Ann Coulter and “Godless”

“Now
listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming
upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold
and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your
flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you
failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The
cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.”

In the 1920’s, author Upton Sinclair read the above to a
group of Chicago
businessmen, saying they were the words of anarchist Emma Goldman. The men were
aghast, “That woman should be deported at once.” Mr. Sinclair then confessed
the passage was from the Bible, the words of the apostle James. If they were
shocked, they shouldn’t have been. Someone looking for a nice justification for
free-wheeling, profit-driven capitalism, won’t find one in the Bible. This is
why Ms. Ann Coulter, having produced a book with both “Church” and “God,” in the
title, does not quote from it.

A wise choice on Ann’s part. There’s not much in the Bible
to calm the nerves of a free-marketeer waiting for the benefits to trickle
down, or someone looking for a portrait of Jesus as a moral crusader. Open up
the New Testament, and what you actually find is this socialist-sounding
claptrap about loving your enemies as well as your neighbor.

You can imagine poor old Ann, realizing this omission – a
book supposedly about religion that fails to quote that religion’s central text
– so she sits down with the Good Book to correct the glitch. What she found
probably put her in a sour mood. It turns out that when Jesus came upon a man
of means, he didn’t chuck him under the chin and praise his entrepreneurial
spirit. He told him to give away his wealth. When Jesus came upon people with
deviant lifestyles, he didn’t turn to the crowd and lecture them about Rome’s decaying morals. He
took those people into his fold, usually with a snarl or two at the gawkers
nearby. In her research, did Ann find accounts of the early Christians sniffing
out offensive lifestyles, then going on the warpath to make them illegal?
Nope.

How disheartening that must have been for our intrepid
commentator. What’s more, America's
basic tenants, the right to a government that does not encroach on personal
freedom, the individual's right to pursue happiness, “let a man live his own
life,” are not in the Bible. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Not at all. It’s
just not appropriate to doll them all up in spiritual mumbo-jumbo. I think
Thomas and Benjamin and George would agree with me.

Now, Ms. Coulter may feel a little uncomfortable roaming
around the Good Book to support what she’s saying, but me? I got noooo problem with it. It’s quite
simple. The Christian’s first religious duty is to help the poor:

Jer. 22:3. Do justice and
righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his
oppressor. Also do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or
the widow; and do not shed innocent blood in this place.

Is. 58:10. "And if
you give yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then
your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday.

Luke 12:33. "Sell
your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves purses which do not wear
out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near, nor moth
destroys."

Luke 6:20-21. Blessed are
you who are poor, for yours in the kingdom
of God. Blessed are you
who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for
you shall laugh.

Is. 58:66ff. Is this not
the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands
of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke? Is it not
to divide your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into the
house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your
own flesh?

Mt. 5:42. Give to him who
asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

The Bible’s clear bias towards the poor always comes as a
surprise to my non-churchy friends, who’ve long witnessed the priorities of
Christians around them, and rightfully assumed the Bible must be a massive
tirade against gay marriage and abortion.

Yes, I’m a wild-eyed liberal, and I go to Bible studies,
fairly fundamentalist ones, at that. And contrary to Coulter’s book, liberals
are not bent on transforming America
into some sort of pan-sexual Amsterdam.
We don’t preach abortion as birth control, nor do we think the ACLU should busy
itself with protecting quirky behavior at the expense of common sense. We don’t
think courts should take over the rightful role of parents, and surprise,
surprise, our opposition to the war in Iraq is just as motivated by the death of American soldiers as it is by
the death of Iraqis.

Now, this Bible study I go to has its share of
Clinton-bashers, as well as a few liberal fellow-travelers like myself. Once
the bashing starts, we quietly roll our eyes, and wait to say our piece. Yes,
people know I’m liberal, but except for Coulter, no one has ever called me
Godless. She’s one of the few who seem to think that a belief in science makes
you anti-God. Around this nation are many believers in Christ who recognize
that fossils show the evolution of species, but not transmigration. There’s
evidence that indicates changes within
a species over time, but not fish to fowl, fowl to mammal and so forth. This is
important because Ms. Coulter likes to paint a monolithic portrait of two
camps: God-hating evolution-believers in one, and God-fearing creationists in
the other. Nothing could be further from the truth.

