Another Coulter controversy

Yesterday The American Thinker had three articles up on its main page about the recent flap over Ann Coulter's remarks to left-wing talk show host Donny Deutsch about her belief that America would be a better place if everyone were a Christian and that everyone, even Jews, need to place their faith in Jesus Christ in order to be saved, that is have their sins forgiven and be granted eternal life in Heaven.

The first article, by Richard Baehr who is described as the political director of American Thinker, is titled Ann Coulter is Not Helping. Mr. Baehr believes that Ann has made it more difficult to bring conservative leaning Jews into the Republican Party. Here is the meat of Mr. Baehr's article:

I say this in part based on the number of emails I have received today from Jews, many of whom I have been working with for years to consider switching to the GOP, given President Bush's very strong record of support for Israel, and the much stronger commitment to national security on the GOP side of the aisle. If a strong US-Israel relationship and promoting a tough American response to the global jihad are the main issues that move you, then the GOP should be your party.

So to get back to medieval arguments that Judaism has been replaced by Christianity (a replacement theology), and that Christians are the perfected Jews, and that Jews need to become Christians to be perfect, and that America would be better if we were all Christians, ignores the shift in thinking on these issues among Christians in recent decades, especially among Catholics. The Pope has called Jews our "elder brothers".

Coulter appears to either be unaware of much of modern Christian theology, or just prefers to slap down the non-Christians for their imperfection. . While Coulter calls for all to join her religious ranks, evangelical Christians and Jews have become allies in support of Israel, and shown that clear theological differences between the groups can be respected, and common causes can be
advanced.

Mr. Baehr uses the term "Replacement Theology". Replacement Theology is an error which crept into the Christian Church early in its history and in short it holds that the Church has permanently replaced the Jewish people in the plans of God and that the Church is in fact now the "True Israel".

The entire eleventh chapter of the New Testament book of Romans was written to refute that error, here is the key scripture:

11 I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. 12 Now if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness! 13 For I speak to you Gentiles; inasmuch as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, 14 if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh and save some of them. 15 For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? [NKJV]

The false doctrine of Replacement Theology has been used as a justification for the persecution of the Jewish people and attempts to eradicate Jewish culture. It is an emotionally loaded term for many Jews and is guaranteed to bring a negative response. Nothing that Ann Coulter said indicates that she is a subscriber to Replacement Theology - and implying that she did is "not helping".

What Ann said simply reflects clear biblical New Testament theology as regards salvation in that all people, Jew and Gentile alike, who wish to be saved from their sins and have eternal life in the presence of God must place their faith in Jesus Christ and acknowledge his deity, his atoning death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead and his eventual return. Rather than being somehow "anti-Jewish" this teaching is imminently Jewish.

Christians believe that in order to be saved that one must worship a Jew, Jesus Christ, as God. They believe that the Hebrew God sent the Jew Jesus to the Jewish nation in fulfillment of Jewish prophecies given in the Jewish bible to offer the Jews the promised Jewish millennial kingdom. Obviously a doctrine which could only be held by people who are filled up to the nose holes with hatred for the Jews. [snort]

Mr. Baehr then goes on to imply that anyone who holds a biblically correct view of salvation cannot be a supporter of Israel. Mr. Baehr needs to review the history of the second half of the 20th century. The more literally one takes the Bible the more likely he is to be a supporter of Israel. Biblical literalists believe not only what the Bible teaches about salvation but also what it says about supporting Israel and the Jews. God promises the Jews that he will bless those who bless them and curse those who curse them (Genesis 12:3).

For an example of how this blessing and cursing can work itself out consider Berlin before and after Germany's attempted "final solution to the Jewish problem". Before a beautiful and prosperous city and after a pile of smoking rubble full of Red Army soldiers. This is your nation. This is your nation on antisemitism. Any questions?

Mr. Baehr's reference to "the shift in thinking on these issues among Christians in recent decades, especially among Catholics" brings us to the next article on AT. This one, titled My Opinion on Ann Coulter's Opinion of the Jews, is written by Kyle-Anne Shiver. This is one of the saddest things that I have read in a long time.

Ms. Shiver summarizes the current teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on the subject of salvation and in doing so demonstrates that the modern RCC is a cult on the order of the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses.

