Glen Beck was standing in front of a blackboard with his typical folksy home spun graphic organizer, and it was his graphic that caught my attention. It said "Destroy our: churches, history, constitution."
I will assume he was not promoting the idea that conservative, libertarian, Republican or Tea Party members should undertake this destruction, but I will assume he was arguing that Obama, the liberals and the Democrats (or whoever) were undertaking this destruction. That bothered me.
I could be troubled by the overly heated nature of his rhetoric, or I could ask pointed questions about exactly how is Obama, the left or the Democratic party (or whoever) destroying our churches. But what bothered me most was his connection of churches with our history and constitution as if they were in the same category. It struck me as a perfect picture of conservative Christians buying into the conflation of the cross and flag, assuming the interests of the Empire are the same as that of the Church.
Even if the the institutional powers of the left in this country were "destroying our churches" I certainly don't believe that political organizing and pinning our hopes on an election is the way to go. Not that we should seek conflict with the Empire, in fact we should pray for our leaders that there would be peace, but, frankly, it would not be the worst thing for the Church in America to undergo some measure of persecution. It might help us see more clearly the lines between the city of God and the city of Man.
After thinking along these lines for a few minutes I had a second impulse. I wondered if I might be reading into his graphic too much; maybe the graphic could not sustain the weight of my argument. So I did a quick search for local news stories regarding the event, hoping to find some quotes by Beck. I found some.
"We've had enough. We're going to set things right," said Beck, arriving to a standing ovation three hours into the event. "The tea party finds itself in the position where it is the beginning of the end of the establishment."
This is eschatological language. The biblical language, as often mentioned by N.T. Wright, speaks of YHWH's return at the end of the present, evil age, and at that time YHWH will "put the world to rights" or in American English "it will be made righteous." The eschaton, the final event of the present age, will mark the time when all our trials, persecutions, temptations and failings will be made right for those that are in union with the New Adam, Christ. The established powers and principalities of this world, against which Paul polemically attacks in many of his epistles, will be dealt with decisively by the return of Jesus the Messiah, and it will not be a good day for whoever is found out to be part of the Old Adam and his order.
The Church's hope is the eschaton, the return of the Messiah; the world will be put to rights and the establishment will be "dethroned" upon His glorious return. That great hope may or may take place this November 2nd, but I am quite certain that if it does it will have nothing to do with the results of an election regardless of who wins.
I am not saying that conservative or liberal Christians cannot vote, organize or run for office. But I am saying that we, the Church, cannot conflate the concerns of Empire with the concerns of Kingdom. And our involvement should not be of such a nature that our cherished eschatological language should be used to further political action.
