Glenn Beck's Tent Revival

How do we spell chutzpah? Glenn Beck told the audience at his rally yesterday that someday Washington would build a monument to yesterday's event. He demurred this morning when asked whether he and Sarah Palin would run for the Presidency in 2012. Did it keep Beck's PR machine going? Of course. Was it politically meaningful? No. It was a rather dull affair both for the watcher and the attendee. Depending on whom you would believe, attendence ranged from the CBS aerial estimate of about 85,000 to a larger, but perfectly realistic 150,000. I found anything such as the MSNBC estimate of 330,000 and the more outlandish Michelle Bachmann's 1 million totally out of the ballpark.

The whole affair was a display of American civil religion as scripted by Mormons and radical fundamentalist Christians. If you didn't know the background of players like David Barton or some of the speakers, you would believe this was simply a tent revival meeting on the Mall and, for the most part, it was. Like much of what Beck produces, this event was incoherent and its ultimate purpose was thoroughly unclear.

What struck me was the deliberate absence of overt politics from every speaker and Beck's strange interludes of emphasizing the "positive and the good" of America and not the scars of the country. When this was unfolding during yesterday's three hours, I remember that the head of the Mormon Church in the United States only recently issued a proclamation, close to a fatwa in that sect, that chastised radio and television producers for constantly criticizing our political leaders saying they were crooks or dishonest and called on these people to focus on the positive and the good. Yesterday, Beck's rhetoric was noticeably changed and today he apologized for having called Obama a "racist". I felt all yesterday that someone had called Beck to account.

The mythology of yesterday's events are well-known from the 1950s propaganda of Americanism. We are a country founded under divine will and have a role to play as an instrument of God's. Yesterday, as every speaker "testified", the country was under the protective cloak of Jesus Christ. This is the mainstreaming of Christian nationalism, which was the project of the organizers. Only at the very last minute did Beck mentioned Jews or Moslems, but very reluctantly. At the finale, he rolled out several dozen religious leaders, representing all Christian faiths and a lonely rabbi, who it turns out was an associate of GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But throughout the day, the speakers were from the radical fundamentalist churches. There were no speakers from any mainstream Christian churches or any other religion.

Besides its monotony, I can't believe the teabaggers were thrilled by the event. While the stage was multi-ethnic, crowd counters only found 100 African-Americans in the audience. Teabaggers who came had their confederate flags, posters that said Martin Luther King was pro-Communist and the t-shirts with the usual anti-Obama slogans. They came for redmeat but Beck didn't deliver. Al Sharpton, who had a protest march across town, made an astute observation that Dr. Martin Luther King came to Washington to petition the government to protect the rights of African-Americans against the states and local governments. But Beck's followers are just the reverse--wanting to again assert state's rights against the federal government. Absolutely true but the rodeo clown couldn't deliver.

The more important part of the Beck invasion was the event held on Friday at the Kennedy Center where the whole gamut of sponsors were entertained by Beck and Sarah Palin. At that event, the whole alliance of Domionist preachers, Rev. Hagee, and the other radical fundamentalists were in full display with the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, Freedomworks and the NRA. That is the new "conservative alliance" working on the mid-term elections. Their presence was suppressed in the Saturday event. But you can catch this crowd in events leading up to the election. For instance, Lou Engle, the homophobic fundamentalist minister, is convening a massive rally in Sacramento with some benign title using "values". This rolling revival meeting has been travelling through the country with Newt Gingrich and David Barton as the leading sponsors. Like Friday's dinner, the emphasis is on how this administration is "secularizing" America.

Even after listening to three hours of yesterday's program, I can not tell you what Restore America's Honor means. And why now? The program began with presentations by the Special Operations Foundation, which provides scholarships to the children of dead soldiers and assistance to wounded combat veterans. The first part of the program glorified the military as a force for good in the world and rolled out veterans who had been mutilated in battle. But their stories were tinged with the futility of our recent wars. The bravery and courage displayed by these men were in avoiding being massacred and escaping losing situations. This reminds me of one of Beck's first rallies, which was held at the Alamo. The most recent history of the Alamo based on all the known documents portrays our courageous Texans, actually being killed separately as each tried to escape. There was this strange note to yesterday's commemoration of veterans. There was no heroics for vanquishing an evil foe but individual courage in escaping disaster.