That Bible study I go to represents a spectrum, where we each
place differing emphasis on private vs. public morality. You might say a
liberal Christian places more emphasis on decisions made as a society, “We ought not to go to war.” “We ought to take care of the poor,”
whereas a conservative Christian shifts the emphasis to private life, “A woman ought not to have an abortion.”
“A man ought not sleep with another
man.” But these are not absolutes. There are plenty conservative Christians who
think Bush’s policies in Iraq
are disastrous (it makes it harder to preach the Gospel abroad), and quite a
few liberals who don’t appreciate seeing women on TV parade around in their
underwear.

Of course there is a division in society, a divide along
church and class lines that Coulter’s writings help to foster, but it is not a
natural one. First, a little background:

Until the beginning of the last century, most Christians
believed that redistributing wealth and helping the poor was just as important
as personal moral behavior. To turn one’s back on the hungry was considered
just as much a sin as anything you might do in the bedroom. Struggles against
slavery, child labor and unsafe working conditions were all fueled by fiery
sermons from the pulpit, complete with all the Bible-thumping and moral
certitude that today, we associate with gay-bashing. The fiery revivalist preachers of yesteryear
excoriated the rich for neglecting America’s growing class of street
children, and economic conditions that forced women into prostitution. In early
American Christianity, morality and justice were intertwined. In fact, the
division that Coulter helps to inflame today, did not exist in the least.

What caused the division was urban migration, but mostly,
the Scopes Trial. The attorney that prosecuted the Tennessee science teacher for teaching
evolution was William Jennings Bryant, three-times presidential candidate and
the greatest orator of his time. A fervent Christian as well as an early
believer in a world body to arbitrate disputes, he was appointed Secretary of
State under Wilson,
but resigned to protest the growing drumbeat to enter WWI. His Cross of Gold speech is considered to be
one of America’s top oratory masterpieces. Bryant’s faith represented the
prevailing “pitchfork populism,” that put justice and morality on equal
footing, and was broadly represented across America.

But when called upon to prosecute Mr. Scopes, Mr. Bryant was
clearly past his prime. During the trial, he frequently sounded befuddled. The science
was a little above him, and his opponent was the sharp and urbane Clarence
Darrow, who was content to let Bryant’s ignorance do the talking. The trial,
broadcast daily over the newly minted medium of wireless radio to an audience
of millions, left a bad taste in people’s mouths. Mr. Darrow, with his big-city
arrogance and snobbish condescension,
appeared to take pleasure in publicly humiliating a great American icon,
smirking while this hero twisted in the wind. Mr. Darrow lost that day, won on
appeal, but lost the hearts and minds of
regular Americans. Pretentious, know-it-all book-learning had bested simple
heartland faith. But the Scopes Trial was only battle one of what we now call
the Culture Wars.

But today, Coulter’s anti-liberal hate-talk is a distraction, because in
reality, both sides are working towards the same general goal: a better world
to live in, a better place for our kids to grow up in. Ann does not want you to
recognize the church schism as a historical misunderstanding, two strains of
faith that were once united. For her own reasons, she wants you to see
"liberalism" as monolithic, irrational state of mind, hoping you’ll
disregard everything we say. According to her, all liberals are cut out of the
same defective material. Skilled at the
time-honored technique common to all hate literature, she de-personifies her
target, referring to us liberals as one indistinguishable group. We’re all unchurched, unpatriotic,
amoral, and never met a government program we didn't like. If you were to download any of the famous
works of hate literature, for example, "Protocols of the Elders of
Zion," replace "Jews" with "Liberals," the resulting
book would seem oddly familiar: One target, one enemy, scheming as one to
undermine all the nation holds dear.

Seeing Coulter’s books for sale makes you wish humans were born with a
built-in crap detector, something inside us that buzzes when commentators use
phrases like, “they always,” “they never,” “they all hate America.” At such times, it should kick in: “What do you
mean ‘all’? Where did you learn that? How many liberals have you really met, sat down and talked to?”

There exists reasonable commentary that suggests American supremacy is
not such a horrible thing, just as there are books on my side of the fence that
warn of America’s conservatism without sounding like some goofy spy novel. One
thing’s for sure. Our nation is at a crossroads, at a critical juncture
deserving of better guidance than Coulter’s simplistic rants.

