Randall Stephens, Evil Genius -- From New Contributor Glenn Beck!

I’m delighted to introduce to you today our new contributor, Mr. Glenn Beck! Beck’s radio and television shows are well known to the public, and through these venues he has also become known as an American religious historian, one who draws from the rich tradition of David Barton, W. Cleon Skousen, and quite a few of the figures who are discussed in Richard Hoftstadter’s classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Beck’s first post today concerns our very own blogmeister, Randall Stephens, who wields a degree of power and influence of which even I was unaware. Welcome to Glenn! We hope to have many thoughtful posts from him upcoming.

Randall Stephens, Evil Genius

By Glenn Beck

Greetings, RiAH readers, and thank you for taking the time out from your busy days of buying gold to protect yourself from the coming apocalypse, as well as faithfully following me on The Glenn Beck Show, to read some of my perusings here at your estimable blog. I especially want to thank Christopher Jones, who really spearheaded the national drive to have my name added to the list of contributors. As you faithful blog readers know, Christopher and I go way back on this blog, almost back to those days when “the social network” meant cracking open a case of Vitamin Water with buddies and sitting down to watch the Mavs play the Lakers. So, here’s one for you, Chris! I hope you go all Jimmer on ‘em down there at William and Mary.

But we have serious concerns to attend to today, my friends. I hope to run a series of posts on these concerns, because it’s going to take a while to explain to you how and why we have a mole in our midst. That’s right, my friends, while you have been worried over the crushing burden of Centralized Socialism created by Woodrow Wilson and passed down through Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Kennedy until it finally reached Barack HUSSEIN Obama, and while you have anguished over the Protocols of the Elders of Ben Bernanke and his devious manipulations of our financial system to rob the wealth from those who have created it, and while certainly you have fallen to your knees in prayer every time you have seen the Liberal Media Conspiracy attack my friend and true patriot Sarah Palin – even as you have done these things, you, I, and the American people have missed truly comprehending the evil genius that ultimately is behind the Decline of the American Republic, its descent into Liberal Fascist Socialism, and its capture by a secret religious history elite which has conspired to undermine the very values, morals, and patriotism that has made this once-great country what it was, even if it no longer is. That’s right, my friends – today I must begin to explain to you how and why I came to realize that Randall Stephens is the Evil Genius of our age, and, if not the AntiChrist himself, quite possibly betokens the coming of an age which will eventuate in the end of freedom in America.

That's right, freedom is under siege, and Mr. Stephens (along with George Soros, Media Matters for America, and the evil folks here) is heading up the forces of our enemy. Revolution is what they are shooting for!!

As always, my friends, please, do not take what I say as gospel. Do your own research. I've been educating you for over two years now on the radicals and revolutionaries in this country who control everything, and I've heard from many of you who did not believe until you followed my broadcasts with your own research. I myself would not have believed what I am explaining here, but gradually, reluctantly, and even to my own surprise, I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Stephens is the most dangerous man in America.

Those of you who know Mr. Stephens may be surprised, even shocked, to hear of his true nature and his linkages with many of the great apostasies of our age. He may come across to you as a mild-mannered Nazarene and, even worse, a college professor of history, who dispenses gentle witticisms such as his oh-so-funny line about the relatively high rates of obesity among evangelicals that the Liberal Media Conspiracy claims as truth – what he calls “The Scandal of the Evangelical Behind.” It is those kind of seemingly innocent puns, my friends, that lead you astray, for behind the Kansas-born demeanor lies an intellect so acute, so manipulative, and yes, so conniving that he can only be compared to a cross between John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Gailbraith, Mark Noll, Van Jones, Bill Ayers, and (worst of all) that guru of glibly -- err, flippantly, I mean -- false pluralism, Chris Beneke.

My friends, you ask how I can come to such a conclusion. Doesn’t it seem a little extreme. Am I just nuts, like my friends in the Liberal Media Establishment always say I am? Have I fallen off the wagon again?

Well, you all know I feel strongly and passionately about preserving the Values that made this Republic Great; and you know that my patriotism is directly connected to my tear duct glands, and you know that I only aim to educate and instruct you in the way that the world works because no one else will do so. I care about you, my friends, and I know that you only want to know the TRUTH, and that sometimes the truth can be seen only through following elaborate chains of connections and reasonings that get one to the heart of the matter. That’s why I’m here, my friends, because I know that you want to know, and you know that I may know something that you don’t know. And I know that that is the case here, because I know that you don’t know the real truth behind the blogging, book-writing, beer-swilling, Fulbright-winning, Nazarene Sunday-School-teaching, guitar-playing, witticism-dispensing, You-Tube-interviewing whirling dervish of devious deception that is Randall Stephens.

So, you are asking, how does Randall actually run the world, without anyone knowing about it. Stay tuned, my friends – Part II of this series, to be posted a bit later today after I finish teaching my class on How and Why Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter Persuaded FDR to Go Off the Gold Standard, And Why Barack Hussein Obama Refuses to Put Us Back On It In Spite of the Imminent Financial and Spiritual Doom That Awaits Us Because He Won’t, will explain the full range of Mr. Stephens’ influence. Stay thirsty, my friends, I’ll be right back with the rest; tune in around 8:00 Salt Lake City time tonight for the remainder of my exposition.

Contributors in the News

Paul Harvey

A brief note on some of the doings of our contributors here at RiAH.

