think, vote or live. Each of us has the right to make his/her own decisions.

It seems that if we paid more attention to the Gospel and tried to follow our hearts when it comes to "social justice", debates like this one would rapidly lose significance. Each of us should decide what issues are significant as viewed through the prism of Jesus Word, and act accordingly, whether the issue involves government or caring for our fellow humans.

Pray For Peace and Dare To Act!