Liberation/Emerging Church Theology

Glenn Beck: talk show/radio personality, recovering alcoholic, Mormon. Love him or hate him I want to take some time to analyze something he said today and what implications it may have for the Christian faith and belief system. It is my understanding that Mormonism isn't scripturally sound which is to say that it doesn't necessarily follow the teachings of Jesus as found in the new testament and therefore it is a manipulation of Christian ideology. That being said, Glenn made a comment on Fox News Sunday about the fact that he believes President Obama is a follower of another sect of Christianity that, it may be said, is not founded completely on biblically sound theology either. I am talking about Liberation Theology or it's more contemporary counterpart the Emerging Church movement. For those of you all who don't what either of those are you can click the links above taking you to a Wikipedia.org page describing each belief.

Liberation theology is described very succinctly as the belief that Jesus came to earth to save humanity and especially the poor and that it is our duty as believers to understand and try to remedy the plight of the poor. Practioners of this belief system also espouse that Jesus said we should do our best to become poor ourselves and they sight examples of paribles that Jesus tells in which it is the poor who benefit and the rich who come away empty. A good article describing these beliefs is "Glenn Beck vs. Christ the Liberator" by a Rev. James Martin.

Now the problem that I have with these theologies is that they fail to see the big picture of Jesus' sacrafice for humanity. Some of you out there may not be Christian or know anything about the bible so briefly; Jesus came and died for all of us in order that we may go to heaven when we die. Where Liberation and Emerging church theology falls short is that they miss the point of the Christian belief that, Jesus didn't die specifically or especially for one group of people but rather humanity as a whole. Each group of people has it's own unique problems but Jesus' sacrafice covers them all. The bible has a few occasions where Jesus says that in order for someone to be saved they have to give up all their possessions or so on but the point of these stories is not that the people have to give up their possessions for poverty's sake but instead give them up in order to rely completely on God for survival and salvation. The point of the gospel is that we can do nothing to save ourselves or others from sin, only God has that power.

So, I have to say that I disagree with Liberation theology and if President Obama is indeed a follower of this belief system then I have to wonder how it has affected his formation as a man and as our president. I can also say that, because he is a mormon, I do not think that Mr. Beck has any right to speak for the Christian community as a whole or lecture anyone on the teachings of the bible when he himself follows an unsound doctrine.

-Jim at the D.W.

PS-anyone who has questions about what it means to be a Christian or anything else about my beliefs please feel free to email me jed19@students.pti.edu