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Antisemitism in Christianity

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Historically, a number of Christians have practiced anti-semitism. The severity and extent of it has varied much over time. Many times in the last 2000 years anti-Semitism has been widely accepted and promulgated by Christian leaders and laypersons. In recent years there has been much to note in the way of reconciliation between some Christians groups and the Jewish people.



Anti-Semitism in the New Testament

Most anti-Semites have justified anti-Semitic behavior by appealing to Christian tradition and scripture. One cause of this is the many New Testament passages that criticise or attack the sect of the "Pharisees", which Christians have historically read as "Jews". Indeed, it seems there are a number of verses criticising Jews in the New Testament. These passages have shaped the way that some Christians viewed Jews; like most Bible passages, they have been interpreted in a variety of ways.


Some have argued that anti-Jewish passages in the New Testament are not really targeting Jews as a whole, as the Pharisees were just one of several Jewish groups (with the Saducees, Samaritans, and Essenes, for example). They argue that the fact that in the time of Jesus the Pharisees were the largest and most dominant group of theologians and religious leaders does not prove that Jesus' words were aimed at every individual Jew, nor at Jews as a people. During the years that the New Testament became canonized, the other Jewish sects disappeared, leaving only Pharisaic Judaism (later known as rabbinic Judaism). Thus, for all intents and purposes, all Jews today are descendants of the Pharisees. (Members of the Samaritan community still extant do not refer to themselves as Jews.) In that perspective, the New Testament passages about Pharisees could be read as passages about the Jewish people in general. Hence, one might think, the matter hinges on one's focus: the initial intention of the New Testament writers, or interpretation of the texts through later developments.


Even before the existence of Christianity, anti-Semitic thought already existed. The Roman rulers considered the Jewish sect to be antisocial and the Jews to be religious fanatics. The Jews were nearly unique in the Roman world in insisting that their God was the only one. Romans in general were very tolerant of each region's religious practice.


Many Christians suggest that readers should understand Jesus's and Paul's attacks on Pharisees as specific charges aimed at the existing hypocrisy among certain Jewish leaders of that time. In this view, the New Testament does not condemn the Jewish people as a whole. Others disagree, pointing out that the passages as written do not condemn individuals, but target the Jewish people as a whole. In either case, historically, a number of Christians have understood the statements to be aimed at the entire Jewish people.


As time passed, the split between Christians (specifically, the followers of Paul and the other Apostles, all of whom were Jews) and Jews became more significant. By the time the Gospels came into their final form, they included points of view that, if said by gentiles to Jews, would certainly be considered anti-Semitic by the Jews. This may be where the real problem began - Christianity reached out to gentiles, and accepted them as eligible to become Christian without their first becoming Jewish. This was a direct result of a decision by the Christian leadership (who were predominantly Jewish) in Jerusalem. Thus a large number of non-Jews came into Christianity, which is based on the New Testament, and they read many verses as attacking Jews in general. It is clear that this interpretation of the New Testament was more commonly used after 1000 A.D. when used as proof that God hated the Jews. Until about 1000 A.D., there was an active Jewish component of Christianity. Lutheran Pastor John Stendalh has pointed out that "Christianity begins as a kind of Judaism, and we must recognize that words spoken in a family conflict are inappropriately appropriated by those outside the family."



The Church fathers

All of the following anti-Semetic statements have been used to justify persecution and mass-murder of Jews. Many of the following people were made saints by the Church.


  • Origen - "The blood of Jesus falls not only on the Jews of that time, but on all generations of Jews up to the end of the world."


  • Tertullian - "the whole synagogue of the sons of Israel killed him [Jesus]."


