Ann Coulter's Heresy

Now Ann Coulter is in trouble, for saying that Jews would be “perfected” if they become Christian. As soon as she said it, the interviewer himself declared to her face that he was personally offended, that she was “hateful,” “anti-Semitic,” and her statement was “absurd.”

Since then, the pundits have been going crazy.

It is barely credible to me--and evidence of how anti-religious America has become--that there is any controversy attached to Coulter's remarks. I say this even though I am far from being a fan of Ann Coulter.

But what on earth do people think that believing in a religion means? It means you think it is true. If you care at all for your fellow man, surely you want them to know the truth--and the best way to heaven--too.

This is what Coulter was saying. She said it in so many words: “Jews go to heaven, sure, but ours is the fast track—like Federal Express.”

Yet people are objecting to this?

The world is mad.

Suppose she had said that everyone should know how to read and write, or that everyone should know basic physics. Would that be similarly offensive?

If not, we are discriminating against religion.

She has also been absolutely misquoted in many outlets as saying that Jews would have to “discard” Judaism to become Christian. This is especially offensive, because this was what the interviewer, not Coulter, said, and it seems to me Coulter made it quite clear this was not what she meant. She pointed out that Christians all believed in Judaism, in fact. That Christians all accept the Hebrew Scriptures. That Christianity is itself a form of Judaism. One can, as "Jews for Jesus" have always pointed out, be both a Jew and a Christian. As, of course, Jesus was; and St. Peter, and St. Paul, and Mary, and all the apostles. There is no question of “discarding” Judaism here. She said “perfecting” it.

Just as the misadventures of Dr. Watson over the last week show it is dangerous in the current climate of thought to know too much about science, Anne Coulter’s experience here shows it is also now dangerous to know too much theology.