Glenn Beck vs. Barack Obama: Whose Version of Chrstianity Is More Mainstream?

(Sept. 2) -- God is on whose side?

Today, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs responded to criticism made by television talk show host Glenn Beck, who alleges that President Barack Obama believes in tenets of liberation theology, a social justice movement started in Latin America's Catholic churches in the 1960s in response to the plight of the poor.

"The president is a committed mainstream Christian," Gibbs said at Thursday's press gaggle, adding that he wasn't sure whether Obama actually did admire the movement, nor where Beck had learned of the alleged connection.

Gibbs' assertion comes as polls show that a growing number of Americans believe the president is actually Muslim.

As delivered at his "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, Beck's line of attack had it that Obama was indeed a Christian, just not one who could be trusted. As proof, Beck attempted to link Obama with liberation theology, which he called "a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ and most Christians know it."

Meanwhile, however, in evangelical circles, many religious leaders were saying the very same thing about Beck's faith, Mormonism.

"Too often, and for too long, American 'Christianity' has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it," Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote on his blog in reference to Beck's rally. "There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both

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are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barabbas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah."

And Brannon Howse, the founder of Worldview Weekend, a group that sponsors Christian conferences and considers Mormonism no better than a cult, wrote the following: "Beck used his conservative veneer and double-speak to co-opt leaders of the religious right."

The question of whether Mormonism or liberation theology is closer than the other to the heart of mainstream Christianity is, of course, a relative matter born both of politics and faith. One thing is certain: It's a debate that is unlikely to be settled at a rally or during a news conference.