Not Quite Perfect
So Ann Coulter ran off her mouth and said…well, she said something that every serious Christian believes:
COULTER: Do you know what Christianity is? We believe your religion, but you have to obey.
DEUTSCH: No, no, no, but I mean –
COULTER: We have the fast-track program.
DEUTSCH: Why don’t I put you with the head of Iran? I mean, come on. You can’t believe that.
COULTER: The head of Iran is not a Christian.
DEUTSCH: No, but in fact, “Let’s wipe Israel” –
COULTER: I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention.
DEUTSCH: “Let’s wipe Israel off the earth.” I mean, what, no Jews?
COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.
DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?
COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we’re all sinners —
As a full time member of the tribe of the imperfect, allow me to say how unoffended I am. Last time I checked, being a believing Christian meant believing that you’re similiar to the Jews, except better. And somehow, with millions of people believing this, we get along OK. Even among believing Christians who all think they’re perfected Jews, you have Catholics who think Protestantism is a lame wannabe Christianity, not part of the “one true church.” Protestants think Catholics are a bunch of Magic Cracker eating idol worshipers. They all think Mormons are positively wacky. Oh yeah, us Jews think all of you silly Christians are worshiping a false messiah.
What makes this especially strange is Andrew Sullivan’s renunciation of these remarks. Andrew says that he is a believing Catholic, does he not believe that Jesus superseded the Old Testament and the Torah? It’s perfectly understandable – and preferable – for believing Christians to not talk about their views regarding the Old Testament and Judaism in the public sphere, but they shouldn’t then denounce people who hold those views that they (probably, I don’t know in Sullivan’s case, but he says that he’s a believing Catholic…) too hold. How else to interpret Luke 22:20 when Jesus makes a new Covenant, or multiple other times in the New Testament where Jesus claims to supersede the Torah. What about Protestants? Does Sullivan think Protestants are members of the one true Church? I don’t like asking these questions, but Sullivan is kinda begging for it with this shtick of being a believing Christian on one side, but then denouncing those who profess to have the views that most Christians have.
In the history of the Jewish Diaspora, whenever blond haired Aryans like Coulter said something like this, it was usually followed by a harsh bout of repression. Shouldn’t we Jews be celebrating that someone can say this, and there are no negative consequences for American Jewry? Of course, the perpetual outrage machines like the National Jewish Democratic Council are just horrified, but if they couldn’t get outraged about trivialities, why would they exist?
As Yglesias says, one of the great things about liberal society is that it encourages people to bracket off these eschatological or metaphysical commitments when they enter the public sphere, so we can have political debates without devolving into arguments about who is going to hell faster. While this is certainly a good thing, it doesn’t mean we should freak out whenever some hack like Coulter gleefully breaks the taboo. I wouldn’t be the first to point out that liberalism has some issues accommodating those who insist on bringing their prior metaphysical commitments into the public sphere, and Slavoj Zizek isn’t either, but you should definitely read his Times Op-Ed concerning religion and the public sphere.
Well, speaking as an ex-Catholic, I believe that Catholics view Jesus as an expansion of the Covenant, rather than a replacement (which is what a Calvinist would believe), and the same holds for the New Testament. Although, I could be very wrong about this, again, I’m an ex-Catholic.
John Cain
October 11, 2007 at 12:12 pm
If by “every serious Christian believer” you mean “the accepted dogma of certain Christian sects” then yes, but I think Sullivan has good cause to balk. First, Sullivan (like many Catholics) doesn’t accept all of the Church’s teachings (discussions on whether this makes him a “true Catholic” is another matter altogether). Second, different sects decide which elements to highlight and which to downplay; I once heard the pastor of the Catholic church I grew up in deliver a homily in which a country doctor cared for the people in his rural county for years, a living testament to “love thy neighbor”. He finished the homily by saying that he didn’t know if the doctor was a Christian, but he was sure that he was in Heaven. This, I think, is how many Christians, Sullivan included, understand their faith.
And as for Zizek, he’s being intentionally silly, darting hither and thither around rationalism and pluralism, because, as John Holbo put it, “they go against something you don’t like. Namely, liberalism.” Thus, Zizek claims takes democracy promoters to task for both clicking their lounges at a China that would interfere with religion, while being secularists (and purported democracy lovers) who support the undemocratically chosen Dali Lama. The problem here isn’t liberalism’s lack of accommodation (at least in the Coulter case or in the Chinese case Zizek cites), but rather a straightforward difference in religious exegesis and practice; Sullivan and more liberal minded believers see her trumpeting of “no way to God but through Christ” as ignoring many other, more important teachings of Jesus.
paxamericana
October 11, 2007 at 3:13 pm
IIRC, these days, the accepted metaphor in the Roman Catholic Church and all Christian denominations more liberal than the RCC is that the Jews are Christians’ “older brothers in faith,” and that the salvation of the Jews is part of God’s ultimate plan (as opposed to something that individual Christians should make a point of bothering individual Jews about in the here and now). Coulter may be a member of a less liberal denomination, or may be remembering from her childhood religious schooling something that has been superseded in the last 30 or so years.
alkali
October 11, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Sullivan’s questioned basic Nicene Christology on his blog. To call him a Catholic is to draw the boundaries so wide that Arius, Mohammad, Brigham Young, and Sun Myung Moon could be called Catholics. Luther and Calvin were both more Catholic than Sullivan is.
Open Atheist
October 11, 2007 at 3:58 pm
[...] Jump to Comments Both Matt Yglesias and Young MZ see Coulter’s comments about “perfecting Jews” as the unsurprising response of a [...]
Imperfect Adherence « Pax Americana: Culture, Politics, and Ineffectual Debate
October 11, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Don’t you think any negative reaction is from Coulter talking out of her ass (again) and not some bizarre repression of free speech or nonsense theology?
Shouldn’t we Jews be celebrating that someone can say this, and there are no negative consequences for American Jewry?
What a bunch of crap. This sort of talk encourages like-thinking morons into believing their stupidity has a place in civil society. Jews haven’t had a lot of luck with people not following throught with smack talk. They can say just as someone else can tell them to shut up.
She has all the class and grace of Fred Phelps.
She is Mrs Fred Phelps.
madmonq
October 11, 2007 at 5:46 pm