WASHINGTON — An enormous and impassioned crowd rallied at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, summoned by Glenn Beck, a conservative broadcaster who called for a religious rebirth in America at the site where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago to the day.

“Something that is beyond man is happening,” Mr. Beck said in opening the event as the crowd thronged near the memorial grounds. “America today begins to turn back to God.”

It was part religious revival, part history lecture, as Mr. Beck invoked the founding fathers and the “black-robed regiment” of pastors of the Revolutionary War and spoke of American exceptionalism.

The crowd was a mix of groups that have come together under the Tea Party umbrella. Some wore T-shirts from the Campaign for Liberty, the libertarian group that came out of the presidential campaign of Representative Ron Paul, while others wore the gear of their local Tea Party group, or of 9/12 groups, which were founded after a special broadcast Mr. Beck did in March 2009.

But the program was distinctly different from most Tea Party rallies. While Tea Party groups have said they want to focus on fiscal conservatism and not risk alienating people by talking about religion or social issues, the rally on Saturday was overtly religious, filled with gospel music and speeches that were more like sermons.

Mr. Beck imbued his remarks on Saturday and at events the night before with references to God and a need for a religious revival. “For too long, this country has wandered in darkness,” Mr. Beck said Saturday. “This country has spent far too long worrying about scars and thinking about scars and concentrating on scars. Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished, and the things that we can do tomorrow.”

Mr. Beck was followed on stage by Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate and former Alaska governor, who said she was asked, in keeping with the theme of the day, not to focus on politics but to speak as the mother of a soldier.

“Say what you want to say about me, but I raised a combat vet, and you can’t take that away from me,” said Ms. Palin, whose son Track served in Iraq.

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The most skilled of shooting-god-from-both-barrels rabid spruikers... check Glenn and mamma-bear on the Jon Stewart show...

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By Stan Grant

Martin Luther King Jnr cast an enormous shadow in my childhood. It was a presence that outlived his death — indeed his assassination added potency to his leadership of a black struggle that mirrored our own.

This wasn't the acceptable Dr King as Santa Claus — as one black scholar remarked this week — our Dr King was a man of righteous anger who spoke with moral urgency to an American nation he saw as doomed by its white supremacy

On the day of his death he was working on a sermon he would never give, entitled Why America May Go To Hell.

From the other side of the world, Dr King spoke powerfully to my family.

We came out of the church and our church was black. It was a hangover from the old days of the Aboriginal missions.

We were to be Christianised and "civilised", but like the African slaves of the American plantations, we embraced religion and made it our own.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-04/martin-luther-king-assassination-5...

Read from top. Note: the illustration of MLK is on a big wall in Newtown, Sydney, Australia (Picture by Gus). It demands respect.