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Add to NewsvineYesterday I have an email forwarded to me from someone who says they want to take up my "challenge" about Christians and Ann Coulter. The "someone" is Darrell Bock. For those who might now know him:
Darrell Bock is Research Professor of New Testament Studies and Professor of Spiritual Development and Culture at Dallas Theological Seminary. The author of over 20 books, including a New York Times Best seller, his specialties includes study of the historical Jesus, as he was a Humboldt scholar at the University of Tübingen in Germany and is editor at large for Christianity Today. He has made numerous appearances on national television about issues related to Christianity.
Here are his thoughts on Coulter and Christians:
Godless Author Needs to Think Again–And So Do WeAs a theologian I have been watching with interest for some time the tone of some of our political discourse. In sum, it often resembles what one might expect to hear on an elementary school playground. So maybe some straight talk to five year olds is in order. The only problem is that it is not just the two families that are being invoked but the entire community of our body politic. There is a genuine need for a respectful engagement on the real issues of our time, not a polemicizing, self-promoting, mocking handling of opponents. Nothing has made that more apparent than the “work” and approach of Ann Coulter.
She needs to be called out for hiding behind an argument that “they do it, too.” This sounds exactly like something a five year old would say. It actually reflects very poorly on the cause she attempts to defend. More than that, she needs to be rebuked for arguing about how godless others are when the moral level of her own discourse relies on making fun of others using not so veiled personal attacks. Listeners clearly see such remarks as what they are–tasteless–while she attempts to say she really was not addressing the person directly. In my business, that is called a lie. It is a godless thing to do. If conservatives are going to try to argue for the high ground, they need to see that her type of argument cuts the ground from underneath them, as it smells of being hypocritical. Yes, it stinks to high heaven.
The connection some make between conservative causes and the Christian faith is also clouded by such tactics. Although Jesus could and did confront starkly (see his remarks about Pharisees), he also hung out with them (as well as others) and did regularly engage them in substantive issues and respectful dialogue. Interestingly, Jesus was often hardly on those supposedly on the “inside” versus those he actively sought who were often perceived as being on the other side of righteousness. Moreover, his call to love one’s enemies, even to the point of praying for his executioners as he hung on the cross, sets a decidedly different standard for those of faith in how they engage opponents. When Christians embrace godless tactics in the name of God and country (or the other way around), they deny the pedigree they so passionate seek to affirm.
Making fun of the tragic death of a child, teasing about sexual orientation, or joking about wanting to see a terrorist at work against someone is wrong, whether it comes from the left or the right.
Her attacks on John Edwards and her dismissal of his wife Elizabeth’s attempts to politely ask in a very Southern way for her to stop was not an attempt to get her to stop talking as she claimed. Her suggestion that John should have made the call was a ruse to avoid facing up to the issue she has helped to sustain and, even worse, promote. Her claim that the real goal was to keep her from talking at all was the type of exaggeration that showed no sensitivity to the very real point being made to her. Conservatives who care should say enough and not support her in anyway as long as she insists on traveling this road. Yes, disavow such tactics. They do not help anyone on either side of our debates.
Now let me defend Ann at one point. Her claim is that the other side does it too. She is right on this one. Anyone who has watched political satire knows that both sides are guilty here. But how does it advance the moral standard of our debates to say that the standard is if they do it, then we can do it too? If a teacher were on the playground during such a spat, she would simply say to both children, “Stop it.”
The godless author needs to clean up her act, or, as my Mom used to say, take some soup to your mouth, because if you cannot say it well or nicely, it may indicate that in fact your position is shallower than you let on. Humor, at least the type we are seeing her (and others) use, may actually suggest weakness rather than strength. “If I can’t make a case, then I will put my opponent down and belittle them.”
Democracy deserves better, the serious issues of our body politic require more.
Most importantly, for those who wish for a high moral standard to our country’s community life, someone who claims the high moral ground on issues need not and cannot stoop so low and truly advance the causes they advocate. In fact no matter which side of the left-right fence you are on (or even if you are straddling it), no one can or should condone five year old behavior in what should be a very mature discussion. When it comes to the tone of our political discourse, we all may need to grow up. So let’s pick our models carefully.
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Comments
Dr. Bock,
That is the best post on Ann Coulter I have read as of yet. It really has given me something to think about because what she does is appeal to our fleshly nature, that tendency in us to strike back when Christ calls us to turn the other cheek. Thanks for the reminder.
Blessings
Timothy
Posted by: Timothy | July 3, 2007 12:36 PM
1.With all due respect, professor Bock, you talk like you don’t know what you’re talking about. But, that is a natural and predictable result of getting information from Mainstream Media sources.
Ann Coulter’s jabs were not aimed at “the tragic death of a child…, sexual orientation (I assume you mean “sodomy”), or … wanting to see a terrorist at work against someone.” No matter how many times you repeat these fallacies, Coulter’s sarcasm was directed at 1) John Edward’s repeated invocation of his own son’s tragic death for political gain, 2) the Political Correctness regime that classifies speech-code heretics as in need of therapy (Coulter’s allusion was to a TV actor who, for using the word “faggot” was browbeaten into undergoing therapy, then fired from his job anyway), and 3) the contrast between the Media outrage over her joke about Political Correctness, made at the expense of the preening, Metro-sexual Edwards, and the kid gloves response of the “sensitivity” crowd to Liberal commentator, Bill Mahr’s on-air, non-joking lament at the failure of an actual terrorist attack in Afghanistan, directed at VP Dick Cheney (OK, let's accept your point that Mahr was what-if-ing, not endorsing the wish that Cheney had been killed. So, Coulter's premise about Bill Mahr was erroneous, but she was still NOT joking about someone being killed by terrorists, as you claim, but about the double-standard applied to her remarks).
