{"id":2859,"date":"2010-08-27T09:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T09:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/08\/by-their-conservative-fruits-you-shall-know-them-conservative-christians-use-liberal-arguments-to-defend-association-with-glenn-beck\/"},"modified":"2010-08-27T09:31:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-27T09:31:00","slug":"by-their-conservative-fruits-you-shall-know-them-conservative-christians-use-liberal-arguments-to-defend-association-with-glenn-beck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/08\/by-their-conservative-fruits-you-shall-know-them-conservative-christians-use-liberal-arguments-to-defend-association-with-glenn-beck.html","title":{"rendered":"By Their (Conservative) Fruits You Shall Know Them: Conservative Christians Use Liberal Arguments to Defend Association with Glenn Beck"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"http:\/\/religion.blogs.cnn.com\/2010\/08\/27\/some-evangelicals-on-defensive-over-partnering-with-glenn-beck-a-mormon\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">An article on CNN\u2019s\u00a0religion blog<\/a> mentions some arguments and explanations used by conservative Evangelical Christians to defend their support of, or association with, Glenn Beck, who is a Mormon.<\/p>\n<p>What struck me most, and made it seem worth sharing, is that the arguments in question are ones that have been used for a very long time \u2013 by Liberal, Progressive, social-justice, inclusivist, and any number of other strands of Christianity that conservatives usually denegrate. Just look at this excerpt:<\/p>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\"><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i106.photobucket.com\/albums\/m248\/Thunder-Pig\/Glenn-Beck-1.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/i106.photobucket.com\/albums\/m248\/Thunder-Pig\/Glenn-Beck-1.jpg\" width=\"200\"><\/a>Many conservative evangelical activists argue that evangelicals and <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/mormonism' target='_blank'>Mormons<\/a> should set aside theological differences to partner on moral and political issues.<\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\"><\/div>\n<p>\u201cFor Christians concerned about Glenn\u2019s faith, I would ask the following questions: What fruit do you see produced by Glenn?\u201d David Barton, an influential evangelical activist who is joining Beck\u2019s rally, wrote on his Facebook page recently. \u201cGood or bad? If you judged Glenn only by the fruits he has produced, would you still hold concerns over his faith?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChristians concerned about Glenn\u2019s faith should judge the tree by its fruits, not its labels,\u201d Barton, a former Republican National Committee consultant, continued. \u201cAfter all, Nancy Pelosi and Bill Clinton openly call themselves Christians\u2026 Although these individuals have the right labels, they have the wrong fruits.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It seems so strange to read an argument like this, which sounds so much like the emphasis of many progressives \u2013\u00a0that doctrine matters less than practice \u2013\u00a0only in reverse, or at least in favor of a very different sort of practice.<br>While other conservative Evangelicals who were interviewed emphasized that they would not \u201cunite spiritually\u201d with Beck because of important doctrinal differences, the article shows that for at least some people who self-identify as conservative Christians, the first part of that label is what really matters the most to them.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-7342624612155648076?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An article on CNN\u2019s\u00a0religion blog mentions some arguments and explanations used by conservative Evangelical Christians to defend their support of, or association with, Glenn Beck, who is a Mormon. What struck me most, and made it seem worth sharing, is that the arguments in question are ones that have been used for a very long [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>By Their (Conservative) Fruits You Shall Know Them: Conservative Christians Use Liberal Arguments to Defend Association with Glenn Beck<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An article on CNN&#039;s&nbsp;religion blog mentions some arguments and explanations used by conservative Evangelical Christians to defend their support of, or\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/08\/by-their-conservative-fruits-you-shall-know-them-conservative-christians-use-liberal-arguments-to-defend-association-with-glenn-beck.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"By Their (Conservative) Fruits You Shall Know Them: Conservative Christians Use Liberal Arguments to Defend Association with Glenn Beck\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An article on CNN&#039;s&nbsp;religion blog mentions some arguments and explanations used by conservative Evangelical Christians to defend their support of, or\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/08\/by-their-conservative-fruits-you-shall-know-them-conservative-christians-use-liberal-arguments-to-defend-association-with-glenn-beck.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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