On a Saturday morning at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, people gathered to celebrate the life of one of Pennsylvania’s best-known civil-rights lobbyists, a man known for working the halls of Harrisburg’s statehouse, championing issues from gay rights to prison reform to immigration justice.
Many of the people who came for the service were from American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, where Larry Frankel had spent all but the last year of his ACLU career, before becoming a D.C. lobbyist for the organization.
Frankel died Aug. 28 in D.C. of natural causes. He was 54.
It was a standing-room only crowd of mixed faiths and non-believers. Except for the program’s translation of the Jewish Mourner’s Kaddish, recited in Aramaic, God was never mentioned. Still, any Christian present would have recognized that Christ’s teachings would be in harmony here as Frankel’s friends and Jewish family discussed the man’s acts of charity and practice of social justice. (Of course, such notions are not exclusively Christian. They are also inherent in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, most other faiths actually, and, yes, secular humanism.)
But wait…perhaps acts of charity and social justice aren’t Christian ideals after all?
A few short weeks ago, Glenn Beck on his show on Fox News tried to link the brutal murder of a 16-year-old boy during a Chicago gang battle to what he says he fears is a rising tide of atheism in this country.
Amid the factual errors in his remarks—falsely asserting that kids can’t pray in school, that people can no longer sing Christmas carols and that “In God We Trust” has been removed from coins—Beck makes one particularly startling assertion:
“Maybe we need to stop looking for more social justice and start looking at eternal justice.”
For someone who professes to be washed in the blood of Christ’s redemption, Beck sounded surprisingly unfamiliar with Matthew 25:31 in which God banishes the goats to hell for just the kind of talk that Beck espouses.
‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’“
But of course, once editors at Conservapedia—an online encyclopedia formed as a response to what its creators declare is the “liberal bias” of Wikipedia—get done with their Conservative Bible Project, the parable of the sheep and the goats may have a much different meaning with the goats morphing into macho, gun-toting, Old Testament-style, eye-for-an-eye conservative heroes in this story.
The recently announced project seeks to rewrite the Bible, removing its “liberal bias,” including the parable about stoning the prostitute, “Whoever is without sin cast the first stone.”
It also says the inclusion in the Gospel of Luke of Jesus praying on the cross for his torturers—“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”—is a liberal falsehood.
Additionally, Conservapedia urges contributors to spot examples of socialism in the Bible and suggest translation changes. “Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the ‘social justice’ movement among Christians.”
It’s more than a little disconcerting that those most piously professing to stand up for Jesus are the ones actively trying to scrub the Bible of his teachings of forgiveness and compassion. And it’s strange that the ACLU, an organization denounced by Conservapedia as pursuing “a leftist agenda that includes censoring prayer and recognition of God in public institutions, such as public schools,” would be where one goes to hear stories about a man who spent his life working to protect the rights of all his brothers and sisters—and not just those who shared his worldview.
For Frankel passionately defended many issues protecting those who might otherwise have little voice in the political process, including women, gays, immigrants and prisoners.
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
What I have always loved most about the parable of the sheep and the goats is the sheep’s utter surprise that they had been rewarded for their good deeds to others. Unlike the devout goats, the sheep apparently weren’t keeping a score card of righteous one-upmanship.
It seems as if Beck, Conservapedia and others are trying to call themselves Christian when what they are espousing has nothing to do with Christian brotherly love. So it appears they’re rewriting the terms of what it means to be a Christian, while moving the goal posts to the extremist right.
It’s gotten to the point that Fred Phelps and his disgusting, hate-spewing “God Hates Fags” campaign no longer sounds like the far-fringe views of the Christian conservative movement.
Certainly, Beck’s ability to worm his rants into subjects of public debate should give people of more mainstream faith, who believe in the importance of acts of Christian charity, cause for concern. Many of Beck’s more extreme, flag-waving rants—from his manufactured outrage over czar appointments, to the destruction of environmental advisor Van Jones’ career, to support for the 9/12 rally, which he initiated—have been picked up and carried by the conservative mainstream.
Of course, critical views of Christ-as-activist aren’t exactly new. In 2003, Barbara Ehrenreich stirred up controversy with conservative Christians when she described Christ in her book Nickel and Dimed as a “socialist.”
People were shocked (shocked!) at the idea that Christ—who urged followers to “Render unto Caesar what is Caeser’s” and warned it would be harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven—could be considered a socialist.
In response to her critics, Ehrenreich wrote, “I take it back. He was actually a little to the left of that, judging from his instruction to the rich man to sell all that he had and give to the poor. If that’s what it takes to be a true Christian, believe me, it’s a hell of a lot easier to be a socialist: You have to dedicate yourself to working for the poor, just as a Christian should, but at least you get to keep your stuff.”
But Ehrenreich’s critics have gone further since 2003 and I wonder if what we’re witnessing here is a subtle change in tactics. Are some attempting to actively deny the social activism component of their faith in exchange for reinforcing Holy War notions against fellow Americans?
***
Back in Philadelphia, a city founded on the concept of brotherly love, Witold “Vic” Walczak, the ACLU-PA’s legal director who oversaw Frankel’s memorial service, closed with a message urging action rather than judgment. Perhaps he missed Beck’s admonishment. Or perhaps he doesn’t care much what Beck has to say.
Sniffling back tears, Walczak asked those gathered to take Frankel‘s memory and “to go do good works.”
Lauri Lebo is a card-carrying member of the ACLU.