If some first or second-hand consumers of Ann Coulter’s commentary are too ignorant or misinformed to get the point of her humor, she can hardly answer for that. Since you have taken upon yourself to correct Coulter, you should at least address her remarks as they are, rather than as a lazy and/or hostile News Media misreports them.
2.As for Elizabeth Edwards’ phone call to MSNBC’s Hardball program. There is nothing polite (or “Southern” either, for that matter) about the ambush stunt that Chris Matthews and Elizabeth Edwards pulled on Ann Coulter. The attempt to trap Coulter betrayed the insincerity (except to the chronically credulous) of the request to stop picking on Mr. Edwards, and Coulter rightly refused to take the ploy at face value, instead addressing the real purpose of Mrs. Edwards’ tactic, namely to silence an effective critic of her husband’s Presidential candidacy. Nor was there anything godly about Mrs. Edwards confronting Coulter publicly over the claimed offense, rather than first telling Coulter her fault privately to try to reconcile (re: Matthew 18:15). Anyone who actually believes that interested parties, Chris Matthews and Elizabeth Edwards, concocted that awkward moment for Coulter in order to elevate the tone of American political discourse is painfully, perhaps hopelessly gullible.
3.You write that: “Humor, at least the type we are seeing [Coulter] (and others) use, may actually suggest weakness rather than strength. “If I can’t make a case, then I will put my opponent down and belittle them.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds to me again like you are getting your impressions of Coulter’s polemics second-hand. Leftists don’t hate Ann Coulter because she’s ineffective at making her case.
4.The validity of Coulter’s analysis, in “Godless,” of Liberalism as a secular religion, is unaffected by her own behavior (right or wrong). The book is an expose of what makes Liberalism tick, not a call to holiness. I don't always like the way Ann Coulter -- or Christianity Today, for that matter -- chooses to make a point, but with Leftist Secular Humanists coming in like a flood to eradicate our God-given freedoms, I'd rather keep my guns trained on the enemy than take aim at those fighting alongside me who get carried away in the heat of battle.
5.Ann Coulter is a bare-knuckles brawler in the arena of ideas. Not everyone has the appetite or the stomach for that style of argument, but if you prefer the Marquis of Queensberry style to debate the great issues of our day, you may have a hard time getting through passages like Matthew 23:15, 27-28, Galatians 5:12, 19-21, or Isaiah 44:15-20 (to name a few), or worse yet you may forget that Biblical Christianity is much more about TRUTH than it is about niceness, and not even notice when niceness-trumps-truth terms like “sexual orientation” creep into your vocabulary.
Posted by: Larry N | July 5, 2007 2:28 PM
Larry:
I am sure that was a bare knuckles Jesus up there on the cross when he asked God to forgive those who crucified him. I believe our calling is to seek to be light and invite people to share in what Christ offers in the gospel, including turning the other cheek, something Coulter's approach seems not to include. I'd line up the number of passages that urge us to love over the confrontive passages any day (and I did note those in the post)
I also wonder if people reads posts carefully or just react. As I noted in the post, the double standard Ann complains about it true. I said she was right on that point.
As for why Leftists complain, it is because her type of rhetoric poisons the atmosphere, just as some rhetoric on the other side does.
I listen to my children (not to mention many 20 somethings I teach) get frustrated with politics and one of the reasons why is because people do not have conversations about substance but simply trade angry charges (and make arguments one way when it is their guy and another when it is not- I'll let you all figure out the allusions here). We can do better I am sure. It is not only important to make the right case, but to do so in the right way. The former without the latter is a shell of a real argument. That is why in the end such "humor" is destructive and beneath the view it argues for.
By the way, Coulter actually claimed she did not speak directly about Edwards as you claimed. I actually think you are right about her target being Edwards, but that was my point about her non-denial denial. It was not credible, despite what she said.
Sorry, Larry, but I felt your comment needed to be addressed directly. No bare knuckles here, just a little effort at setting the record straight in a response that ignored the fact that it was not media reports I was dealing with but actual video from the participants.
Posted by: Darrell Bock | July 7, 2007 4:35 AM
I just checked back to see if Larry's post elicited a response from Darrell Bock. Once again, gracious and kind rather than strident in tone, he defended his position with facts rather than emotionally loaded words. As I re-read Larry's post I noticed his assertion, "...you may forget that Biblical Christianity is much more about TRUTH than it is about niceness..."
Unfortunately, many folks substitute what THEY believe to be the truth for the real TRUTH (often 'cherry-picking' Scripture to suit their particular bias).
Actually, our faith is mostly about LOVE. When Jesus said he was the "Way, the Truth, and the Life," we need to remember that each of those concepts is grounded in love. "For God so loved..., love one another..." etc.
And furthermore, the final judgment in Matthew 25 is based on how we loved (cared for) the "least of these" and each other, rather than our ability to hurl invective and accusations in trying to get our views across.
God knows our hearts and deepest thoughts. God and God alone will be our judge -- thank God!!
Posted by: Marlene | July 7, 2007 1:03 PM
Thanks, Dr. Bock. I appreciate your articulation of this fine line. As a Christ-follower I understand that all of my speech should be "seasoned, as it were, with salt," and that my utterances should seek to lift up and not tear down. Thanks for weighing in on this timely topic.
Posted by: Paul Pettit | July 12, 2007 12:24 PM
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