First, John Fea is busy on a speaking schedule in support of his new book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?On part of that tour he appeared at the Virginia Festival for the Book, and his panel there is now up on the C-SPAN website (it was shown on C-SPAN 2, that harvest of riches for book geeks everywhere).

Contributor Jon Pahl has been traveling the world, engaging in interfaith dialogues, currently in Jakarta. You can follow his travels at his blog, linked above.

Chris Jones is celebrating surviving his comprehensive exams, not to mention making plans to be a father! Congratulations to Chris. Also on the graduate school front, contributor Heath Carter, whose excellent article about "scabbing ministers and striking saints" in the 1894 railroad strike recently appeared in American Nineteenth Century History, has been awarded the Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation fellowship to support his work next year.

Kelly Baker is tinkering with the title of her soon-to-forthcome book, now entitled Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK's Appeal to Protestant America, out soon with University of Kansas Press. Gerardo Marti's book on worship in multiracial churches (Worship Across the Racial Divide: Notions of Race and the Practice of Religious Music in Multiracial Churches) is slated to come out with Oxford, next spring I believe, and Art Remillard's book about competing visions of civil religion in the post-Civil War South (especially the "Wiregrass" South) will be out with University of Georgia Press around the same time. Meanwhile, Seth Dowland will be decamping from Duke cross country to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA, where he will be a new assistant professor in the Religious Studies Department (correct me if I got the departmental affiliation wrong, Seth). Seth's book Family Values will be out with U. Penn Press next year we hope, and I hope many of you saw the preview for the book in his Church History article. And Lin Fisher, who's enjoying his year as an NEH Fellow at the Mass. Historical Society, is right at the end stages of finishing his terrific book The Indian Great Awakening, which Oxford will publish a bit down the road.

My co-blogmeister Randall Stephens is gearing up for his Fulbright in Norway next spring, where he will be a "Roving Scholar," while Ed Blum will be spending the year in Germany on a Fulbright as well. Meanwhile, Matt Sutton will use his recently awarded full-year NEH fellowship to work on his much-anticipated text about fundamentalism and politics since the 1930s. It's been a good year for Young Scholars.

As for me, I will be spending next year teaching a wonderfully light 3-4 load, directing 40 some odd senior theses, and writing to the NFL commissioner complaining about how the lockout has cancelled the fantasy football season, which is the only thing that gets me through the fall. As Historiann would say: Awesome!!!.

Oh, and after Glenn Beck's television contract with Fox runs out, he will be joining me as fellow blog-meister here at RiAH. So, please join me in welcoming Glenn to his new, highly-paid gig here at RiAH!! As you can see from the above, he will be joining an illustrious group of contributors.

The rest of ya'll, send your news.

Rush Limbaugh to Speak at Sojourners' Mobilization to End Poverty!

Rush Limbaugh to Speak at Sojourners' Mobilization to End Poverty

In an inspiring display of bipartisan bridge-building, talk radio personality Rush Limbaugh has accepted Jim Wallis' invitation to deliver a keynote address at Sojourners' Mobilization to End Poverty conference in April."I've always said the monologue of the extreme right is over, and a new dialogue has begun," said Wallis. "Well, that dialogue is about to get a whole lot louder."



Limbaugh, longtime champion of conservative media, announced his acceptance of the invitation on his daily radio show. Interrupted occasionally by call-ins of incredulous listeners, Limbaugh detailed months of off-the-record conversations with Wallis during which the two forged a deep friendship despite political, theological, philosophical, ideological, ecological, anthropological, eschatological, and soteriological differences.

That dialogue came to a head one night when an anguished and sleepless Limbaugh called Wallis after 3:00 a.m., seeking spiritual solace. "I responded like any good evangelical would," said Wallis. "I told him he should read his Bible. And then I hung up and went back to sleep. "Vexed but desperate, Limbaugh grabbed his trusty KJV, fanned it open at random, closed his eyes, and thrust his index finger upon whatever page it might find, landing upon this passage from James 5:

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.

"I admit, of all the verses for him to read, this passage sounds a bit harsh—especially in the King James," said Wallis. "But with 2,000 verses on poverty in the Bible, Rush was bound to hit one of them."Limbaugh's response to the Word was swift and dramatic: "Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."

As part of Limbaugh's dramatic change of heart, he has reciprocated Wallis' speaking invitation by naming him the new co-host for his daily radio show, giving it a more faith-based focus. "The way Kathy Lee needed Regis, that's the way y'all need Jesus," said Limbaugh. "That's what Jim will bring to the show on a daily basis—that good ole’ Red Letter Christian gospel!"Limbaugh further detailed his plans to team up with Sojourners and others to fight domestic and global poverty, issuing this challenge to all Dittoheads in a recent broadcast: "I want everyone within the sound of my voice to call upon their members of Congress to cut the number of Americans living in poverty in half in the next 10 years, and to support America's commitment to the Millennium Devleopment Goals. ... And always remember to recycle. ... Oh, and one last thing: fur is murder."

With Mobilization attendees and legions of conservative talk radio fans both reeling from this dramatic turn of events, many are asking what other surprises are in store for the Sojourners conference.Anonymous sources have confirmed that TV talk show host Stephen T. Colbert will be delivering the prayer of invocation to kick off the event. Also, Bono has cancelled the free U2 concert for emerging leaders due to lack of interest. Instead, band members The Edge, Larry Mullins Jr. and Adam Clayton will accompany Jim Wallis in leading the young people in a sing-a-long of church camp fireside favorites. "Arky Arky" anyone?