Chris Hayes: As ugly as he accuses his opponents of being
Projection.
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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes loves a good slander.
Indeed, the most punchable face in cable news practically jumped at the chance this week to declare Republican North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn an anti-Semite after the freshman lawmaker said he has had more success proselytizing religious Muslims than religious Jews. Hayes, 41, did not even hesitate to defame the 25-year-old lawmaker. You can almost hear the glee in the host’s words.
Cawthorn, a devout Christian, said in an interview with Jewish Insider that he has converted “several Muslims to Christ,” explaining that he read the Quran specifically to help him better understand the language and culture of Islam.
The Republican then answered directly whether he has tried to convert Jews to Christianity.
“I have,” Cawthorn laughed. “I have, unsuccessfully. I have switched a lot of, uh, you know, I guess, culturally Jewish people. But being a practicing Jew, like, people who are religious about it, they are very difficult. I’ve had a hard time connecting with them in that way.”
From this quote specifically, Hayes and a few others conclude that Cawthorn is obviously an anti-Semite.
“I’ve got a pretty good hunch about what websites this guy is reading,” said the MSNBC host, likely implying that the GOP lawmaker frequents neo-Nazi and pro-white supremacy blogs.
Hayes continued, saying, “In all seriousness, this is a really anti-Semitic thing to say. It's like the original anti-Semitic thing to say and doesn't rely on any codes or tropes. And the entire GOP should condemn it. But of course they won't, and I'm willing to bet it gets 1/20th of the coverage of Omar's tweet? And this speaks to something pretty profound about how the two parties are viewed and whose ‘extremism’ gets attention.”
Hayes is talking out of his hat. Nothing Cawthorn said is false, or even particularly offensive, considering our penchant for sharing crucial information with one another — and Christians surely consider the only way to eternal life a key announcement. Within the faith, it is colloquially called the “good news.”
Evangelism is a core tenet of Christianity (Islam similarly puts a major emphasis on converting non-believers to the Muslim faith). For Christians, announcing Jesus Christ to others, Jewish or otherwise, is an act of love and sharing, not bigotry. Christians believe that He is the only path to salvation, not just one of many. Christians believe His sacrifice and resurrection bring life-transforming salvation and that they are called to share His message with those who do not know. As for Cawthorn, perhaps one can say that his attempts to proselytize religious and non-religious Jews are aggressive. One can certainly say it is a sensitive topic given the history of forced conversions. But inherently anti-Semitic for a Christian to attempt to evangelize a Jew? Please.
It helps if one actually reads the Jewish Insider interview. Cawthorn merely stated that, in his experience, it is easier to evangelize devout Muslims than devout Jews because Christians and Muslims have a shared supranatural view of Jesus Christ.
"The thing I found when I was actually reading through the Quran is that Christianity — that is a very easy switch to make to lead a Muslim to Christ,” the congressman said.
“They believe Jesus is a real person,” he added of Muslims. “They believe he was a prophet, though. And so when you’re trying to lead an atheist to Christ, or, say, kind of a traditional Jewish person, you kind of have to make people really — you have to sell Jesus a lot, because, one, they don’t really believe that, you know — some very devout Jews just think he’s kind of a good guy. That’s great. But, you know, the Muslims, they already believe that he was somewhat divine, and so all you have to do is just be like, he wasn’t just a good man, he was a god, and now if you can submit to that then you believe in Christ.”
Tablet Magazine’s Yair Rosenberg explains well why Cawthorn’s remarks are far from offensive.
“[H]is observation that Jews are hard to proselytize to because we don't believe in Jesus is super accurate!" said Rosenberg. "Rejection of Jesus is one of the few redline beliefs of most American Jews.”
He adds, “Twice as many Jews think you can be Jewish and not believe in God than think you can be Jewish and believe Jesus was the messiah. It's not anti-Semitic to say this out loud! It just means you've talked to some Jews and noticed what most of us believe.”
The host of a nationally televised politics news show should be capable of understanding this. Also, while we are at it, no, Cawthorn is not a secret Nazi because he once toured Hitler's Eagle's Nest. That was an election-year smear by Cawthorn's Democratic opponent (critics who point to a since-deleted post from Cawthorn's personal Instagram account as evidence of his supposed pro-white supremacist sympathies often omit the part where the post’s caption referred to Hitler as a "supreme evil").
“Judaism isn't a religion in the Christian sense," Rosenberg continues. "It's a nation/culture/family, not just a theology. Many Jews experience their Jewishness as something other than a purely religious identity."
He adds, “If you think you have the right path to salvation — whether you are Muslim, Jewish or Christian — of course you'd want to tell people about it. The problem only arises if you advocate persecuting people who don't accept your teaching, which does not seem to be the case here.”
It is clear what Cawthorn meant. But Hayes does not appear even to have read the Jewish Insider interview before leveling charges of anti-Semitism against the Republican lawmaker, showing yet again that the MSNBC host is every bit as unrelentingly ugly as he accuses his opponents of being.