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Glenn Beck's program at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday focused more on God than government.
The Fox News host followed through on a commitment to avoid wading explicitly into partisan politics. So President Barack Obama's name did not come up once during a 200-minute program that featured multiple prayers, gospel songs and bagpipers playing "Amazing Grace."
Choreographing the event so it felt more like an old-fashion religious revival than a tea party-inspired political rally gave Beck just enough cover to credibly position himself as an heir to Martin Luther King's legacy on the 47th anniversary of the legendary "I have a dream" speech, even as prominent African-American leaders attacked him at a counter-rally for being insensitive to civil rights iconography.
Beck, who first called the timing coincidental and later embraced it as fitting, didn't respond directly to attacks as he spoke to a massive crowd that extended for a mile all the way back to the Washington Monument.
He instead filled the stage with a racially diverse mix of religious people who sympathize with his social conservatism.
King's niece, anti-abortion activist Alveda King, told the multitudes that her "Uncle Martin" would commend them for showing up. She said that metaphorical check King wanted cashed in his 1963 speech still hasn't been and only will be when there's prayer in schools and the public square.
Beck also introduced a new "Black-Robed Regiment" of clergy, bringing 240 clergy of various denominations and ethnicities onto the stage. He asserted that thousands more were in the crowd.
"God is the answer," Beck said.
Beck had initially planned for a political rally. In November, he said he would unveil a political organizing book on August 28, called "The Plan," which he billed as providing "specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps" to launch "a new national movement to restore our great country."
Then prominent minority leaders pushed back.
Without specifying why, Beck said Saturday that he came to the realization a political approach would be wrong for this occasion. He attributed part of his idea for what to do in lieu of that to a conversation he claimed he had with God.
"It was about four months ago that we were still kind of lost, and we didn't know what we were going to do when we got here," Beck said. "And I was down on my knees, and we were in the office. And I said 'Lord, I think I'm one of your dumber children. Speak slowly!' And the answer was, 'You have all the pieces. Just put them together.' The pieces are faith, hope and charity and looking for those things inside each of us.'"
Faith, hope and charity--derived from 1 Corinthians--became the three key buzzwords of the day. An award went to a person who embodied each of those three categories: one was an African-American pastor from Texas who had attended King's 1963 rally. The other was a native of the Dominican Republic, St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols, for promoting Jesus Christ.
Meanwhile, many in the predominantly white crowd bent over backward to preemptively insist in interviews that they are not racists and to note that the crowd was courteous.
"People have attributed racism and anger and all of these emotions that, every event we've been to, we have never seen anything like that," said Denise Hagemeier, a 52-year-old attorney who came up from Elizabethtown, N.C., with her husband. "In fact, people are the opposite: They're respectful. They're helpful. They want to be good to their neighbors. They don't leave any trash. They're polite to everyone. There's no epithets. There's no slurs. There's no hate."
Beck, for his part, just couldn't praise Martin Luther King enough. He said King rose above politics, and that he "held strong while his detractors spread hate." He proudly told the crowd that he was staying in the same hotel where King finished writing his "dream" speech.
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