The Other McCain on September 10, 2009 at 1:31 AM

Well, that is kind of the point. Jews don’t know much about Christianity and don’t bother to learn, so they are susceptible to myth and misconception. Christians do tend to study more, and tolerate more. I’ve never known a Jewish person other than a rabbi who seriously studied the Bible.

I know what I’m talking about here – I am the daughter of a first-generation Jewish American who married a Southern Baptist in 1945, and both of their families disowned them for a time. My own grandmother told me once that I was going to Hell. My father was politically conservative, but he stuck out like a sore thumb in our Jewish community. I never read a line of the New Testament until I was grown and began dating Christians. Then I married a Catholic and we both became Episcopalians 10 years ago.

My brother also married a Christian and even raised his children as Methodists, but has never converted. He cannot get around “I am the truth, the light, and the way; no one comes to the Father except through me.” He still thinks this means the rest of our family is going to Hell.

People who knew me as a Jew or knew my Jewish heritage often assumed I was liberal until I told them otherwise. I’ve kept silent and listened to many political discussions among Jews over the years. They are simply fearful of America becoming a “Christian nation,” which they think will result in Jews being ostracized, teased, discriminated against, and generally being “the other.” The more irrational of them believe it will ultimately lead to pogroms and concentration camps. When they hear politicians talk about “Judeo-Christian principles,” they think that is window-dressing designed to get them to let their guard down. When they heard George Bush say that his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ, it scared the crap out of them. They believed all the nonsense pushed by the Left that Bush decided to invade Iraq because God told him to.

Republicans have a real problem here. Jews are more afraid of Christians than they are of Muslims, and the more they perceive the Republican Party as being a “Christianist” party, the more they are driven away.

This is not “the Southern Baptist belief.” It’s basic Christian doctrine — in the Bible and all that. Salvation, atonement, etc. Of course, we see “through a glass darkly,” and thus cannot perceive God’s great plan in every aspect, so it is presumptuous to claim to speak for God. The Christian, however, puts his faith in Christ, and wishes others to share that faith.

For the Christian to contradict the Bible, to say that there is some other means to eternal life, is apostasy. So to condemn as “bigotry” the proclamation of the Gospel, to require that the Christian deny his own faith so as not to be “offensive” — sorry, that’s just wrong.

To confess that I am myself nothing but a wretched sinner, deserving nothing but destruction from God who is infinitely righteous, and therefore incapable of saving myself by any deed of my own, is not arrogance or prejudice. Nor is it ignorance or superstition. It is the most profound thing that can be said of mankind — that we are fallen creatures, mortal and finite, “sinners in the hands of an angry God,” as Jonathan Edwards said. This pessimistic view of human nature (most commonly described as Calvinism) informed the worldview of James Madison, who studied under the Presbyterian scholar Witherspoon at Princeton.

That the man known as the Father of the Constitution was schooled in this doctrine is little known or appreciated today but, as Richard Weaver said, ideas have consequences. What is amazing to me is that so many people in contemporary America think themselves more wise or more virtuous than our Founders, and even denounce the beliefs of Witherspoon and Madison as “backward,” etc.

As I mentioned in the post, I know Christian laymen whose study of the Bible has led them to become fluent in Hebrew and Greek, to research ancient history and geography. These men can tell you the dates of key events in ancient history from memory and discuss with authority the deeds of ancient rulers, the nature and extent of their domains, etc. There are quite erudite, you see, though they have never attended college and have taught themselves most of what they know, through their own diligent study. And yet one often encounters atheists who know none of that stuff — uncultured swine whose linguistic skill is limited to a bit of simple Spanish and whose knowledge of history is minimal — who derogate these devout Christians as “ignorant,” simply because they are Christians!

Think about that. Why should the ignorant think themselves superior to the learned? It’s a monstrous sort of intellectual perversion.

The other general problem is that access to the past, via images and/or audio recordings, make it far easier today to cling to the past ideas and allegiances than in previous generations. It kind of turns the old “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” line on its head.

Those who cling to history as if the past is the present are destined to find themselves allied with people further and further away from their original beliefs, as what defined ‘liberal’ across the board in 1966 doesn’t work anymore and in fact, a majority of their supposed ‘allies’ may actually feel the other way (i.e. — The left is no longer solidly behind Israel as if we’re still pre-Six Day War, and anti-Semetic faction on the left is far more in power than anything the Buchanan wing of the right can manage).