Glenn Beck told me to “shut up” after my Palm Sunday op-ed in the New York Times.

Here is why I won't.

Yesterday, on his radio show, Glenn Beck lambasted both me and my Palm Sunday op-ed in the New York Times.

Now—I always welcome criticism. It doesn’t even have to be constructive. But his tirade (which, to be fair, included several points we agree on) went a step further. He called me out by name and told me to “SHUT UP!”

He also tossed out these dingers:

“He has not read the Bible.” “Hell is a-waiting for you.”

Really? Really?!

So below, you’ll find my reply.

Because I want this and every conversation to be constructive, I’ve removed the paywall on the entire 8-part Holy Week series that originally inspired the op-ed. If Glenn—or anyone else—wants to engage with the full context, it’s all here now.

My goal, as always, is graceful candor. I hope you see that in the letter that follows.

— The Rev. Andrew Thayer

If you want to hear the broadcast for yourself. Here is a link:

https://www.glennbeck.com/st/podcast

The Glenn Beck Program | Hour 2 | 4/16/25 starting about 24:20.

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April 17, 2025

Mr. Glenn Beck

c/o Blaze Media

Irving, Texas

Dear Mr. Beck,

I hope you are well this Holy Week.

This letter is long but there is a lot to unpack from your radio show yesterday. After you spent twenty minutes responding to my Palm Sunday op-ed in the New York Times (available here: tinyurl.com/ThayerPalm) I thought a reply was in order.

Let me start by commending you on your conclusion with which I completely agree: “Justice has a name, and its name is Jesus.” Amen!

Unfortunately, the rest of your segment misrepresented both me and the article. You didn’t just disagree with the article—you tried to tie it to behaviors I categorically reject: lighting Teslas on fire, vandalizing churches, chanting slogans that amount to genocide. That’s not justice.

And that’s not what my piece was about.

My article wasn’t leftist. It wasn’t partisan. It didn’t promote a social agenda in the way you claimed. It was, quite simply, a Holy Week reflection on the deeply political act at the heart of Palm Sunday: Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as a prophetic confrontation.

As you rightly point out—He rode a donkey, not a war horse. That wasn’t random. It was symbolic, pulled straight from the pages of Scripture (Zechariah 9). It was resistance. A direct counterpoint to how Pilate was entering the city that same day—on a war horse.

But I never said Jesus came to overthrow Caesar.

Jesus came to reveal the emptiness of Caesar’s logic—the logic of empire, domination, coercion, extraction, and fear. The logic that says might makes right. That a few must prosper while the many are crushed beneath the system. That peace can be purchased through violence. That whole cities can be burned in the name of “peace,” and the innocent condemned for the sake of order.

And yes, I believe Jesus calls that out—then and now.

While we’re on the Bible—you claimed, “He has not read the Bible,” in reference to me. That’s ironic.

Ask the parishioners who’ve sat through my classes or listened to my sermons—I’m a Bible geek. I strive to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest Scripture daily. I wrestle with it. I study it. And I work to uncover its relevance in the modern world—for both people of faith and skeptics alike.

You accused me of biblical ignorance because, in your words, I failed to mention that Pilate said he found no fault in Jesus. In your estimation, that somehow proves Jesus wasn’t killed by Rome—or that I missed the “real story.”

But here’s the thing: If Jesus came into Jerusalem that week healing the sick, arguing theology in the Temple, telling everyone God loves you, there would have been no trouble that week. Nobody would crucify such an innocuous figure.

Rome reserved crucifixion for three main offenses: Major criminal violations of Roman law (like murder or theft); rebellious or runaway slaves, and acts of sedition or insurrection. That’s it.

Jesus wasn’t accused of the first two; that leaves political threat. He was seen as an existential danger to the established order—an order overseen by Rome and managed by the temple leadership of his day. Pilate ordered Jesus to be executed by Roman methods—on a cross, the empire’s chosen symbol for population control and public warning.

Rome didn't crucify healers or miracle workers or philosophers. Rome crucified insurrectionists.

Had the charge been blasphemy, the punishment would have been carried out by the chief priest and the temple guard. They had the authority to impose capital punishment—but by stoning, not crucifixion.

Roman soldiers were carrying out Pilate’s order. It was Rome’s death sentence for any who threaten Rome’s sovereignty—and Pilate was complicit.

Though Pilate publicly declared that he found no charge against Jesus, his actions tell a different story. As a Roman governor, he was first and foremost a political operator—balancing the pressures of public unrest with the imperative to maintain imperial order. His claim of innocence was less a statement of principle than an act of plausible deniability.

It’s what oppressive power often does when caught between public pressure and moral conviction: it dodges. It distances. It washes its hands.

This is not new. We see it today when leaders claim they don’t support a policy, but vote for it. When institutions disown actions they enabled. When power publicly recoils from consequences it privately initiated. The call to justice is rarely welcomed by those who benefit from systems of injustice.

