10/12/10

Is Beck Inciting Holy War?

This NPR story stopped me right in the middle of finishing drywall in the new bathroom:
Only a handful of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are aware of the "White Horse Prophecy," according to Utah State University professor Phil Barlow, who teaches Mormon history and culture. "And among that minority, very few would be able to explain what it actually refers to," Barlow tells NPR's Guy Raz.  The prophecy originates with the diary entry of an LDS church member, who scribbled the following quote and attributed it to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church:  "You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed," the diary quotes Smith as saying. "It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber."
Whether that quote actually came from Joseph Smith, Barlow says, is difficult to prove. But the language itself? "That phrase, Latter-day Saints would have heard of."  "I think that in many ways, Glenn Beck has picked up some of the more obscure — and more extreme — work of Mormon thinkers," he says.  There's no denying Glenn Beck has used the phrase "the Constitution is hanging by a thread." In fact, he's been saying it at least since Nov. 4, 2008.
"We are at the point — or we are very near the point — where our Constitution is hanging by a thread," Beck told a guest on his radio show, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, who is himself a Mormon.  "You got that right," Hatch replied.
Apparently, The End Days and Holy War are selling pretty well for Republicans. Calamity, mayhem, cheap sex. . . next thing you know, they'll be in power again.

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