August 31, 2010--The Reverend Glenn Beck

At last weekend's rally in Washington, at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, Fox talk show host Glenn Beck rallied the faithful.

Literally the faithful. At least those faithful to his dogma of racist demagoguery. Recall, he's the one who pronounced Barack Obama the "most racist president in history."

He purports to be historically-minded. In fact, if you can stand watching him, part of most of his shows involves his idiosyncratic gloss on American history. Especially early American history where the eternal values and verities that still guide us were fought for and over. Claiming, as he does, that we must turn back to them.

On Saturday he called for a religious rebirth in America. “Something that is beyond man is happening,” he said. “America today begins to turn back to God.” He told the crowd that God himself had called him to this mission. (See New York Times article linked below.)

In case any of his people are reading this, allow me to quote a paragraph from The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood, who many consider the leading expert on the formation of the American republic.

Wood writes about some of our founders' religious views:

At the time of the Revolution most of the founding fathers had not put much emotional stock in religion, even when they were regular churchgoers. As enlightened gentlemen, they abhorred "that gloomy superstition disseminated by ignorant illiberal preachers" and looked forward to the day when the "phantom of darkness will be dispelled by the rays of science, and the bright charms of rising civilization." At best, most of the revolutionary gentry only passively believed in organized Christianity and, at worst, privately scorned and ridiculed it. Jefferson hated orthodox clergymen, and repeatedly denounced the "priestcraft" for having converted Christianity into "an engine for enslaving mankind. . . into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves." . . . Even puritanical John Adams thought that the argument for Christ's divinity was an "awful blasphemy" in this new enlightened age. When Hamilton was asked why the members of the Philadelphia [Constitutional] Convention had not recognized God in the Constitution, he allegedly replied, speaking for many of his liberal colleagues, "We forgot." (Page 330)

George Washington, a somewhat regular churchgoer, never once in all his letters, speeches, and conversations--thousands of pages of document--not once did he mention Christ.

No matter what one thinks of this, it is indisputable what most of our founders thought and believed. Glenn Beck is entitled to anoint himself in any way he wishes (it is after all still a free country), but he should at least be held to account for his distortions of our noble history.