Glenn Beck attacks Obama’s religious beliefs
Are these sort of criticisms appropriate?
Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally has come and gone, but the conservative television host is continuing to make headlines this week. On Sunday, he strongly critiqued President Obama’s religious beliefs.
Beck claimed that Obama “is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor-and-victim.”
“People aren’t recognizing his version of Christianity,” Beck added.
Is Beck’s criticism of Obama a valid critique of the President’s philosophy or an inappropriate attack on a matter of personal faith?
On the one hand, Beck’s comments are troubling in that he seems willing to separate matters of faith from politics at one moment, and then blur the distinction at the next. At his Restoring Honor Rally over the weekend, Beck focused on patriotism and religion saying this wasn’t the place for a discussion of policy or personal attacks. Yet, the next day, he used the faith he was promoting to attack Obama, implying that the President’s interpretation of Christian values leave him outside the mainstream.
If we take our commitments to religious freedom and separation of church and state seriously, we should be cautious in allowing religious questions to become central to our critiques of political leaders.
At the same time, religious toleration does not mean that ones faith is so personal that it is off limits for any sort of criticism or analysis. What Glenn Beck needs to do is explain explicitly how Obama’s religious convictions negatively affect his performance as a leader, drawing connections between the president’s beliefs and his actions and policies.
To his credit, Beck did attempt to link Obama’s reaction to the Henry Louis Gates incident to “liberation theology,” but oftentimes it’s difficult to see how his comments on religion relates to politics. If he can make these connections, Beck’s criticism would become a more appropriate and interesting critique of Obama’s performance and less of a personal religious attack.
-Luke
Image by Flickr user Steve Rhodes used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
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