Wednesday, September 15, 2010

A Challenging and Interesting Perspective on Glenn Beck

Andrew Walker over at Mere Orthodoxy has posted a video clip featuring the often iconoclastic, but always interesting, Doug Wilson offering what I think is a profoundly true and challenging perspective on Glenn Beck.

Basically, Wilson is asking why Reformed people are failing to fight the pretentious statism so rampant today and leaving the field to a poorly educated Morman to fight the dragon that we (of all people in the world) ought to be fighting. He is surely right in saying that those who sit back and snipe at Glenn Beck and never get around to joining the battle need to be called out. My suspicion is that a secret yearning for cultural approval and status lies at the root of this reluctance to engage the enemy. What do you think?

Ask Doug: Glenn Beck from Canon Wired on Vimeo.



I know that not all Evangelicals and Reformed Protestants have been sitting on the sidelines. Credit should be given to those leading the Manhattan Declaration movement and those who are are willing to stand up and be counted. Yet, Wilson is still right (in my view) in implying that Evangelicalism is largely lethargic and confused and the Reformed are holding back inexplicably. What say you?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Dr. Carter,

I feel similarly about people like Ayn Rand. The Evangelical community has not done enough to show pride in the unique contributions of the West such as capitalism, and freedom of religion, and private property rights, and to have a revolutionary constitutiion such as the American one.

On the flip side, it is hard to draw a line between defense and advocacy for right-wingers like Beck. I like a lot of what Beck says but I think that he and the right in many ways are not offering a better solution. Beck's ideals mean nothing without serious Christian commitments and the right is just as naive as the left that they can have a utopian new Ronald Regan age of conservatism with or without Christianity. I think the Reformed or any other Christian position must be very careful in giving a strong position that does not simply act as throwing ones approval for the right or the left though I think there is more in common with the right then the left.