Pastor running for Congress responds to criticism that Anne Frank found Jesus in his book

Pastor Johnny Teague, a Republican House candidate in Texas, said he "never dreamed" people would come away with a messianic message from his book "The Lost Diary of Anne Frank" after he was accused last week of having the teenage Holocaust victim find Jesus before dying in his novel.

"It's not a proselytizing book," Teague told Just the News in an interview. Last week, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote an article about his book headlined "An evangelical GOP House candidate in Texas wrote a novel about Anne Frank finding Jesus."

"I'm horrified" by the headline, Teague said. "I'd be mad at me too, if I thought that someone was going to do that."

An enthusiastic supporter of Israel, Teague said he was inspired to write the book after he was moved by a visit to Auschwitz, and he wrote the book for "those who have no knowledge of the Holocaust." 

Teague acknowledged being a Christian likely influenced how he wrote the book, but it "wasn't intentional."

Coalition for Jewish Values Managing Director Rabbi Yaakov Menken, whose organization is the largest rabbinic public policy group in the U.S., told Just the News: "I don't think it's very important, or that it reflects animus against Jews. The fact that he devoted so much of himself to a story of Jewish persecution is perhaps more noteworthy than whether the heroine, in his telling, thought about becoming Christian. There's quite enough real antisemitism today that we shouldn't try to impute bad motivations when a writer looks at things through the lens of his own beliefs."

Outreach Judaism founder Rabbi Tovia Singer, one of the world's leading anti-missionary figures, had a far different reaction, calling the book "deeply offensive." 

"In [the author's] view," Singer told Just the News, "Frank's death is not complete, or there is nothing that is redeemable about this young woman's perishing at the hands the Nazis unless she becomes a Christian ... There's no value in her death as a Jew, so it's a complete negation of her Jewish identity, not only her, but the millions who perished only because they were Jewish. 

"He sees only the value, the spiritual value, of those who become Christians, so the book illustrates nothing about Anne Frank, but so much about the author. He wrote this with the worst possible intent. He wrote a revisionist book that upends Anne Frank's death. She died because she was a Jew and because she was not a Christian and there is nothing he can do to dishonor her memory more than rob her of her Jewish heritage and her Jewish faith for which she was murdered."

The novel's introduction says it is "an attempt to fill the gaps" from Frank's diary after she and her family were discovered and arrested by the Gestapo in 1944.

"In Teague's telling, Frank seems to embrace Christianity just before she is murdered by the Nazis," wrote Andrew Lapin in the JTA article. 

"I do close the book with, 'I've made my mind up,' and that wasn't really having to do with the Messiah, but had to do with this acceptance that ... I'm not going to be delivered," said Teague, who also noted that he had never been involved in proselytization targeting Jewish people. 

"I [probably] could have worded it much more clear," Teague said. "I never dreamed — and a lot of people read the book and ... very few have come away with some messianic, Jesus or converter, conversion of a Jewish person."

Teague concludes his book with Anne Frank saying: "I think the fight is over for me. Where is our Deliverer, the Messiah? Or, has He come? ... I believe He has come. And, He has come for me." 

The 230-page book says "Christmas" 20 times, "Christian" 9 times, "Jesus" 14 times and "messiah" six times. Frank's original diary says "Christmas" 7 times, "Christian" 14 times, "Jesus" twice in passing and does not mention the word "messiah" at all.

Other entries are less blatant. In one, the fictional Frank questions where the Messiah is and whether he came already. "I know where I stand," she says. "I know where Margot and Mother stand too. This gives me great comfort, win or lose, live or die."

While Frank actually wrote in her real diary that her father, Otto Frank, attempted to obtain a copy of the New Testament for her and her sister, Teague said he thinks he saw it as "just part of an education."

In Teague's book, Frank writes that she wishes her father would have gotten the New Testament for her. "I would love to learn more about Jesus and all He faced in His dear life as a Jewish teacher," the fictional Anne writes. "I can imagine that I would find lots of coping skills from Him."

Teague's Anne writes that her father "had always said that Jesus was a perfect example of how to handle hard times, difficult people, and of how to love no matter what befalls us." There is no evidence for or against attribution of such beliefs to the historical Otto Frank.

Teague takes artistic license in parts of the novel. For example, he writes that Frank said the Lord's Prayer before bed because it's "actually a Jewish prayer." 

While the Lord's Prayer does incorporate several parts of ancient Jewish prayers, Jews do not say it. Frank would have been far more likely to have at least heard the Jewish "Shema" prayer before bed. 

The Frank family is unlikely to have done several things mentioned in the book, such as having Isaiah Chapter 9 be Anne's "favorite" verse about the Messiah. That verse is used by Christian groups to confirm their belief that Jesus is the Messiah.

On several occasions, to take another example, Anne uses the terms "Old Testament" and "New Testament." However, being Jewish, Anne would have likely used "Torah" or "Tanakh" to refer to the "Old Testament."

Teague took issue with several points made in the JTA article. For example, he said he never alluded to the idea of Otto Frank being spared due to his interest in learning about Jesus.

"I never want to offend anybody," Teague said. His hope is that readers will finish his book and then read "The Diary of Anne Frank."

"I can't match her," said Teague. "But if I point people to her, then I've done a good job."