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but those who teach that one can reject Jesus Christ and still earn salvation through good works (even magnificent and heroic good works) are not Christians. They are, in fact, the enemies of God and fulfill the apostle Paul's prophecy given in the 20th chapter of Acts, "29"I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

Finally we come to the last of AT's commentaries on Ann and in this case I have saved the best for last. In On Coulter, Christians, And Jews Steven M. Warshawsky, who describes himself as a "secular Jew" demonstrates that he "gets it".

. . . Coulter's crime is that she violated one of PC's most sacred taboos: Expressing belief in the correctness of one's religion. The only thing worse than this in PC land is asserting the superiority of one's race.

Well, at least when it comes to white Christians. For the rules of PC do not apply equally to all. They do not apply to Jews or blacks or women (except to the extent these groups express "conservative" points of view). The strictures and penalties of PC only apply to the majority of the American people, as well as to the Founding Fathers who established this great country, and to the many generations of overwhelmingly white Christian Americans who built this nation into the freest, richest, and most powerful country on earth, and defended our country through several bloody wars against its enemies, foreign and domestic.

The ideology of PC is anti-American to its core. Its fundamental purpose is not to ensure that "minority" Americans share more fully in the American Dream. Its goal is to tear apart this nation -- its people, its culture, its history -- root and branch, and replace it with a miasma of atheism, socialism, and multiculturalism. [. . .]

Moreover, for Jews of any political persuasion to take offense at Coulter's comments strikes me as deeply ignorant and immature. Do Jews truly expect Christians to pretend that they do not believe in the teachings of their religion? Why? Because so many Jews have discarded the teachings of their own religion? (I myself am a secular Jew.) The "logic" at work here seems to be that, because so many Jews can imagine, along with John Lennon, a world in which "there's no heaven" and "no religion too," it is offensive and outrageous for other folks to disagree with this sanitized vision of the future. Many Christians, however, still believe in their religion, still believe it is the path to eternal salvation, and fail to appreciate what is so wonderful about the fairy tale world invoked in Lennon's song. From a PC perspective, this makes them "insensitive" and "bigoted" and "hateful."

I say, thank god that so many Christians in this country still believe in their religion! That is the only thing that will prevent the violent and tyrannical expansion of the Muslim world. And that is the only thing that will preserve the existence of the Jewish people. [. . .]

Today, the leaders of Iran -- the most powerful Islamic nation, with aspirations of regional, indeed world, domination -- speak openly of eliminating the state of Israel, i.e., the largest concentration of Jews outside of the United States. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed repeatedly to "wipe Israel off the map." Just this week, the former president of Iran, Hashemi Rafsanjani (often referred to as a "moderate"), commented during a sermon (yes, during a religious service) that the Nazis "saved" Europe from the evils of Zionism. In other words, the Nazis did Europe a favor by murdering six million Jews. Where was the outrage from western leftists? Where were the screams of protest from liberal Jews? What will these idiots say when the nuclear bombs start falling on Israel? Probably that Israel caused it, or could have prevented it, or even deserved it. The mere existence of the Jewish state will be deemed sufficient justification for its total destruction. My stomach is sick with the thought of how easily Muslim genocide of Jews will be excused, even by Jews themselves. [. . .]

But measured by the amount of heat and vitriol her comments generated, the real enemy apparently is Ann Coulter. How dare she assert the truth of her religion? True or not, I know that Christianity is far preferable to Islam. Would Donny Deutch and Michael Savage and all of the other critics who are blasting Coulter rather live in a Muslim country? One does not have to be a scholar of the world's religions (and I am not) to know the answer to that question.

This is the real choice facing Jews in this country, and even in Israel. John Lennon's fantasy of universal peace and love and brotherhood does not exist, and never will exist. The fate of the world's Jews, and Christians for that matter, ultimately depends on the ability and willingness of the Christian West, especially the United States, to prevail in the steadily intensifying struggle we are witnessing across the globe between Islam and Christianity.

What Deutch and Savage and the other critics fail to understand is that only a Christian people who truly believes in the correctness, indeed superiority, of their religion will be able to win this fight. A secularized people who believes in nothing but watery principles of tolerance and democracy inevitably will succumb to the combination of violent Islamic intimidation and the "nondiscriminatory" imperatives of their own multicultural worldview. If sharia ever does come to the United States, I am quite certain that its handmaidens will be atheists and liberals, not believing Christians.

As a Jew living in this great country, I have no doubt who my enemies are, and who are my allies. And I know to which group Ann Coulter belongs.

Amen.