Sarah Palin was very muted in her presentation. She made it clear that she was told to avoid political remarks and speak only as a mother of a serviceman. She did get a dig in on Obama saying we have to restore America , not transform it like "someone wants to do." But this was pretty tame stuff. She invoked Abraham Lincoln and admitted that slavery really had been a scourge on the land and she praised Martin Luther King. When she introduced a former Vietnam POW, she made mention of John McCain, which drew absolutely no applause from the audience. And she got her religion in by saying God's Providential hand is guiding the United States.

Glenn Beck's gimmick for the event was to reproduce George Washington's Merit of Honor, which Washington awarded to revolutionary soldiers for good deeds and FDR revived as the Purple Heart. The first on Faith was presented by an American Indian from Oklahoma, who was a "covenant warrior"--i.e. a fundamentalist Christian--and who called on all Indians to leave the reservations and accept Christ and be an American. The prescence of the Indian was a nice touch of Mormon influence as our Indians are the lost tribe of Israel.

If you were not watching, you would not get that the Faith award was given to a protege of David Barton, Christian revisionist. The award went to African American Baptist preacher C.L. Jackson, who had been chosen by Republican Governor of Texas Rick Perry to minister to the Texas Department of Corrections. David Barton had been the second in command at the Texas GOP during this period. Rev. C.L. Jackson was chosen because he had been at Dr. King's "I have a Dream" rally.

Hope was the most peculiar Award. Tony LaRussa of the St.Louis Cardinals presented the award to Albert Pujoles, an Hispanic who is vocal against the Arizona anti-immigration law.

The Mormon card had to be played. Throughut the day, as Glenn Beck m.c'd the event, he would come dangerously close to stating Mormon theological beliefs. It's remarkable self-discipline that he never actually went over that line. But he had to send a message home to Salt Lake City. The Charity award went to Jon Huntsman, a billionaire Mormon, who has donated over $2 billion to charity. Ironically, the award was accepted by an African-American named Emma Houston, who proudly testified to Jesus Christ. Huntsman claimed he couldn't make it because of a marriage in his family. But you wonder whether it wasn't because his son is Obama's ambassador to China.

The program then segued into Martin Luther King, Jr. whom Beck spoke about. Long parts of the "I have a Dream" speech were played over the loudspeakers. Beck even quoted from King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. And this led to Beck's catch of the day--Dr. Alveda King, the estranged niece of Martin's family. Fundamentalists love Alveda because of her anti-abortion stance and her campaign against same-sex marriages. But I'm not sure the teabaggers liked to hear her full social program. She introduced several African American Baptist pastors and we listened to several gospel singers.

When Alveda King speech opened with her tesimony to Jesus but then she decided she had to keep parts of Dr. King's legacy alive and the audience clearly didn't anticipate this as an event of the head teabagger. Alveda quoted Martin that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." She called us to lay aside the lies about people and recognize we are one human race. She called on America to repent and reject racism. She mentioned the high rate of imrpisonment of her "brothers and sisters". And she mentioned Martin's speech about coming for a check that had been marked "insufficent funds" on the promise to African American Americans. She did her little rendition of what her dream was. The first out of the box was "an end to white privilege"but instead the idea of "human privilege". The crowd was totally quiet.

But she regained her audience by mentioning America's moral poverty and saying that marriage was threatened and all children in their mother's wombs are threatened. Then Alveda said that she would know her dream would be realized when prayers in schools was restated.

Throughout the day, a narrator would read some pious, partiotic narrative to make way for the next segment on the show. The one introducing Beck talked about America as mankind's last hope and that the New World was founded by faith. And that mankind always searched for a better way. So the narrator urged the audience that to "restore America" it was ok to believe again.

The audience had problems actually hearing Beck's final statements because he delivered it in a low voice in contrast to his melodramatic posturing on radio and television. The whole theme of his speech was to synthesize David Barton's pseudo-history of the founding of America as a narrative of Christian history. Subtext throughout the program was a revisionist history of American Christianity, particularly the fundamentalists, claiming they resisted slavery. A huge cloud hangs over the American Christian church during the period leading up to the civil war. While evangelicals in England outlawed slavery because of their agitation, their American brethern provided theological justification of slavery in the South.

