By Martin Lenkowsky | New Pelican Writer
Lauderdale-By-The-Sea – Myra Kahn Adams wears two different – but intertwined – hats. She’s both an established political writer, and a religious author, lecturer, and scholar.
The Needham, Massachusetts native, writes a column regularly for The Hill, a respected, well-balanced political journal, not an easy find in today’s dangerously polarized 2024 America. “The Hill is right down the middle,” she says. “They try very hard to be balanced. It’s hard to be balanced in this media environment.”
Adams has also been a contributing writer to other political publications including National Review, The Daily Beast, and RealClearPolitics, among others.
That’s hat No. 1 for Adams, 68. Her second is her devotion to Christianity and her involvement with – and her belief in – the Shroud of Turin. She was born into a Jewish family, but later converted while in college at Ohio State University. She first became a Messianic Jew, a Jew that believes in Jesus. She subsequently became an Evangelical, and is now Catholic. “I call myself a no labels lover of Christ,” she says. It was back in 1975 when “divine intervention events” led her to the path of Christianity.
While attending Ohio State she also became enamored with politics, and identifies as a conservative Republican, adding she joined the Ohio State Republican Club. “I knew Karl Rove.”
Adams worked on former President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign creative team, as well as on the late Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “McCain was very feisty and a hero,” she says, adding that by 2008 the country was ready to move on from Bush, and that most often voters tend to elect the other party’s candidate after a two-term incumbency. Adams moved to Washington, D.C. in 1977 and lived there until 2007. Her husband was in the State Department working in the foreign service. She moved to Pompano Beach in 2007 and then to Lauderdale-By-The-Sea in 2012.
In Washington, she had her own video production company and began writing political op-ed columns in 2010. In 2021, she started writing for The Hill. She says writing political columns is not an easy thing to do. “You have to come up with something every other week.” In addition to her political writing, she writes a weekly Sunday Bible Study series on Townhall.com. She has incorporated her series into two books called, “Bible Study For Those Who Don’t Read The Bible.”
“I write from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about the Bible, as I once did,” she said. “It has to be with humor. I make it easy to read so people are not intimidated. Bible illiteracy is on the rise.” Sitting in the serene setting of her condo’s beachfront garden, lined by sea grape trees and overlooking the calm, sparkling waters of the Atlantic, she displays both editions of her Bible Study books. A third and fourth one are on the way.
She then holds up a pamphlet depicting the Shroud of Turin which is the cloth bearing the image of what believers say is Jesus Christ, miraculously imprinted upon the burial shroud used to wrap his body after his crucifixion. “I lead a ministry group about the Shroud of Turin.”
Adams has written about today’s hostile political environment, and poses the question in one of her op-ed pieces as to whether today’s Americans would come together and rally as one people which happened after the September 11th terror attacks. Sadly, she is not at all optimistic a similar scenario would ensue given the political bitterness and the emergence and power of social media.
“Social media has so accelerated the polarization,” she says. “Young people get their news from TikTok.” She adds that TikTok contributed to the troubling rise of antisemitism following Hamas’ massive attack on Israel. She blames social media as being, “the big bang of polarization.”
Adams feels America is in a dangerous place, extremely vulnerable to cyberattack. “We’re at 1939 levels of danger with all the different areas of conflict,” she says, adding she’s particularly concerned with Russia’s war against Ukraine. “Putin wants to unify the Russian empire. He wants to put it back together.”
And does this well-established op-ed columnist and religion devotee have any preferences as to what she prefers writing? “They’re both stressful to write about,” she answers. “Writing is not easy. I love the balance of both of them.”
