Media misses the point on Beck’s Restore Honor Rally

Ralph Reed | In recent days, the lamestream media has been in high dudgeon about evangelical leaders appearing at Glenn Beck’s Washington, DC Restore Honor rally. Isn’t it hypocritical, they ask, for mainline evangelicals to share the stage with a professed Mormon? As usual, the media misses the point. The evangelicals participating in the Restore Honor event are not endorsing Glenn Beck’s theology, nor is he asking them to; they are joining in his clarion call to restore America’s honor and founding principles. Together, we and millions of our fellow citizens are calling America back to its Judeo-Christian values of faith, hard work, individual initiative, the centrality of marriage and family, hope, charity, and relying on God and civic and faith-based organizations rather than government for our security and prosperity. We have always partnered with those with whom we had theological differences: the Jewish community in defending the state of Israel, Roman Catholics in defending life, Mormons in defending marriage. The media can’t have it both ways. Either evangelicals are theologically narrow and judgmental, or they are just as politically sophisticated and mature and capable of building coalitions with 80% friends who they do not view as 20% enemies. It seems they get criticized no matter what they do. The high point of the civil rights movement was the cooperation between prominent Jewish supporters and African-American Christians to end segregation and what C. Vann Woodward called the strange career of Jim Crow. Historically, cross-ethnic and multi-denominational coalitions are a sign of strength, not weakness.