CHRISTIAN REVIVALISM IN THE UNITED STATES IS GOOD FOR JUDAISM

This is copied and pasted from "Jews News of Greater Phoenix Online."
September 2, 2005/Av 28 5765, Volume 57, No. 53
PROFILE

Medved right where he belongs
DEBORAH SUSSMAN SUSSERAssociate Editor

As a former liberal, media personality Michael Medved knows exactly how to push liberal buttons. Chapters in his new book "Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life" include "Liberals Love Losing Because It Makes Them Feel Virtuous," "A More Christian America Is Good for the Jews" and "For the Most Part, Conservatives Are Both Nicer and Happier Than Liberals."This from a man who helped Barbra Streisand plan her son's bar mitzvah and was law-school buddies with Hilary Rodham, now Clinton.The right turn Medved describes in his book was gradual but radical. Today, Medved's radio program, "The Michael Medved Show," is a hit with conservative Christians, and his book boasts blurbs from Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Ann Coulter and Mel Gibson, whose "Passion of the Christ" Medved defended when the film drew objections from the Jewish community, prompting Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to call Medved "the Jane Fonda of the Jewish people" in a nationally broadcast debate.Medved is coming to Phoenix Sept. 7 to speak on "The Lessons of 9/11.""Part of what I believe we all learned from 9/11," Medved says, "is that the post-modern idea of relativism is shockingly irrelevant to the world in which we live and the struggle in which we're engaged. Ten years after the Cold War ended, we received a startling reminder that ... there were struggles that involved the stark contrast of good and evil."In conversation, Medved is both engaging and emphatic, a combination that has served him well in his position as outspoken cultural commentator. Over the years, he has become more and more critical of popular culture and what he sees as the film and television industry's "assault on traditional values."He has also moved from the secular Judaism of his youth to Orthodoxy; in "Right Turns," he writes that those elements of the Jewish community that "stress the unconditional sanctity of traditional teaching and the obligatory nature of God's commandments represent the greatest new centers of energy and influence." One of the reasons he gives for his longtime collaborations with members of the Christian Right is his belief that the kind of Christian revivalism promoted in the United States by such groups as Focus on the Family is good for Judaism."A nation in which Christians take Christianity more seriously is likely to be a nation where Jews take Judaism more seriously, which is deeply needed," Medved says. "If your neighbor all of a sudden makes quote a commitment to Christ unquote and the house becomes very fervently Christian, that does absolutely nothing to make your home less Jewish. In fact, it probably encourages your home to be more Jewish."What we have to fear," Medved concludes, "is not Jews for Jesus. It's Jews for nothing."It seems unlikely that the man who now counts Dick Cheney as one of his close personal friends would have managed to maintain his friendships with liberals. But Medved is an unlikely person."My friend Jeffrey Lyons is a die-hard Mario Cuomo liberal," Medved says, "and we e-mail back and forth every day."Lyons and Medved co-hosted PBS's movie review show "Sneak Previews" for more than a decade.But surely he and Lyons don't discuss politics?"Yes," Medved says, "we talk politics."In fact, he admits, both men are more interested in discussing politics than movies."I've never had a consuming passion about movies," Medved explains. "What interests me is movies as both a reflection of the larger culture and a factor in shaping the larger culture."Medved says that Lyons is one of many friends and associates who are liberal; his own brother, he points out, is "very much an activist liberal."Medved himself has been known to depart from a strictly conservative party line now and then. Most recently, he recounts, he's angered many of his hard-right listeners by being "a cautious and qualified supporter of the Sharon government" and the recent withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank."I'm hopeful," Medved says. "I don't think ridiculously hopeful, but realistically hopeful that this will make Israel stronger rather than weaker. I don't believe that ruling over 1.3 million people that hate your guts makes you stronger. Ruling over people that hate you makes you weaker."

Note from the poster of this blog, there are over 5,000 recorded writings that attest to the New Testament, when for most recorded historical documents of the time of Christ's life on earth there area at most 7 recorded writings of a particular historical event. In addition, there are records of where 3,000 people were baptized at one time and another 5,000 people that were baptized at one time, which were within 80 years of Christ's resurrection. Christians, more than any other religous group, go on missions to teach the word of the Lord to others in every corner of the earth. The message that is spread is that if you accept Christ as your savior that you will have eternal life. I have never had a Jew knock on my door and plea with me to convert to the Jewish religion in order that I may have salvation. Christians are followers of the King of the Jews, the Christ and the Lord, and we believe in the New Testament that when Jesus returns that the 12 tribes of Israel will be prophets to spread the word of the Lord (the 144,000 that the bible talks about as being the chosen ones). Christians are not the enemy of the Jews, the Jews that create paranoia about Christianity are the enemy.