That brings me to your comments about justice. You insinuated that I “don’t even know what the word means,” and claimed I have “no idea where it even comes from.”

Then you offered what you framed as a corrective: “Justice is born in law. Real law. Divine law.”

Again, ironic. As someone who did my doctoral work at The University of Oxford on justice and the Kingdom of God, let me gently—but firmly—offer a correction.

I think you have it backwards. Law is born from justice, not the other way around.¹

We create laws, at least ideally, to cultivate just relationships with one another. We innately feel that you shouldn’t steal my car and so we make laws prohibiting and punishing that behavior. But sometimes, we come to see that the law itself is unjust. And when that happens, it is justice—not law—that must speak.

When kings in scripture rule unrighteously, it’s the role of the prophet to call them to repentance. Kings don’t usually like this—and prophets generally suffer for it. But prophets don’t exist merely to convert individuals like kings. They challenge the systems those kings uphold. They speak on behalf of the people suffering under unjust laws and policies.

Prophets destabilize oppressive structures in order to usher in justice—justice that transcends the law, and calls a nation back to something deeper than law, transcendent to human law—divine justice.

Justice may not always change the law directly, but it exerts pressure—moral, prophetic, divine—on laws that fall short. Prophets dare to say, “This may be legal, but it is not right.”

Modern example: For generations, the law prohibited Black Americans from voting. The prophet crying out for justice? Dr. King. Through nonviolent protest, he destabilized an unjust system—not with vengeance, but with vision. And the law changed to reflect a deeper, truer justice. Laws change. Justice doesn’t.

Justice is like truth with a capital T. But here’s the rub: no one gets to hold that capital-T truth fully, finally or exclusively. Even the church. Many churches stood against Dr. King and civil rights. Religion, tempted by power, can be co-opted to serve injustice.

Because I am convinced the Gospel doesn’t just tell Jesus’ story, or the apostles’ story, or a 2,000-year-old story. Scripture tells our story. Here. Now. The Gospel mirrors our society—our impulses, our power structures, our temptations whether political or religious.

And that’s exactly why I wrote what I wrote—to spark deeper thinking about justice that challenges everyone. Not just the “TikTok mobs or masked arsonists,” but also the political apparatus, and the religious voices who imagine themselves riding the war horse instead of the donkey—those who aspire to sit at the very tables Jesus came to overturn.

I used Palm Sunday as an analogy—drawing from history and scripture to invite a public conversation about how we understand power, and how it shapes our common life today.

But rather than engaging the piece on its own terms, you framed it as yet another front in the culture war. You cast it as a battle between left and right—reducing its theological and historical claims to partisan provocation. It became, in your telling, another binary: us versus them.

You used the piece to fuel partisanship and deepen suspicion. And while you made some valid and even thoughtful points on your show, you peppered the whole broadcast with invective. Directing much of it directly at me.

“Shut up!” “He has not read the Bible.” “Hell is a-waiting for you.” Really? Really?!

You rail against what you call “unforgiving tribalism”—even claiming it’s the same pagan instinct that Jesus came to defeat. You said: “Real justice, eternal justice begins with you. Begins with me.”

If that’s truly your conviction, then I implore you: Please stop feeding the very instincts you condemn.

Look—I get it. Commercial pressure is real. Audience retention is serious business. Radio shows like yours are built to hold attention. And the easiest way to do that—across the political spectrum—is through outrage, through caricature, through division. It’s easy to produce and entertaining to consume.

But it’s costing us something. It’s making enemies out of neighbors. It separates and divides us. We’ve forgotten how to disagree without seeing the other as evil. We’ve forgotten how to hold convictions without condemnation.

You can do better, Glenn.

You close your segment powerfully and, again, I totally agree, “There’s only one revolution that will ever lead to true peace and real justice…if that truth ever took hold again… not in just our churches but in our homes and our hearts in our schools and our streets - then and only then, will justice change everything. Then and only then will justice roll like a mighty river.”

I think we both want the same thing: a faith that matters. A Christianity that doesn’t bow to the culture wars or the media machines, but actually looks like Christ.

So here’s my invitation: Read the full series. Not just the op-ed. The whole thing. It’s eight parts long—one for every day of Holy Week. Available here: tinyurl.com/8-PartHolyWeek.

It’s not about left vs. right. It’s about Jesus vs. the worst impulses of Empire. It’s about the historical context of Holy Week and Passover. It’s about economics, politics, and how we see the world around us.

And, of course, it’s about Easter.

Peace,

ART+

The Rev. Andrew Richard Thayer

1. There are a few secular philosophers who might agree with you, Peter Singer or Richard Rorty. Both are relativists of sorts who I’m sure wouldn’t represent your point of view here. The vast majority of thinkers in modernity and the ancient world entirely agree that justice is a transcendent ideal- Plato, Augustine, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Michael Sandel, Jürgen Habermas, Cornel West, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Gustavo Gutiérrez…