Religious scholars say Glenn Beck is ignorant

[Peikko 1,575]

I am not defending any movement, I don't do movements, I don't join things for the most part. However, to suggest that all these churches are simply trying to inveigle people into a movement towards institutionalized communism, or some such things is as daft as you can get.

In other words, you and Glen need to get out more - christians are not all evil.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I am not defending any movement, I don't do movements, I don't join things for the most part. However, to suggest that all these churches are simply trying to inveigle people into a movement towards institutionalized communism, or some such things is as daft as you can get.

In other words, you and Glen need to get out more - christians are not all evil.

I don't either one of us said they were. But, there are dangers inherent in any movement, including religion.

Edited March 12, 2010 by ##########

[Peikko 1,575]

I don't either one of us said they were. But, there are dangers inherent in any movement, including religion.

I absolutely agree. However, I do not believe that your average congregation is planning a political coup. Most of them simply want to enhance their own community. I don't have any belief in god personally, but I do think that most organized churches are beneficial to their communities. Some are not, but when they are not, it becomes clear that the organization has ceased to be serving the interests of all, and is exclusively serving the interests of those in the hierarchy, or the leader. I don't know of any churches that have caused mayhem in a community by trying to help alieve poverty or provide support for those who are sick or any other social program of that sort.

Perhaps you can point out a church that has caused mayhem with one of their social programs?

[Ali G. 37]

Glenn beck is Mormon. I don't know what they do for their community but every other actual recognized christian denomination pumps millions into their communities.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Glenn beck is Mormon. I don't know what they do for their community but every other actual recognized christian denomination pumps millions into their communities.

From the original article...

Mormon scholars in Mr. Beck’s own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in interviews that Mr. Beck seemed ignorant of just how central social justice teaching was to Mormonism.

...

Kent P. Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University, said in an interview: “My own experience as a believing Latter-day Saint over the course of 60 years is that I have seen social justice in practice in every L.D.S. congregation I’ve been in. People endeavor with all of our frailties and shortcomings to love one another and to lift up other people. So if that’s Beck’s definition of social justice, he and I are definitely not on the same team.”

Philip Barlow, the Arrington Professor of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, said: “One way to read the Book of Mormon is that it’s a vast tract on social justice. It’s ubiquitous in the Book of Mormon to have the prophetic figures, much like in the Hebrew Bible, calling out those who are insensitive to injustices.

“A lot of Latter-day Saints would think that Beck was asking them to leave their own church.”

[Ali G. 37]

Okay, so it's just Beck that has lost his mind..

Has nutty been watching him lately?

Edited March 12, 2010 by Ali G.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

There is a difference between the compassion of the individual, and the term "social justice".

America’s hopelessly antiquated founding principles of individual freedom, personal responsibility, private property, and the self-directed pursuit of happiness all need to be undermined and replaced with collectivism, socialism and cultural relativism (i.e., Western Civilization is evil and to be blamed for all the world’s problems).

That's not from the Bible, that is from a different work.

The term was first coined by a Jesuit priest, but if you won't take my word for it, go ask your parish priest where you can find social justice in the bible? I guarantee you he tell you to read the Gospels.

The term "social justice" was coined by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in the 1840s. The idea was elaborated by the moral theologian John A. Ryan, who initiated the concept of a living wage. Father Coughlin used the term in his publications in the 1930s and 40s, and the concept was further expanded upon by John Rawls' writing in the 1990s. It is a part of Catholic social teaching and is one of the Four Pillars of the Green Party upheld by the worldwide green parties. Some tenets of social justice have been adopted by those on the left of the political spectrum.

Social justice is also a concept that some use to describe the movement towards a socially just world. In this context, social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality and involves a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution, policies aimed toward achieving that which developmental economists refer to as more equality of opportunity and equality of outcome than may currently exist in some societies or are available to some classes in a given society.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Jesus is the Blazing Center of Social Justice

Jesus: Activist for Social Justice

Jesus on Justice: A Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

What's Social Justice Without Jesus?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I absolutely agree. However, I do not believe that your average congregation is planning a political coup. Most of them simply want to enhance their own community. I don't have any belief in god personally, but I do think that most organized churches are beneficial to their communities. Some are not, but when they are not, it becomes clear that the organization has ceased to be serving the interests of all, and is exclusively serving the interests of those in the hierarchy, or the leader. I don't know of any churches that have caused mayhem in a community by trying to help alieve poverty or provide support for those who are sick or any other social program of that sort.