“Now listen, you rich people,
weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your
wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and
silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat
your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look!
The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are
crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the
ears of the Lord Almighty.”

In the 1920’s, author Upton Sinclair read the above to a group of
Chicago businessmen, saying they were the words of anarchist Emma
Goldman. The men were aghast, “That woman should be deported at once.”
Mr. Sinclair then confessed the passage was from the Bible, the words
of the apostle James. If they were shocked, they shouldn’t have been.
Someone looking for a nice justification for free-wheeling,
profit-driven capitalism, won’t find one in the Bible. This is why Ms.
Ann Coulter, having produced a book with both “Church” and “God,” in
the title, does not quote from it.

A wise choice on Ann’s part. There’s nothing in the Bible to comfort
a free-marketeer who believes society magically benefits from his
wealth, or someone looking for a portrait of Jesus as a moral crusader.
Open up the New Testament, and what you actually find is this
socialist-sounding claptrap about loving your enemies, and your
neighbor as yourself.

You can imagine poor Ann, realizing this omission – a book
supposedly about religion that fails to quote that religion’s central
text – so she sits down with the Good Book to correct the glitch. What
she found probably put her in a sour mood. It turns out that when Jesus
came upon a man of means, he didn’t chuck him under the chin and praise
his entrepreneurial spirit. He told him to give away his wealth. When
Jesus came upon people with deviant lifestyles, he didn’t turn to the
crowd and lecture them about Rome’s decaying morals. He took those
people into his fold, usually with a snarl or two at the gawkers
nearby. Ann Coulter thumbs through her Bible looking for references to
Christians trying to pass laws against offensive lifestyles, and finds
not a one.

How disheartening that must have been for our intrepid commentator.
What’s more, America's basic tenants, the right to a government that
does not encroach on personal freedom, the individual's right to pursue
happiness, “let a man live his own life,” are not in the Bible. That
doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Not at all. It’s just not appropriate to
doll them up in church language. I think Thomas and Benjamin and George
would agree with me.

Now, Ms. Coulter may feel a little uncomfortable roaming around the Good Book to support what she’s saying, but me? I got noooo problem with it. The Christian’s first religious duty is to help the poor:

Jer. 22:3. Do
justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from
the power of his oppressor. Also do not mistreat or do violence to the
stranger, the orphan, or the widow; and do not shed innocent blood in
this place.

Is. 58:10. "And if
you give yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the
afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will
become like midday.

Luke 12:33.
"Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves purses
which do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief
comes near, nor moth destroys."

Luke 6:20-21.
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours in the kingdom of God. Blessed
are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who
weep now, for you shall laugh.

Is. 58:66ff.
Is this not the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and
break every yoke? Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry, and
bring the homeless poor into the house; when you see the naked, to
cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Mt. 5:42. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

The Bible’s clear bias towards the poor always comes as a surprise
to my non-churchy friends, who’ve long witnessed the priorities of
Christians around them, and assumed the Bible must be a massive tirade
against gay marriage and abortion.

Yes, I’m a wild-eyed liberal, and I go to Bible studies, fairly
fundamentalist ones, at that. And contrary to Coulter’s book, liberals
are not bent on transforming America into some sort of pan-sexual
Amsterdam. We don’t preach abortion as birth control, nor do we think
the ACLU should busy itself with protecting quirky behavior at the
expense of common sense. We don’t think courts should take over the
rightful role of parents, and surprise, surprise, our opposition to the
war in Iraq is just as motivated by the death of American soldiers as
it is by the death of Iraqis.

Now, this Bible study I go to has its share of Clinton-bashers, as
well as a few liberal fellow-travelers like myself. Once the bashing
starts, we quietly roll our eyes, and wait to say our piece. Yes,
people know I’m liberal, but except for Coulter, no one has ever called
me Godless. She’s one of the few who seem to think that a belief in
science makes you anti-God. Around this nation are many believers in
Christ who recognize that fossils show the evolution of species, but
not transmigration. There’s evidence that indicates changes within
a species over time, but not fish to fowl, fowl to mammal and so forth.
This is important because Ms. Coulter likes to paint a monolithic
portrait of two camps: God-hating evolution-believers in one, and
God-fearing creationists in the other. Nothing could be further from
the truth.

