What is it about the Beck rally that has people like Jim Wallis and Al Sharpton so upset?

The Restoring Honor Rally:

Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin addressed several hundred thousand people on the National Mall and called on the nation to recommit itself to traditional values. And this message has some people up in arms. Al Sharpton accused Beck of trying to hijack King's message. Which is all the more strange since Dr. King's niece, Alveda King, also addressed the rally with a plea for prayer "in the public squares of America and in our schools." Sharpton also issued what appeared to be a veiled threat saying, "You don't know who you're messing with."

Jim Wallis, in an email to his Sojourners supporters, wrote:

"Last spring Fox News commentator Glenn Beck told Christians to leave churches that promoted social justice. To do so, Christians would have to walk out on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 'I Have a Dream' speech too. Dr. King was a social justice Christian, the kind of Christian Mr. Beck constantly derides.

Tomorrow marks the 47th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. And, if you’re in Washington, D.C., you’ll see Glenn Beck standing on the historic location of King’s speech – only Mr. Beck will be leading his 'Restoring Honor' rally.

I want to challenge Christians to understand the true significance of King’s speech – for our work on social justice, for racial reconciliation, and for the health of the American church."

What can we make of Jim Wallis' assertion that Dr. King was "the kind of Christian Mr. Beck constantly derides." Yes, it's true that Dr. King, a Baptist Minister, was "a social justice Christian." But social justice had a different meaning for Dr. King than it does for Jim Wallis. As Louie Verrechio has noted, "Social justice lies in the fullness of morality as defined by God, not as calculated by majority rule. It is a function of grace, not government." Dr. King understood that. Jim Wallis does not.

Alarmed at the prospect of conservatives calling upon this nation to recommit itself to traditional moral values, many have lost sight of Dr. King's message. Writing for the Associated Press, Philip Elliott and Nafeesa Syeed said that, "Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and tea party champion Sarah Palin appealed Saturday to a vast, predominantly white crowd on the National Mall to help restore traditional American values and honor Martin Luther King's message. Civil rights leaders who accused the group of hijacking King's legacy held their own rally and march."

Does it honestly matter that the crowd was "predominantly white"? Dr. King, in his I Have a Dream speech given on the National Mall on August 28, 1963, said that, "The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone....I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.."

If King's message has been hijacked, it has been hijacked by those who have lost sight of the true meaning of social justice and by those who still judge people on the basis of skin color rather than the content of their character.

Why would Father J. Bryan Hehir choose to associate himself with such a leftist radical?

In a previous post I showed how Father J. Bryan Hehir of the Boston Archdiocese has associated himself with leftist radical Jim Wallis and his organization Sojourners (which has been financed by Nazi collaborator George Soros) and which promotes the New Age Globalist Earth Charter which seeks to replace the Ten Commandments and dismantle the Roman Catholic Church.

Jim Wallis, in his book entitled "The Great Awakening," expresses his support for homosexual unions and even spiritual "blessings" for such unions. He writes, "I support civil rights laws for same-sex couples. That, for me, is a justice issue. Many Christians, and I include myself, prefer the solution of ‘civil unions’ from the state, and even spiritual ‘blessings’ for gay couples (from congregations prepared to offer them), rather than altering the church’s sacrament of marriage as between a man and a woman, but those differences should not be fundamentally divisive. Gay marriage should not be the primary battleground in the fight for the health and stability of marriage and family in our society. In a pluralistic democracy, we should support civil and human rights for all our citizens, regardless of our different theological and biblical interpretations of the complicated and thorny issues surrounding homosexuality. New evidence and understanding around those issues could cause any of us to alter our views. But we should find common ground by supporting concrete practices and practical policies that strengthen families and nurture all our children.” (p. 229).

Needless to say, this attitude is not consistent with the Magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its document entitled "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons," explains that, "There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts 'close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved." (No. 4).

The "gay movement," as explained here, is not a "civil rights movement." But rather a moral revolution aimed at changing people's view of homosexuality. Interestingly, Jim Wallis advances that same corroding and ambiguous pluralism which Father Hehir advances.

For the last fifty to sixty years, forces within the Church have been working to dismantle the Mystical Body of Christ and to prepare the world for the emergence of the Man of Sin. It was Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich who said, "God himself had decreed this; and I was likewise told, if I remember rightly, that he [the Devil] will be unchained for a time fifty or sixty years before the year of Christ 2000....a certain number of demons are to be let loose much earlier than Lucifer, in order to tempt men, and to serve as instruments of the divine vengeance.."