Perhaps you can point out a church that has caused mayhem with one of their social programs?

Neither do I. And if you don't like the slant of the Minister, or the congregation, you can head to another church, synagogue, temple, or parking post. I had an unofficial minor in religious studies, and that didn't turn me off religion, just the organized ones. I do object to proselytizing, whether it is for a particular religion, political movement, or brand of toothpaste. By I do enjoy discussing religion, as an observer, not a participant.

Back to the OP, Glenn was noting that many Churches are not just pushing God and a means to meet him in the afterlife, but rather they are pushing a secular movement. That is an observable fact. My wife and I used to belong to a Parish with an old school Irish pastor that preached fire and brimstone. We switched to another parish where the congregation, and the pastor, are more akin to the Progressive community we live in. I take the sermons from both with a grain of salt, although both are good men and mean well. But the respective congregations suck the stuff in like zombies, even though neither parish strictly toes the Vatican line. One pastor thinks Vatican II was a mistake, the other pastor avoids the more "controversial" teachings of the Church, and asks people to rely on their own sense of right and wrong.

[Ali G. 37]

Your actions, or lack of, are your path to afterlife. Scaring people into heaven is not what Christianity is about.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Back to the OP, Glenn was noting that many Churches are not just pushing God and a means to meet him in the afterlife, but rather they are pushing a secular movement. That is an observable fact. My wife and I used to belong to a Parish with an old school Irish pastor that preached fire and brimstone. We switched to another parish where the congregation, and the pastor, are more akin to the Progressive community we live in. I take the sermons from both with a grain of salt, although both are good men and mean well. But the respective congregations suck the stuff in like zombies, even though neither parish strictly toes the Vatican line. One pastor thinks Vatican II was a mistake, the other pastor avoids the more "controversial" teachings of the Church, and asks people to rely on their own sense of right and wrong.

You're arguing then that social justice is NOT central to the Jesus' teachings and that's ludicrous. Like I said, read the Gospels.

....

The political philosopher John Rawls draws on the utilitarian insights of Bentham and Mill, the social contract ideas of Locke, and the categorical imperative ideas of Kant. His first statement of principle was made in A Theory of Justice (1971) where he proposed that, "Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others." (at p3). A deontological proposition that echoes Kant in framing the moral good of justice in absolutist terms. His views are definitively restated in Political Liberalism (1993), where society is seen, "as a fair system of co-operation over time, from one generation to the next." (at p14).

All societies have a basic structure of social, economic, and political institutions, both formal and informal. In testing how well these elements fit and work together, Rawls based a key test of legitimacy on the theories of social contract. To determine whether any particular system of collectively enforced social arrangements is legitimate, he argued that one must look for agreement by the people who are subject to it, but not necessarily to an objective notion of justice based on coherent ideological grounding. Obviously, not every citizen can be asked to participate in a poll to determine his or her consent to every proposal in which some degree of coercion is involved, so one has to assume that all citizens are reasonable. Rawls constructed an argument for a two-stage process to determine a citizen's hypothetical agreement:

* the citizen agrees to be represented by X for certain purposes; to that extent, X holds these powers as a trustee for the citizen;

* X agrees that a use of enforcement in a particular social context is legitimate; the citizen, therefore, is bound by this decision because it is the function of the trustee to represent the citizen in this way.

