I caught part of the Anderson Cooper show last night and thought I must have heard wrong. But no. A prominent pundit, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, made this commentlast night about Ted Cruz:
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz continues his appeal to religious conservatives. “If we awaken and energize the body of Christ,” he recently said, “we will win and we will turn the country around.” It’s a line he’s used before in various ways, but pundit Kathleen Parker told CNN she was astonished by it. “This seems to have slipped through the cracks a little bit,” she said. “I don’t know anyone who takes their religion seriously who would think that Jesus should rise from the grave and resurrect himself to serve Ted Cruz. I know so many people who are offended by that comment.”
Writer Joel J. Miller continues:
Seriously? Parker is—for what it’s worth, evidently not much—an award-winning commentator. She has a Pulitzer. And yet she doesn’t know that “body of Christ” refers here to Christians, not Jesus’ physical body. Or that the body she’s worried about left the the grave two thousand years ago. Parker’s gaffe reflects a growing lack of consciousness about the Bible and its contents in our culture. A couple of years ago the New York Times famously described Easter—the central holiday of the Christian year—as marking Jesus’ “resurrection into heaven.” The Times issued a correction, but the fact it got by in the first place is telling.
Could she possibly be THAT clueless?
This is a woman who describes herself as “right of center,” who has a Masters in Spanish literature, and who has been acclaimed for decades for her incisive political punditry. She won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. The bio for her at the Leading Authorities Speakers Bureau calls her “quick-witted, very funny, and delightfully sassy.”
Kathleen might want to take a break from all that quick-witted sassiness to crack open a book on the basics of Christianity. She might be amazed at what she’d learn—and it would keep her from sounding like an idiot on national television.
You can see the exchange in question below.
And today we celebrate...