the rix mix

I used to think Anne Coulter was smart, a well-educated person, basically an affluent Heather-type who used her compulsive sarcasm - sharpened in high school & at the family dinner table (competitively challenged to have the last zinger) - as a shock humorist, applied with a certain amount of show biz detachment - which would account for her gossip page friendships with a few celebrity liberals & libertarians. Otherwise, she's struck me as a low libido, high achieving anorexic with daddy issues. Advocating the murder of liberals & mocking 9/11 widows, that's all in fun, right? But her expressions of religious belief sound more authentic, like, from the heart, not a joking matter. So it was mildly shocking to hear her reveal her attachment to the old, discredited theology from all those centuries when Christians prayed for the conversion of the Jews while simultaneously engaging in pogroms & outright genocide. If a Jew did convert, as many educated European Jews did, it made no difference in how they were treated when the deadly anti-Semites came looking for them. They weren't "perfected" enough.

It's a common enough grassroots conservative Christian view, though most of them are polite enough to refrain from expressing it in public. There is some debate among some Evangelicals over whether or not Jews ought to be proslytized. When Jerry Falwell was suspected a few years ago of adopting "Dual Covenant" theology (one contract for Jews, another for Christians) other protestant mullahs became upset, because it gives Jews a "bye." Without explicitly endorsing it, the Dual Covenant is pretty much the attitude of mainstream protestants & the Roman Catholic Church now. Evangelicals know they can't support the State of Israel by sending in legions of missionaries, so they've backed off pushing for conversion of the Jews without abandoning both the hope & a belief in the necessity for trying. They're criticizing Coulter for being uncool rather than for being wrong. Anne meant what she said, & it's not a fringe belief in her world. If she's outraged Jews & lots of others, better that we know what she's representing. She's a messenger.

But something to keep in mind: Only hardass evangelicals give much thought to converting Jews. The average person in the pew probably doesn't think about it at all. They just believe everybody is better off getting with Jesus. Even Coulter had second or third hand echoes in her head, stumbled around & couldn't cite the relevant New Testament passages, which I read today thanks to Pastor Dan Schultz at Street Prophets, & he draws different conclusions from them.

Labels: religion