This applies to one person representing a small group (e.g. to the organiser of a social event setting a dress code) as equally as it does to national governments which are the ultimate trustees, holding representative powers for the benefit of all citizens within their territorial boundaries, and if those governments fail to provide for the welfare of their citizens according to the principles of justice, they are not legitimate. To emphasise the general principle that justice should rise from the people and not be dictated by the law-making powers of governments, Rawls asserted that, "There is . . . a general presumption against imposing legal and other restrictions on conduct without sufficient reason. But this presumption creates no special priority for any particular liberty." (at pp291–292) This is support for an unranked set of liberties that reasonable citizens in all states should respect and uphold — to some extent, the list proposed by Rawls matches the normative human rights that have international recognition and direct enforcement in some nation states where the citizens need encouragement to act in a way that fixes a greater degree of equality of outcome.

The basic liberties according to Rawls

* Freedom of thought;

* Liberty of conscience as it affects social relationships on the grounds of religion, philosophy, and morality;

* Political liberties (e.g. representative democratic institutions, freedom of speech and the press, and freedom of assembly);

* Freedom of association;

* Freedoms necessary for the liberty and integrity of the person (viz: freedom from slavery, freedom of movement and a reasonable degree of freedom to choose one's occupation); and

* Rights and liberties covered by the rule of law.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

The term was first coined by a Jesuit priest, but if you won't take my word for it, go ask your parish priest where you can find social justice in the bible? I guarantee you he tell you to read the Gospels.

Wikipedia again?

Luigi Taparelli was a widely known Catholic polemicist in the heated mid-nineteenth-century era of social revolution in Europe and unification in Italy. Writing regularly in the Civiltà Cattolica for twelve years, he had the added celebrity of being the Jesuit brother of one of the leading nationalists and liberal prime ministers of Piedmont, Massimo D’Azeglio. Even though Taparelli has been credited with inaugurating a Catholic sociology of politics and with coining the phrase “social justice,” not even the recommendation of Pius XI in the 1930s that students should take up his works, right after those of Saint Thomas Aquinas himself, could stimulate more than sporadic interest—and that, predominantly from subsequent Jesuits associated with the journal Civiltà Cattolica, cofounded by Taparelli in 1850. On the one hand, the opinion of the secular historical profession, mostly Italian, influenced generally by a superficial and unsympathetic reading of a few of his well-over two hundred articles on politics and culture in the Civiltà, has tended to label Taparelli as a sophist and reactionary zealot.

http://www.acton.org/publications/mandm/mandm_article_62.php

Being a Jesuit does not make a man infallible. I don't believe being a Pope does either, although the Church teaches us that as well.

Edited March 12, 2010 by ##########

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

You're arguing then that social justice is NOT central to the Jesus' teachings and that's ludicrous. Like I said, read the Gospels.

....

Heretic!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Heretic!

Look in the mirror you babbling fool.

[Peikko 1,575]

Neither do I. And if you don't like the slant of the Minister, or the congregation, you can head to another church, synagogue, temple, or parking post. I had an unofficial minor in religious studies, and that didn't turn me off religion, just the organized ones. I do object to proselytizing, whether it is for a particular religion, political movement, or brand of toothpaste. By I do enjoy discussing religion, as an observer, not a participant.

Back to the OP, Glenn was noting that many Churches are not just pushing God and a means to meet him in the afterlife, but rather they are pushing a secular movement. That is an observable fact. My wife and I used to belong to a Parish with an old school Irish pastor that preached fire and brimstone. We switched to another parish where the congregation, and the pastor, are more akin to the Progressive community we live in. I take the sermons from both with a grain of salt, although both are good men and mean well. But the respective congregations suck the stuff in like zombies, even though neither parish strictly toes the Vatican line. One pastor thinks Vatican II was a mistake, the other pastor avoids the more "controversial" teachings of the Church, and asks people to rely on their own sense of right and wrong.

That is the point though, christians are part of the secular world and in so far as there is an obligation on them to live their lives according to some basic values, that obligation translates into 'good works' within their immediate community and the wider world. Mostly, these are social programs that provide help to those who are less fortunate. Some are outreach. There are very few social programs that are implemented by church congregations that are in any way sinister and are mostly concerned with providing relief for those in poverty - although the people that went into Haiti to 'rescue babies' and such like probably need a kick up the behind - but for the most part, these programs are not a threat to anyone, and in fact improve the basic fabric of the local community.

Edited March 12, 2010 by Madame Cleo