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<DIV id=storyDate-Links><SPAN class=pubDate>Posted on Sun, Mar. 21, 2010</SPAN>
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<H2 id=storyTitle>The fierce urgency of now: justice</H2>
<P class=byline>By LEONARD PITTS JR.<BR><A
href="mailto:lpitts@MiamiHerald.com">lpitts@MiamiHerald.com</A></P>
<DIV id=storyBody><SPAN class=dropcap-large>`B</SPAN> <I>lessed are those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness.'' <I>-- Matthew 5:6</I></I>
<P>Ultimately, I suppose, what we're talking about is a clash between the sweet
by and by and the fierce urgency of now.</P>
<P>The former is the refrain from a venerable gospel song that meditates on the
bliss of life after life. The latter is a phrase from Martin Luther King's ``I
Have A Dream,'' a passionate demand for justice, equality, and freedom,
<I>now</I>.</P>
<P>Into the tension between these two disparate views of Christian mission
stumbles one Glenn Beck. The Fox News showman recently ignited an uproar in the
world of Christian ministry by attacking churches that preach a gospel of social
and economic justice, i.e., a gospel that doesn't just promise relief in the
sweet by and by, but seeks to effect change in the hard here and now. If your
church preaches that, Beck told his radio audience, ``run as fast as you can.''
Social and economic justice, he said, are ``code words'' for communism and
Nazism.</P>
<P>In response, the Rev. Jim Wallis, a preacher of the social gospel and
president and CEO of the liberal religious activist group Sojourners, suggested
on his blog that what Christians should run from is Beck himself. Beck, he
wrote, attacks the very heart of their faith.</P>
<P>``When I was in seminary,'' he says, ``we made a study of the Bible and we
found 2,000 verses in the Bible about the poor, about God's concern for the left
out, left behind, the vulnerable and God's call for justice. If I were ever to
talk to Glenn Beck, I would hand him that old Bible from seminary where we cut
out of the Bible every single reference to the poor, to social justice, to
economic justice, and when we were done, the Bible was just in shreds. And I
would hand it to him and put a sticker on front and say, `This is the Glenn Beck
Bible.'''</P>
<P>I ran Beck's comments by two other preachers of my acquaintance, and they
seconded Wallis. But Beck, says the Rev. R. Joaquin Willis of Miami's Church of
the Open Door, is not alone. Many others, he said, ``would like to see many of
us as pastors just come to church and deal with the spiritual needs of the
people and not address those difficult day-to-day issues that make life so
hard.'' </P>
<P>Beck, adds Willis, ``speaks from the perspective of the entitled and the
relatively well off and they don't see a need for social improvement. Anybody
that's trying to improve the society is a communist to him.''</P>
<P>``It's hard,'' says Rev. Tony Lee of Community of Hope in Temple Hills, Md.,
``for a church to sit and talk to somebody about how to change their lives and
how to turn things around when the institutions around that person are broken.
It's hard for me to talk to young people about how God can make a way and how
they can move forward and be all they can be <I>through</I> God -- but their
educational system is in pieces. What Glenn Beck is saying is, `Don't have a
role in the shaping of the educational system.'''</P>
<P>For the record, Martin Luther King preached a social gospel. Even the
preachers in the anti-abortion movement preach a social gospel.</P>
<P>And the idea that such people are enemies of the state is as visceral a
reminder as you're likely to get of the paranoia and intellectual discontinuity
that afflicts extremist conservatism. Fifty years ago, they saw communists
behind every movie marquee and schoolhouse door. Now, Beck sees them in pulpits,
too.</P>
<P>And I suppose the way not to be a communist in his eyes is to embrace a
gospel that promises uplift in the sweet by and by -- and only then. But that's
a lazy, complacent gospel, a gospel of self-satisfaction and I got mine, of
egocentricity and look out for number one -- and it doesn't square with the
gospel of feed my sheep and love your neighbor as yourself.</P>
<P>He thinks we should flee the church that preaches social and economic
justice? I think you should flee the one that does
not.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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id=TixyyLink><BR>Read more: <A
href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/21/v-print/1539820/the-fierce-urgency-of-now-justice.html#ixzz0ivN5hFMv">http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/21/v-print/1539820/the-fierce-urgency-of-now-justice.html#ixzz0ivN5hFMv</A><BR></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>