That Bible study I go to represents a spectrum, where we each place
differing emphasis on private vs. public morality. You might say a
liberal Christian places more emphasis on decisions made as a society, “We ought not to go to war.” “We ought to take care of the poor,” whereas a conservative Christian shifts the emphasis to private life, “A woman ought not to have an abortion.” “A
man ought not sleep with another man.” But these are not absolutes.
There are plenty conservative Christians who think Bush’s policies in
Iraq are disastrous (it makes it harder to preach the Gospel abroad),
and quite a few liberals who don’t appreciate seeing women on TV parade
around in their underwear.

Of course there is a division in society, a divide along church and
class lines that Coulter’s writings help to foster, but it is not a
natural one. First, a little background:

Until the beginning of the last century, most Christians believed
that redistributing wealth and helping the poor was just as important
as personal moral behavior. To turn one’s back on the hungry was
considered just as much a sin as anything you might do in the bedroom.
Struggles against slavery, child labor and unsafe working conditions
were all fueled by fiery sermons from the pulpit, complete with all the
Bible-thumping and moral certitude that today, we associate with
gay-bashing. The fiery revivalist preachers of yesteryear excoriated
the rich for neglecting America’s growing class of street children, and
economic conditions that forced women into prostitution. In early
American Christianity, morality and justice were intertwined. In fact,
the division that Coulter helps to inflame today, did not exist in the
least.

What caused the division was urban migration, but mostly, the Scopes
Trial. The attorney that prosecuted the Tennessee science teacher for
teaching evolution was William Jennings Bryan, three-times presidential
candidate and the greatest orator of his time. A fervent Christian as
well as an early believer in a world body to arbitrate disputes, he was
appointed Secretary of State under Wilson, but resigned to protest the
growing drumbeat to enter WWI. His Cross of Gold speech is
considered to be one of America’s top oratory masterpieces. Bryan’s
faith represented the prevailing “pitchfork populism,” that put justice
and morality on equal footing, and was broadly represented across
America.

But when called upon to prosecute Mr. Scopes, Mr. Bryan was clearly
past his prime. During the trial, he frequently sounded befuddled. The
science was a little above him, and his opponent was the sharp and
urbane Clarence Darrow, who was content to let Bryan’s ignorance do the
talking. The trial, broadcast daily over the newly minted medium of
wireless radio to an audience of millions, left a bad taste in people’s
mouths. Mr. Darrow, with his big-city arrogance and snobbish
condescension, appeared to take pleasure in publicly humiliating a
great American icon, smirking while a hero twisted in the wind. Mr.
Darrow lost that day, won on appeal, but lost the hearts and minds of
regular Americans. Pretentious, know-it-all book-learning had bested
simple heartland faith. But the Scopes Trial was only battle one of
what we now call the Culture Wars.

Today, Coulter’s anti-liberal hate-talk is a distraction, because in
reality, both sides are working towards the same general goal: a better
world to live in, a better place for our kids to grow up in. Ann does
not want you to recognize the church schism as a historical
misunderstanding, two strains of faith that were once united. For her
own reasons, she wants you to see "liberalism" as monolithic,
irrational state of mind, hoping you’ll disregard everything we say.
According to her, all liberals are cut out of the same defective
material. Skilled at the time-honored technique common to all hate
literature, she de-personifies her target, referring to us liberals as
one indistinguishable group. We’re all unchurched,
unpatriotic, amoral, and never met a government program we didn't like.
If you were to download any of the famous works of hate literature, for
example, "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," replace "Jews" with
"Liberals," the resulting book would seem oddly familiar: One target,
one enemy, scheming as one to undermine all the nation holds dear.

Seeing Coulter’s books for sale makes you wish humans were born with
a built-in crap detector, something inside us that buzzes when
commentators use phrases like, “they always,” “they never,” “they all hate America.” At such times, it should kick in: “What do you mean ‘all’? Where did you learn that? How many liberals have you really met, sat down and talked to?”

There exists reasonable commentary that suggests American supremacy
is not such a horrible thing, just as there are books on my side of the
fence that warn of America’s conservatism without sounding like some
goofy spy novel. One thing’s for sure. Our nation is at a crossroads,
at a critical juncture deserving of better guidance than Coulter’s
simplistic rants.