Comments on: Glenn Beck and “liberation theology”

By: b

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 02:14:58 +0000

he said black liberation theology…..you stupid fucks…. look it up!

By: Z

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:31:40 +0000

Well it is definitely a strategy for calling Obama a Marxist or a socialist, but it’s not even a stealth strategy — it’s so obvious (and as has already been pointed out, it has been done).

By: Historiann

Historiann — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:09:53 +0000

Awesome!

By: Brook Haley

Brook Haley — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:55:49 +0000

Mark K. has it right, I think. My progressive-decentralized-church minister stepmother told me that that code of “liberation theology” is meant to get the ignorati to type it into a google search: “Liberation theology Obama.” Try it. It brings you right to Jeremiah Wright, so Beck doesn’t have to keep calling Obama a racist–the internet will do it for him.

By: Mark K.

Mark K. — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:19:13 +0000

Liberation theology is not unpopular in liberal mainstream Protestant theological circles these days. Though it is far more popular as an affectation than an actual robust theory and praxis. I don’t think the conservatives who are using it as the latest convenient label for “heretic” understand how *either* liberal Protestants or Catholics are making use of it. And liberal Protestants for decades now have been accused of appropriating the trappings of faith to pretty up their purely political goals.

I don’t follow Beck at all, but my very superficial take is that this all goes back to Jeremiah Wright. If the counter to “Obama is a Muslim” is “duh, no, he’s a Christian,” then they are ready with “not really!”

By: Multanemo

Multanemo — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:04:46 +0000

My solution: If you make more than $100k a year you must pay fifty percent federal income tax with no exemptions. Seeing as I will never make $100k a year, and pray to God I can one day make $30k a year with my fancy degree, this would not bother me at all.

Also, there should be a massive new car tax seeing as I will never have a new car.

Now, the above things will never happen, but when I sit in my seminars talking about books only a handful of people have read I begin to think about how I am jumping through all these hoops for a degree that might be financially worthless in the end.

But, you say, “You are not in school for the money!” No, I am not. But it is really fucking scary when I think about getting a job in academia or anywhere for that matter. My advisor tells me that I will be competing against a handful of people in my field, but I am still very scared. I can’t even get married like I want to due to the financial stress. In fact, my bride-to-be, a public school teacher, was just “let go.” So now we must live off the $8k a year stipend that I get, which was cut from $10k last year. Oh, and her unemployment until it runs out. Oh, and the beneficence of my parents.

So that’s my story and it is pretty grim. Then I listen to Beck and people like him and he gives me a tempting target to blame: The Government. Then I think about all those “worthless” history courses and they remind me that if not for The Government my state university would be even more underfunded than it already is, and my bride-to-be would have no unemployment.

I listen and watch Beck a lot. He’s not a bad guy. He’s not a stupid guy. But like so many people, he let’s his ideology drive his view of history. And worst of all, he tries to apply history to contemporary problems, which I think is a mistake.

Yes, I will continue with my degree. I love history. And if I must be poor, I will be Dr. Poor Guy. Oh,

By: Historiann

Historiann — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:01:07 +0000

It’s a funny place we’re at in American religious history when protestant evangelicals are less tolerant of differences of opinion among protestants so that by comparison Catholics seem. . . well, catholic (small-c) in their embrace of different theological traditions. (When of course, the American protestant suspicion of Catholics is that they get their orders from the Pope in the mail and all follow along blindly. . . )

I’m sure Beck (and Richard Land, as wini and Susan note above) seized on “liberation theology” because if they talked about Dorothy Day, a lot of their audience might actually agree with Day and the Catholic Worker viewpoint. “Lib theo” seems dangerously foreign, by comparison.

By: Perpetua

Perpetua — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:01:51 +0000

There is something a little bit funny (in a sad way of course) of a bunch of populists enraged over high unemployment and struggling economy and crushing health care costs jumping on the “activism that helps the poor is bad” bandwagon. Beck is clearly counting on his audience not to know anything about liberation theology except that it has been connected by conservatives as Marxist. (Do ANY of these people actually read the Bible?) Anyway, one of the other sneaky rhetorical devices Beck engaged in during that portion of the speech was to claim that Obama was following liberation theology and then to say, very clearly that liberation theology is “not Christian.” We already know not to expect any kind of integrity from Beck, but it kind of took my breath away to hear him discuss a spiritual and political movement generated from the Society of Jesus as “not Christian.” And I was even more shocked that nobody discussing this point on NPR picked up that sleight-of-hand.

IMO it would be awesome if Obama espoused liberation theology. If we *must* couch all politics in this country in terms of Christianity, why not introduce a radical “liberal” strain?

By: koshem Bos

koshem Bos — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:22:41 +0000

Very few non theologians or historians know much about liberation theology. Even fewer American realize that in our current stage it is a good idea to have a local incarnation of liberation theology. After all, we are enslaved to the banks, their CEOs and the oligarchy that runs the country.

Beck probably stumbled upon liberation theology by mistake without ever knowing much about it. Another explanation might have to do with the religious right which fights the social part of religion, all religions, and therefore sees liberation theology as a major enemy. (Fanatics have enemies that do really exist in addition to a myriad of existing enemies.)

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:12:56 +0000

Um. Yeah. There is so much wrong with Beck that I don’t know where to start. But I’m willing to bet that if we want to find a real theological link, it’s somewhere in the Book of Revelation.

More seriously, as much as I get Comrade PhysioProf’s sentiments, it’s important to remember that there are a LOT of people in this country like the attendees (most of whom were neatly dressed, I note). I really do think that elitist ad hominem comments are counter-productive — we have an awful lot of people here who are scared and that fear has been used by people like Beck to prey on their fears of being marginalized. Maybe it’s better to acknowledge those fears as real (even though most of us here don’t get them at all) and work to alleviate them rather than reinforcing them?