Jesus said that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. So whatever Beck does, Christians who want to follow Jesus should not personally attack Beck but, rather, should pray for him, for the poor and for our country, which is being harmed by an increasingly poisonous public discourse.
Yet, the old Jim Wallis, who is now and always has been about Jim Wallis being the Leader of a New Movement crops up at the end.
This is the right way to stand up to Glenn Beck. Who knows; it may be the moment to launch a new movement of Christians for Social Justice.
This is why I dislike Wallis. Rather than uphold and strengthen the structures that already exist in various denominations for the promotion of Christian social justice, he has always wanted to lead a movement a la Martin Luther King. This is why he will never do so; King was thrust in to leadership through the contingency of circumstance; he was the right person in the the right place at the right time. Wallis is one of those people who keeps shouting "Follow me!" while he looks back over his shoulder to check and make sure they are. When they aren't, he starts all over again.
All the same, his initial response is correct. Rather than denounce Beck, or call him names, offering prayer is, indeed, the proper response.
