WaPo - "Obama to join with religious leaders for an Easter prayer breakfast" - Emphasis On Poverty!

[TomCADem]

Quick call Glenn Beck! President Obama is meeting with church leaders and emphasizing how Jesus cared for the poor, which is a code word for "social justice," which according to Beck is a code word for "SOCIALISM!"

:sarcasm:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/04/obama-to-join-with-religious-l.html?hpid=topnews

Religious leaders from a spectrum of faiths have been invited to the White House on Tuesday for an "Easter Prayer Breakfast." President Obama and senior White House officials intend to use the event to highlight the important service role that Christian organizations play in this country.

* * *

"President Obama wanted to host this breakfast to celebrate and reflect on the meaning of Easter and to honor Christian organizations that are serving our communities, the country and our world" said Joshua Dubois, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. "Attending the breakfast are leaders of some of the largest Christian organizations and churches in the country, along with member of the cabinet and senior White House staff."

The Rev. T. DeWitt Smith, president of the 2.5 million-member Progressive National Baptist Convention, said, "A prayer breakfast allows us to focus our prayers and attention on issues and ills that affect our neighborhood, our cities, our counties and our states. From a Christian perspective, Jesus was always concerned about the poor, and this event allows us to speak to the ills that we deal with everyday."

[pocoloco]

1. Gonna need a really big closet!!

[TomCADem]

2. ABC - "Right-Wing Host Conflates Christian 'Social Justice' With Nazism, Communism"

It will be interesting to see evangelicals turning on their own scripture following the expected diatribes from their new messiah, Glenn Beck.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/glenn-beck-social-justice-christians-rage-back-nazism/story?id=10085008

Glenn Beck has stirred the pot again, but President Obama can rest easy for a few days because he was not the central target this time.

* * *

On his radio and television shows, Beck suggested any church promoting "social justice" or "economic justice" merely was using code words for Nazism and communism.

"I beg you look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church Web site," he said. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. ... Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If they're going to Jeremiah Wright's church, yes!

"If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish," he said. "Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me, are you down with this whole social justice thing?' If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?' And if they say, 'Yeah, we're all in on this social justice thing,' I am in the wrong place."

[SwampG8r]

3. i do not understand why any christians pay beck any mind

he is a mormon and therefore not within the belief system of either the protestant or the catholic churches

im pretty sure technically mormons are not christians

[Igel]

4. Technically, they are Xians.

But since they're not exactly mainstream, a lot of sects consider them to be a cult and therefore doubtfully Xian.

However, Mormons and a lot of Xian groups have something in common: Similar views on corporate vs. individual actions.

Xian groups seem to come in a few flavors as far as collective action goes. I like to simplify the differences to three varieties of two traits (which should yield 6 distinct flavors, having worked out the typology to see if I think there are): (state, corporate, individual) X (worship, virtue).

I also distinguish between people who vote a certain way and believe that the state should reflect their values and those who really don't care how people vote, the state has a Xian or moral duty to adopt their values.


There are religions (okay, people belonging to specific denominations) that believe they should be the state religion and that virtue should be enforced at the state level. Helping the poor is a virtue, by most lights.

There are religions (ditto) that believe that worship is corporate and virtue is corporate.

There are religions (ditto) that believe that worship is individual and virtue is individual.

The traits can be mixed up. And we'll leave out the varying definitions of "morality" because that will make the entire discussion far more untenable that it already is.

Most people who I've met who want to work for social justice believe that worship is individual while virtue is state. In other words, they don't want to be in a corporate structure but want the state to impose virtue. It's their responsibility to make sure that everybody else does what they want.

Most conservatives I've met believe that worship is corporate, but virtue is individual. Mormons are usually like that, even if they also think their religion's values should be the state's values (it's the difference between God ordering the state to do X versus a critical mass of voters making the decision). So are many of the more fundamentalist denominations.

A number of conservatives are into corporate worship but really believe that the state should impose their virtue system, even if it's a minority view. Or distinguish between virtues that should be applied at the state versus the individual level. (Seldom are things as neat as my simplification makes them.)

"Corporate" has nothing to do with legal collective entities under US law. It has to do with the church functioning as a corpus, a body--whether as some mystical corpus Christi or simply as a corps.