It was the same mystic who said that, "The particle of the True Cross renders my sufferings sweet, the relic chases them away." (The Life and Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich, Vol. II, p. 561). Relics of the True Cross are most powerful against the demon and his activities:

"As the exorcism progressed, one could see that the benediction of the Blessed Sacrament pained the devil most acutely. That was always something unbearable for him. How he spat and vomited! He twisted and raved at the blessing with the relic of the Cross. Whenever the priest approached him with the Cross and the prescribed words, 'Look at the wood of the Cross! Begone ye powers of hell! The lion of the tribe of Juda shall conquer,' he acted terribly. 'Stop it, stop it, I cannot bear it, I cannot listen to it!' he seemed to say. And when the exorcist approached him with the relic of the Cross hidden under his cassock, Satan became a raving maniac. 'Begone, begone,' he howled, 'I cannot bear it. Oh, this is torture! It is unbearable.'" (See here).

Wherever the Devil is present, he cannot bear a relic of the True Cross. With this in mind, one cannot help but think of recent events which occurred in Boston.

Jim Wallis, Father Bryan Hehir and Sojourners...

M. Danielsen writes, "Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine, is one of the top 'change agents' today, and the timing of his surge in popularity should not be ignored, considering 1) the ideology of our current administration, 2) the advance of liberal theology via the emerging church and church growth movements, and 3) the current state of apostasy the church finds itself in today. Are all these connected? Through this man, they are indeed.

Unbiblical trends in the church tend to snowball, producing even worse trends: each heretical book or teaching that comes along seems to lead to a worse one; the Bible says in 2 Timothy 3:13 that in the last days, 'evil men and seducers [imposters] shall wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived,' suggesting a progressive pattern of deception.

For those who remember the old 'Dragnet' TV show, allow me to 'reinvent' Joe Friday: 'The story you are about to hear is true. None of the names have been changed – and the only thing I’m interested in protecting is the Gospel of Jesus Christ'... For nearly forty years, Jim Wallis has expressed himself through an organization called 'Sojourners.' He was raised in an evangelical family in Detroit, and attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, but his radical political views made it impossible for him to finish there.

At that time, he also founded an anti-capitalist magazine called, The Post-American, in which he called for the redistribution of wealthand an economy managed by the government. He also experimented for a season with communal living in search of a utopian lifestyle.

In 1972, he moved his work to Washington DC and renamed it Sojourners. He wasn’t just against the Vietnam war, he rejoiced in America’s defeat there showing his leftist sympathies by publicly criticizing the Vietnamese and Hmong refugees who fled that communist regime (we called them 'boat people' back then), by claiming they were leaving to support their consumer habit in other lands … that being greedy capitalists made it just too hard to live under a dictatorship. In remembering the terrible suffering that the boat people endured, what uncompassionate sentiments by Wallis.

Wallis also supported the Sandinista Communists in their attempt to take over Nicaragua in the 80s, actively participating in resistance against the American military – AND working side by side in this cause with none other than Jeremiah Wright, the radical anti-American Chicago preacher who was our president’s pastor for twenty years.

In addition, Wallis supported the FMLN, a communist terror group from El Salvador itching to spread their Marxist revolution throughout South America. Men have been called 'traitors' for much less than what Wallis has stood for.

In 1983, the organization, Accuracy in Media published a lengthy book on the far left policies of Wallis and his organization, documenting 53 political positions of Sojourners on such issues as Israel’s right to exist, terrorism, socialism, capitalism, human rights, etc. In all 53 position statements, it was found that Sojourners’ views were completely in line with the views of hard-line Soviets.

Joan Harris, who did the reporting on this, observed, 'Sojourners never criticizes a Marxist state. The US and the West are the only violators of human rights to them because they are capitalist. Marxists, by Sojourners’ own definition, cannot violate human rights.' Wallis calls himself a 'Progressive' – but keep in mind that 'progressive' is as far left as you can go politically without actually taking a right turn in the process.

Wallis believes that Castro’s Cuba, Chavez’s Venezuela, and Ortega’s Nicaragua are the Marxist paradises the US should emulate. It is not extreme at all to say, that one of his goals is to see the end of the US as we have known it — 'Post-Americanism' finally realized. So, after being arrested by the US government 22 times in forty years, where has he soft-landed? As spiritual advisor to President Obama. Now, with the help of our own government, he hopes to turn mere ideology into policy. He is a living, breathing advocate for total government control, complete socialism, or 'totalitarian socialism.'" (See here for full article).

Sojourners is behind the "Call to Renewal" movement, a movement supported by Father J. Bryan Hehir of the Boston Archdiocese. The question is: why would a Roman Catholic priest wish to associate himself with a radical such as Jim Wallis? Especially since Sojourners promotes the New Age Globalist Earth Charter, an initiative which seeks to replace the Ten Commandments and to neutralize the Catholic Church.