Kathleen Parker and the Strange Heresy of Ted Cruz is a cautionary tale to ponder as we rush headlong into the “silly season” of presidential primaries. It’s illustrative of how the mainstream media uses innuendo, spin and outright deceit to herd the low-information crowd into the desired corral to reflexively pull the lever for the preferred progressive candidate(s).
 
Writing at Aleteia, Anthony M. Esolen provides a superb analysis of the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker’s misguided criticism of Ted Cruz. In case you missed the controversy…

Ted Cruz, it seems, had called upon the Body of Christ to rise up in support of his presidential bid, which led Kathleen Parker, one among her nodding panelists at CNN, to feign offense that Cruz should be begging Jesus to come up out of his grave and write his name on a ballot in Iowa.

Are Americans that ignorant? Parker seems to think so – or maybe it’s just the ones she knows ~

“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,” Parker said. “I know so many people who are offended by that comment.”

 
Hello?! Where to begin? (Beyond the obvious, she needs to get outside her NYC bubble once in a while!) Esolen offers Parker what is clearly a desperately needed refresher course in the history of Western Civilization, referencing everyone from St. Augustine to King Arthur to Sidney Portier ~

Secularism among journalists is often thought a necessary enhancement to their “unbiased” outlook, but it’s not too much to ask that we have a few journalists, just here and there, who actually know something about Scripture and the Christian faith. If you do not know that the central tenet of the Christian faith is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on Easter, appearing in the flesh to his disciples, and if you do not know that the Church is the Body of Christ, as St. Paul says, then what else are you not going to understand? […]
 
Has she never seen a single painting of the Resurrection? Never seen Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas, in which the risen Lord guides the finger of the apostle to probe beneath and within the flesh of the lance-wound in his side? Does Parker not know why we call him Doubting Thomas? Never seen a single one of the many renderings of Jesus walking with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus? Never read Dante’s Divine Comedy? Or Milton’s Paradise Lost? Or John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”?
 
Has she never read Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities? Did she not understand the irony of the grave robber Jerry Cruncher calling himself a “resurrection man”? Did she not know why the code words that bring Dr. Manette from prison are “Recalled to life”? Did she not understand why the author suspends the scene at the end of the novel, to repeat the words of Jesus to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life”?

 
Esolen includes many more examples but you get the idea. And even though our western societies are rapidly devolving into a post-modern cesspools, Parker, by trade (she won a Pulitzer Prize after all) and by age (Gen Xer), can’t possibly be ignorant of the tenets of the Christian faith and its remarkable influence on almost every aspect of our culture.

Imagine somebody wandering about Iowa, not knowing what those big cylindrical structures are for, and that cows eat grass. Imagine somebody living in Nashville and thinking that “country music” refers to national anthems. Imagine somebody living in Italy and thinking that Donatello was a kind of ice cream. Imagine a Russian who thinks serfs were waves on the Caspian Sea.
 
We mustn’t give Parker a pass, but I am cruel only to be kind. We need journalists, even secular ones, to know something about Christianity, and how it has formed and advanced civilization into this troubled century. Without that knowledge, they will have nothing to offer – no informed point of view, no insights, no “unbiased” ability to analyze the challenges before the West.

I say Mr. Esolen is being much too kind. It’s not the first time Ms. Parker has been deliberately obtuse about the Christian faith. And when another opportunity to discredit a conservative candidate presents itself you can bet she won’t hesitate to do it again.
 
But at least we’re wise to her bogus anti-Christian tactics. Don’t be manipulated by Parker – or any of her fellow “journalists” – into misjudging candidates, and voting for four more years of hopeless, Godless change.

 
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Related:
On CNN, WashPost’s Parker Mangles Ted Cruz’s
Remarks, Christianity ~

Parker also failed to realize that it is an essential Christian belief that Jesus already rose from the grave after dying on Mount Calvary. As St. Paul put it his First Letter to the Corinthians, “If Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins.”
 
Moments later, (Parker) claimed that “the evangelical community…may disagree with what I just said, and may see it as less offensive than I did.” That’s probably right, because they knew what Cruz meant by “the Body of Christ.”