"America Today Begins to Turn Back to God"

The title of this post is a quotation from Glenn Beck from the rally at the National Mall today.  If he truly means this, I guess I have to agree with Mr. Beck.  But it is going to be a lot of work, and Mr. Beck will have to persuade many of his followers, I'm afraid.  After all, this road is going to lead us to

• Like the Good Samaritan, take care of our neighbors' medical needs;
• Treat the aliens in our land with respect, just as God's people were aliens in the land of Egypt ("The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God": Leviticus 19:34, NRSV);
• Plead the case of the widow and the orphan (Isaiah 1:17);
• Acknowledge God's response to Cain, that yes, we are our brothers' keepers, and shake off this "ideal" of rugged individualism;
• Ensure that religious leaders do not gain so much power in this country so as to oppress the people and gather power among themselves, even if we have to overturn some tables;
• Say only "what is useful for building up" (Ephesians 4:29, NRSV) and stop the shouting matches that pass for political discourse today;
• Love our enemies as ourselves.

So, I will pray that we can make some progress on the above, non-exhaustive list.  And maybe, just maybe, we can get all of those tea-partiers to join the rest of us to get some work done on the list.