The Religious Parallels of the Jon Stewart Rally

Last night on the Daily Show with Jon Stwewart, Stew-Beef himself announced that he would be holding his own Beckesque rally in Washington, D.C.  He’s calling his event “The Rally to Restore Sanity.”   Last night he explained that 70-80% of Americans don’t actually think that Obama hates this country OR that the tea partiers are lunatics … it’s just that the other 20-30% are the ones who make, and often report, the news.  His rally is to move the political dialogue from the minority extremists shouting each other, to the moderate majority “restoring sanity” to the conversation.

Where Jon Stewart is right about the polarized political climate, the same could unquestionably be said for the Christians who control the faith dialogue.  The fact of the matter is that most Christians aren’t as far to the right as Pat Robertson or Grant Swank, but they’re also not as far to the left as a John Dominic Crossan or even a Brian McLaren.  Most of us fall somewhere between those two extremes, but our extremist leaders control the dialogue- essentially guaranteeing that there will never be unified common ground under the tent of orthodoxy.

I applaud what Jon Stewart is doing in the political realm- trying to give a voice to those who aren’t far left or far right.  Perhaps we, as a church, need to find our own faith based equivalent of the “Rally to Restore Sanity.”