Frank Schaeffer: Jesus For Jews, Or Something Like That
How the right hugs the right across religious bounds. The parts that many forget are the other religious reach arounds between Abrahamic faiths — how we spun up the Orthodox and Islamist groups in the 80s, part of the wedge that split the old Soviet Union. Remember when the Mujahideen were considered by most Americans to be the good guys? While that was happening Zia al Haq and others were introducing “Kalashnikov Culture” to Pakistan, and the PIA stewardesses stopped wearing mini-skirts.
The problem with that wasn’t the “Blowback” — as religious right hypcrites like Ron and Rand Paul frame it, but rather keeping those efforts in the hands of the religious right zealots on both sides of the water alone. They always screw everything they touch up through zealotry and bile and hate.
I was put in touch with radically pro-Israel, anti-Arab, far-right, Islam-bashing neoconservatives. This “bridge-building,” in turn, introduced me to Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine, who was using the Republican Party (and/or being used by it) to advance his single issue — support for the State of Israel — just as I was doing the same for my single issue — abortion.
Commentary had emerged in the 1970s as the neoconservatives’ flagship publication. I regularly reprinted some of their articles as books or as essays in my Evangelical newspaper. And when my mother raised $50,000 from her pal in Dallas, multimillionaire Mary Crowley, (founder of Home Interiors and Gifts, Inc.), to launch Mom’s new book, Forever Music (1986), Podhoretz lent his support.
