By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
On Saturday, August 28 conservative talk radio and cable TV host Glenn Beck drew 20,000 people for a march in Birmingham urging Christian unity across racial, political, and philosophical lines ostensibly to draw attention to growing persecutions of Christians in the Middle East and Africa where ISIS has brutalized, imprisoned, enslaved, and murdered the Christian minorities in Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Beck was joined by popular actor and activist, Chuck Norris, in Birmingham. The group chanted: “All Lives Matter” during the march.
Glenn Beck spoke on Friday at a predominately Black Church on the anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. on the anniversary of the “I have a Dream.” The next day the march was held and then Beck addressed thousands at his Restoring Unity rally on Saturday. Beck is raising money so that up to 400 families of Middle Eastern Christians who have been displaced by ISIS can find homes elsewhere.
Beck said that he has “never felt evil this close,” citing attacks by ISIS on Christian villages, the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ cartoonist assassinations, and the Planned Parenthood revelations. According to original reporting by Beck’s Blaze TV network, Beck said, “For the most part, we have looked away. We avert our eyes. We do it because, if we don’t, we come face to face with the reality of the situation. Facing that would stop us cold and dead in our tracks — and that is how evil works. It makes itself so unbelievably outrageous … so difficult to comprehend… that ordinary people just don’t allow themselves to confront it, because it’s too painful.”
Beck said that, “Evil does not depend always on brute force. It doesn’t. We’d like it to work that way, but it doesn’t,” he said “Usually, it depends on surrender … it offers the false comfort of helplessness.” “The enemy today must start to see us united against evil, and that evil today is ISIS,”
Beck is urging supporters to join in a project called “The Nazarene Fund” — an effort to raise $10 million by Christmas to help save 400 Christian families in the Middle East from the Islamic State.
Beck said, “We don’t need the military to help. The world has changed. … what we need is $25,000 per family of five, and we’re going to get them to Poland, to get them to Germany [or to whatever country will take them].” Beck said of efforts to help displaced Christians. Their goal is to raise an additional $7.3 million on top of the $2,7 million that the group has already raised.
Beck said on his radio and TV show, “A genocide is going on now and we all know it. The pictures are on the web, yet we turn our eyes. We must be brave enough to look, and Christian enough to act. God specifically tells us: “When you happen on someone who’s in trouble or needs help . . . don’t look the other way pretending you don’t see him – don’t keep a tight grip on your purse. No. Look at him; open your purse; lend whatever and as much as he needs. . . . Give freely and spontaneously. Don’t have a stingy heart. The way you handle matters like this triggers God’s blessing in everything you do – all your work and ventures.”
Beck said, “The genocide perpetrated by the psychotic killers named ISIS must stop. So the first thing we are doing is raising money to help those innocents in the Middle East. I hope to be traveling to the Middle East in the next two or three months with a plane load of aid and my cameras to bring home the story of the children who are standing up against the evil of Isis. I may ask you to join me as we bring aid and comfort to those most in need. I would ask for your donation to help us in this goal of raising $2 million dollars in relief. We will also ask some of your churches around the country to take this money and actually fill the boxes and the planes. We will be asking your children to write letters to children in refugee camps so they know that America has not forgotten them.”
Beck has previously worked for both Fox News and CNN before striking out on his own and founding the Blaze network.
(Original reporting by ‘The Blaze’ contributed to this report.)
