I thought I had mistakenly tuned in to one of Southern California\u2019s Christian radio stations last week when I heard a talk show host first issue the usual right-wing boilerplate about Obama allying with the U.S.\u2019s enemies, and then follow-up with the pronouncement that the only hope for the country in the age of Obama was faith.\u00a0 \u2018We need to fall on bended knee before something larger than ourselves,\u2019 the host said.\u00a0 \u2018America is God\u2019s chosen country and everything we have comes from God.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
So began my first exposure to Glenn Beck, who recently started broadcasting on KRLA in Los Angeles.\u00a0 I have to admit that when he is not breaking new ground in anti-Obama paranoia and demonization, he is quite engaging, having mastered that flawlessly-timed banter with his in-studio assistants that Laura Ingraham pioneered.\u00a0\u00a0 He seems to be ratcheting up the aggressive religion quotient on right-wing talk radio, even beyond the hostile, in-your-face \u201cone nation under GOD [dammit!!!]\u201d with which Mark Levin concludes his broadcasts or the more cheerfully triumphant \u201cThe greatest nation on God\u2019s green earth\u201d with which Michael Medved punctuates his broadcasts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Beck didn\u2019t spell out how a greater engagement with faith would save the country from wrack and ruin under Obama.\u00a0 I can\u2019t identify many devout countries that are in any better shape than the U.S.\u00a0 The populace of Mexico undoubtedly enjoys a much more vigorous relation to saints than the U.S. population, its faith in many cases unmarred by the slightest stain of Enlightenment skepticism.\u00a0\u00a0 Ditto every other country in Central America and the Caribbean.\u00a0 As Sarah Palin would say, \u2018How\u2019s that workin\u2019 out for ya?\u2019\u00a0 The prayer habits and attendance at houses of worship\u00a0 of the Egyptians, Indonesians, or the Afghanis would put America\u2019s Sabbath mall-shoppers to shame.\u00a0 None seem like models to emulate.\u00a0 But Muslim nations may not count for Beck, since a Christian God might not acknowledge the prayers of the infidel.\u00a0 So what about Spain: its absolute fealty to the Catholic Church did not arrest its decline into a geopolitical non-entity following the Reformation.\u00a0 If science and technology followed the logic of religious thought, we would be lucky to be living in mud huts.\u00a0 I posit that wearing fluffy sweaters prevents cancer.\u00a0 Here, in confirmation, are dozens of sweater-wearing people who didn\u2019t get cancer.\u00a0\u00a0 Oops!\u00a0 Just found some other warmly-clad sweater-wearers who succumbed to the disease.\u00a0 Never mind!\u00a0 Their fate is beyond human comprehension, but what I do know is that these other more relevant people were saved by their sweaters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Is it unfair to hold religious belief to the same standards as scientific, rational thought?\u00a0 I don\u2019t see why, since religion is making an empirical claim about the world, and since its most vocal proponents on the right love to sneer at non-believers for their obstinacy in rejecting religion\u2019s truth claims.<\/p>\n Glenn Beck may think that faith will save America from Obama.\u00a0 I\u2019d put my bets on old-fashioned politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I thought I had mistakenly tuned in to one of Southern California\u2019s Christian radio stations last week when I heard a talk show host first issue the usual right-wing boilerplate about Obama allying with the U.S.\u2019s enemies, and then follow-up … Continue reading
\n\u00a0
\nPerhaps a lack of prayerfulness and faith led to the election of Obama, in Beck\u2019s view.\u00a0 By implication, then, a greater prayerfulness may have given the country George W. Bush.\u00a0 That religious devotion didn\u2019t prevent 9\/11, Hurricane Katrina, or the financial meltdown.\u00a0\u00a0 But of course, the list of catastrophes that faith has not prevented is endless.\u00a0\u00a0 To arbitrarily pluck just some recent misfires that neither preemptive nor post hoc religiosity could cure: the flash flood <\/a>that killed at least 20 campers at an Arkansas campsite on June 11, the barge crash <\/a>that killed two young Hungarians on a Philadelphia tour boat on July 7, or the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil that killed 11 workers.\u00a0\u00a0 At present, putting one’s faith in Paul the octopus seems to be the wiser course<\/a>.
\nIs it presumptuous to expect God to have prevented these catastrophes or to have intervened once he caught wind of what was happening?\u00a0\u00a0 A believer might so reprimand us.\u00a0 Then why does Beck think that God will respond to anything Beck or his listeners may pray for now?\u00a0 Yet the governors of Alabama, Texas, Florida, and Mississippi declared a coordinated day of prayer <\/a>in June to ask God for help with the oil spill.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t God already have noticed that something was awry without the day of prayer?\u00a0 Or does he require a threshold number of bended knees before he rouses himself?\u00a0 Of course, at some point the oil spill will be contained, so if we just wait long enough, we will have clear evidence of God\u2019s responsiveness to prayer.\u00a0 The many intervening human agents will be merely agents of his will.\u00a0 So did the neighbors of Abby Sunderland, the publicity-seeking, would-be world circumnavigator, see God\u2019s hand<\/a> at work in her rescue\u00a0from the Indian Ocean this June, even though the crew and captain of the French ship \u00cele de la R\u00e9union might seem to be more proximate causes of her salvation than the Almighty.\u00a0 Let the 16-year-old forswear all human assistance the next time she capsizes, and we might have a better demonstration of God\u2019s power.\u00a0<\/p>\n