I wish I had a Diagram to Describe Glenn Beck...

If you've read my blog at all, you probably know that I believe in the use of delicious food to change the social environment. I alternately write about my experiences with said food and my standard complaints and stresses in graduate school. Well, it may be time to expand the breadth of my writings to include some of my other core beliefs. I have tried, intentionally, to keep political and religious rhetoric to a minimum here. The point of the this blog was, after all, to increase the use and function of pleasure and leisure in our rat-race society. What could be more of a downer than a discussion of religion and politics in relation to such a goal?

However, there are such times that it is important to reflect and expose my own personal biases in relation to writing about various topics, and if there was ever such a time, I believe it is now. What spurs me to do this now, you might ask? Well, I came across this article in the Huffington Post that I found particularly compelling. I urge you to read it before I continue. The article is a response from Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, a respected journal/organization centered around liberal Christian activism, to his negative portrayal by Glenn Beck, the conservative mouthpiece on the Fox network.

While Beck may be liberally lampooned (figuratively and literally) as a cartoon by most thinking persons, his rhetoric has whipped many on the right into a furor of fear and paranoia that used to be the sole purview of George Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney. Beck's rhetoric, in my mind, is not important because of the factuality of what he says (which, as Wallis rightly points out, he mostly makes up) but because of who is listening and believing. If, as I have asserted with less-serious matters (e.g. Gaga), popular culture is important and worth listening and responding to, then the challenges and accusations of Glenn Beck certainly warrant discussion and personal response in the hope of countering its impact. Beck has challenged Christians to leave their churches if the word 'social-justice' is even mentioned in their context and said that 'social-justice' is the root-proper of totalitarian government (e.g. Nazism). These challenges and accusations strike at the heart of what I believe to be true about my faith. Wallis puts it all most elegantly, but I would like to have my say as well.

I am a Quaker, a member of an organization known as the Religious Society of Friends. For myself and the Quakers I know, testimonies of peace and peaceful activism are intrinsically bound up with faith practices. The notion of totalitarian government is entirely foreign to our faith, my faith, which is based on pure democratic consensus and reflective listening. Quakers all over the world help the poor privately, and an arm of the Quaker church participates in lobbying for policies designed to bring peace to the world, succor to the poor, and better lives for all. Quakers have been involved in civil rights activism since the early days of the Underground Railroad, and their outreach on other social matters has been great. Quakers emphasize simplicity and inclusion, not fear-mongering and violent revolution. In fact, nearly everything about the Quakers I know and love represents a direct contradiction in terms to what Glenn Beck has said about social-activism, and the awful things it is supposed to represent for the Christian faith.

Furthermore, I would seek to remind Christians everywhere of Jesus's predicament upon this Earth, whatever you may or may not believe about the Bible. Jesus was nothing if not revolutionary, bringing to bear the power of inclusive love to the poor and the destitute whoever they might be, in the face of a great Roman empire seeking to crush that love beneath its thumb. As Wallis notes, few are the preachers and religious leaders who can ignore so completely the admonishments of the Bible to serve the poor in all ways possible, as Beck does. It is as if, as Wallis again notes, that those parts of the biblical narrative have been wholly lost to this man.

Luke notes, for example, that, "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty." The power of love, the power of peace, humbles the powerful and brings comfort to the lowest of us. Social-justice, in this way, seeks to re-model the structures that produce the poor, the destitute, the war-torn, and the sick, not just to treat the symptom over and over and over again. To really make things better, we must cure the disease. Part of that is shifting public policy, not towards totalitarianism but towards democratic inclusion, not towards communism but towards equitable opportunity. Part of that process is also shutting down the type of divisive rhetoric that Beck spouts, and which is now shifting us, so unnecessarily, towards violent pedagogy and an unwillingness to listen to each other, a thing we MUST do if we can effect change in any direction at all. If we cannot come to the table to talk with each other, then we are truly lost.

Which is why I do, and write about, theatre. I do not do it because I hold historiography upon a pedestal, or because of any certain personal egotism about being involved in academia. I do not do it to make myself better than others in my field (though I do strive to be good at what I do), and I do not do it (certainly) because it is popular or attention-getting. All of these reasons are petty to me in the end, though I do find myself getting caught up in them as a function of the discipline. I do theatre because it brings people together, in a common spot, to a place that provides a visceral connection to something vital and human and community-oriented. I do theatre because it inspires people, at its best, to talk to each other about the injustices in their lives and in other's lives. I do it because it can begin a process of discussion and reconciliation, of revolution (yes, that dirty word) and positive social change. If we need calm, concerted, and open discussion, then theatre can be the table around which that discussion can be centered. Not all theatre does this or can do this, but it is the theatre of social change that interests me.

So, instead of attacking Glenn Beck, or Christians, or social activists, or our churches, let us stand together in all of our difference and start to discuss how we can make things better for each other. Suspicion, paranoia, and fear are the culprits that lead to violence, not a devotion to social justice! Beck's rhetoric should not be attacked, it should be deconstructed for what it is, a move to centralize power within the ranks of one cloistered voice in this country, in the face of millions of other voices struggling to be heard and recognized. This can be a flash-point that brings us together in faith with other faiths, or it can be the dividing line that breaks the impulse to dialogue for many years to come.

As a Christian, a Quaker, a Social-Activist, and a Theatre Practitioner/Scholar,

I bid you peace.