Beck read the whole Gettysburg Address and claimed Lincoln was "baptised" at Gettysburg. This would come as a surprise to Lincoln scholars, who note how Lincoln paid a political price in his early career for being irreverent and a known agnostic. Beck also totally over-read the influence of evangelical preachers on the Founding Fathers--a pure Barton invention. He then likens Moses, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington emphasizing that "God is the Answer".

The AP reporter picked up that Beck basically plagiarized Barack Obama in whole paragraphs of his speech by urging his audience that one man can make a difference and often lapsing into Obama's own language.

Beck started talking about the pioneers, admitting he would have gotten stuck at the first river. But as he talked, it was clear the narrative in his mind was the Mormon exodus across the West to Salt Lake City. He didn't elaborate but left it that he would have stayed in Denver. The audience would not have a clue what he was talking about. He caught himself in time.

Then he gave a list of old saws, bromides and platitudes. He urged his audience to "get the poison of hatred out of us", worried about "the growing hatred in the culture" (which, of course, he's not a part) and urged Americans to look to God and to Love. He even gave a little riff on how he isn 't a hate monger, just the guy who warned about the iceberg before the Titanic sank. Paradoxically, he urged his audience to defend those who disagree with them.

A constant theme was that America was at a Crossroads. I didn't know whether that was coded language about Karl Rove's PAC or what. In the manner of Farwell, Pat Robertson, and Jeremiah Wright, Beck claimed that 9/11 was a 'wake-up call from God", not an attack by Islamic terrorists.

The remedies for this are simple prayer, tell the truth and give to charities. He made a pitch for tithing, which fundamentalists and Mormons are supposed to do. He told his audience his whole life had been a lie and then urged everyone to go to "God's Bootcamp". Then he introduced the 240 pastors as a New Black Robe army. He claimed the allusion was to the British's hatred of the clergy during the American revolution--curious since the British had a "religion" tax to support churches.

He then commited another whopper with the story of John Newton, as slave ship owner, who changed his ways and wrote "Amazing Grace", which we were treated to, complete with bag pipes. No mention that Newton ripped off the tune from a Negro spiritual.

And then for all us fans of Oral Roberts, he did the money miracle bit. He said he had spent over $3 million and it looked like he couldn't donate to the Special Operations Fund as promised--something critics have been noting from the beginning. He prayed to God and said He had to come through. And, sure enough, two days later $600K arrived. Oral had been more inventive, telling his flock that if they didn't come up with $5 million God would smite him dead. Miraculously, they got it together and Oral Roberts lived another day.

The whole event ended with a prayer from a seriously burned Vietnam vet, who had become a minister. In his introduction of the pastor, Beck told Vietnam Vets he was finally welcoming them home. Gag. Then Dan Reever, the pastor, began the prayer by thanking God for the President of the United States. Which must have driven the teabaggers wild.

There are so many observations one can make about this whole event, especially about the meglomania of a Glenn Beck. But when you come right down to it, it resembled old Tent Revivals of the past, just with a little more showbiz. But bad showbiz at that. But I can't imagine anyone was moved or persuaded by any of this. In a way, it showed the old American civil religion in tatters and not really in a position to restore itself. I was struck throughout by the extreme limits of ideology. There was no there there. Christian nationalism might whip up some people for a short period of time but it has no viability or even emotive force. Maybe because it ultimately can not make the overt racial appeal that Hitler did. Even in trying to coopt Dr. Martin Luther King, Beck and his cronies had to bend and diversify the participation on stage and thereby dilute and defuse his and their message whatever it is.

How long Beck can go on until he disintegrates is anyone's guess. But for a Tent Revival, it failed because it lacked any religious imagination. As a political pep rally, it failed because movements can't run on old, soiled cliches and bromides.

One question I had throughout the event was that if our rights are given to us by the divine, then when they are taken away does the divine intervene to restore them. The whole event left a long string of questions.

Frankly, I was re-assured by the whole lameness of the show. While Beck tried to co-opt everything in sight, he couldn't do it with any finesse or umph. There was no resonance in the whole production. The tea baggers will go home deflated, knowing they have been abandoned by their leaders. I noted that the great build-up to Saturday's event was supposed to be Beck's Plan for the next 100 years of America. No mention. No suggestions. No Plan.

The carnival moves on.