  • Eusebius, in 325, blames all Jews, both in the time of Jesus and in centuries after, for the death of Jesus: "that from that time seditions and wars and mischievous plots followed each other in quick succession, and never ceased in the city and in all Judea until finally the siege of Vespasian overwhelmed them. Thus the divine vengeance overtook the Jews for the crimes which they dared to commit against Christ. " (Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History: Book II, Chapter 6: The Misfortunes which overwhelmed the Jews after their Presumption against Christ)


A history of the Church by Eusebius


  • Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (340-397 CE) - Amrbose publicly praised the destruction of a Roman synagogue by an anti-Semitic mob. He threatened the Roman Emperor with excommunication, and labeled the emperor a "Jew", because the emperor committed the "sin" of helping to rebuild the Jew's synagogue.


Catholic Encyclopaedia entry on Ambrose
Ambrose in a timeline on this subject



  • Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430 CE) - In Epistle 82 he writes "The ceremonies of the Jews are both baneful and deadly to Christians and whoever keeps them is doomed to the abyss of the devil." Augustine also preached "The Jews held Jesus, they insulted him; the Jews bound him; they crowned him with thorns, dishonored him by spitting on him; they scouraged him; they heaped abuse upon him; they hung him on a tree; they pierced him with a lance." This quoating became a popular Easter sermon in Chruches, often leading to pogroms.


In his "The City of God" Augustine writes "Jesus did many miracles that He might commend God in Himself, some of which, even as many as seemed sufficient to proclaim Him, are contained in the evangelic Scripture....But the Jews who slew Jesus, and would not believe in Him, because it behooved Him to die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly rooted out from their kingdom, where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through lands (so that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own Scriptures a testitmony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ. And very man of them, considering this, even before His passion, but chiefly after his resurrection, believed on Him...but the rest [of the Jews] are blinded...Therefore when they do not believe our scriptures, their own, which they blindly read, are fulfilled in them....God has shown the Church in her enemies, the Jews, the grace of His compassion.


  • Saint Gregory of Nyassa (ca 335 - 394 CE) - In his homilies on the resurrection, section 5, he states that Jews are "Slayers of the Lord, murderers of the Prophets, adversaries of God, haters of God, men who show contempt for the law, foes of grace, enemies of their father's faith, advocates of the devil, brood of vipers, slanderers, scoffers, men whose minds are in darkness, leaven of the Pharisees, assembly of demons, sinners, wicked men, stoners and haters of rigtheousness."


  • Saint Jerome (374-419 CE) - He denounced Jews as "Judaic serpents of whom Judas was the model." In his "Les Juifs dan L'Empire Romain" he writes "The Jews seek nothing but to have children, possess riches and be healthy. They seek all earthly things, but think nothing of heavly things; for this reason they are mercenaries."


  • Saint John Chrysostom (ca 344 - 407 CE) - "[Of what to accuse the Jews?] Of their rapine, their cupidity, their deception of the poor, of thieveries and huckstering? Indeed, a whole day would not suffice to tell all." (Homilies Against The Judaizers, pp.843-942)


"How can Christians dare have the slightest converse [with Jews], most miserable of all men.....[Jews are] inveterate murderers, destroyers, men possessed by the devil [whom] debauchery and drunkenness have given them the manner of the pig and the lusty goat, The know only one thing, to satify their gullets, get drunk, to kill and maim one another...they are impure and impious...they have surpassed the ferocity of wild beasts, for they murder their offspring and immolate them to to the devil."


In one of the eight sermons delivered at Antioch, he preached "Israel, since the deicide, has been given over to commerce with demons; the Jews have all the vices of beasts and are good for nothing but slaughter; gluttons, drunkards, sensualists living for their belly...they behave no better than pigs and goats in their lewd vulgarities. Their crime leaves them no hope of mending their ways of being pardoned. The synagogue is a brothel, a den of thieves, a lair of wild beasts."


Historical note -- In the introduction to the first of the eight sermons delivered at Antioch, Chrysostom explains his purpose in these words: "There are many in our ranks who say [the Jews]] think as we do. Yet some of these are going to watch the Jewish festivals and others will join the Jews in keeping their feasts and observing their fasts. I wish to drive this perverse custom from the Church right now. My homilies against the Anomians can be put off to another time, and the postponement would cause no harm. But now that the Jewish festivals are close by and at the very door, if I should fail to cure those who are sick with the Judaizing disease." This would seem to indicate that the goal of these sermons was to discourage Christians from intermixing Jewish belief and practice with Christian belief and practice.


  • Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe (467-533 CE) - In his "Writings", written about 510 CE, he states "Hold most firmly and doubt not that not all the pagans, but also all the Jews, heretic and schismatics who depart from the present life outside the Catholic Church, are about to go into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."


  • Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) preached that the Jewish people were damned because they had slain Jesus, and the only way they could be saved was to renounce their faith and be baptized as Christians.


  • Martin Luther, founder of Protestant Christianity, preached that Jewish people were "venemous beats, vipers, disgusting scum, canders, devils incarnate. Their private houses must be destroyed and devastated, they could be lodged in stables. Let the magistrates burn their synagogues and let whatever escapes be covered with sand and mud. Let them force to work, and if this avails nothing, we will be compelled to expel them like dogs in order not to expose ourselves to incurring divine wrath and eternal damnation from the Jews and their lies."



The Jew's expulsion from Spain

In 1481, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, the rulers of Spain who financed Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World just a few years later in 1492, declared the Spanish Inquisition. All Jews in their territory were compelled to convert to Christianity or flee the country. While some converted, many others left for Morocco and North Africa. Estimates are that between four and eight thousand secret Jews (morraños) were burnt alive, as well as many Moriscos. It is arguable whether this constitutes anti-Semitism in the racist sense, since it was directed at the religion of Judaism.



Church teachings and Nazi Germany

The synod of Clement, 535 CE - Prohibited Jews from holding public office.

Nazi Germany, 1935 CE - Prohibited Jews from holding public office.


The synod of Toledo, 681 CE - Ordered the burning of the Talmud and other Jewish books.

Nazi Germany - Ordered the burning of the Talmud and other Jewish books.


In 692 Christians were forbidden to go to Jewish doctors.

Nazi Germany - The Nuremburg laws forbade people to go to Jewish doctors.


The Fourth Lateran Council, 1215 CE - forced Jews to wear a distinctive badge on their clothing.

Pope Paul IV, in 1555, issues a papl bull forcing Jews to wear yellow hats; this same papal bull confines Jews to ghettos, and bans them from working in most professions,

Nazi Germany - Adopted every single one of the Christian laws in 1939; the only change was that the yellow hat was changed to a yellow star.


In the 1930s Nazi Germany help the Lutheran church and other Christian churches publicise Martin Luther's teachings; his reccomendations were carried out on every Jew in Germany and its occupied lands. They attempted to murder almost every Jews; following the Lutheran Church's teachings, they also enslaved tens of thousands of Jews.


The Catholic laity in Slovakia was taught by their clergy that the Nazis were doing the will of Jesus Christ in exterminating the Jews. In 1942 before Passover, Rabbi Michael Dov-Ber Weissmandel asked for help from a fellow clergy person and long-time acquaintance, Archbishop Kametko. Rabbi Weissmandel begged the archbishop to intervene with President Tisso, to rpevent the expulsion of the Jewish population from Slovakia. Archbishop Kametko replied "This is no mere expulsion. There you will not die of hunger and pestilence; there they will slaughter you all, young and old, women and children, in one day. This is your punishment for the death of our Redeemer. There is only one hope for you, to convert to our religion. Then I shall effect the annulling of this decree." (See "Min Hamezar", in "Faith After the Holocaust", Eliezer Berkovits, Ktav, 1973, pp. 16-17.)


In fall 1955 Rabbi Michael Dov-Ber Weissmandel, escaped from a deportation to Auschwitz. He approached the papal nuncio (Catholic papal delegate) for help in stopping the extermination of Slovakian Jews. The official response was "This, being a Sunday, is a holy day for us. Neither I nor Father Tisso occupy ourselves with profane matters on this day." Rabbi Weissmandel asked how the murder of innocent men and women, children and babies could be considered "profane" by Christians. The Catholic Archbishop replied "There is no innocent blood of Jewish children in the world. All Jewish blood is guilty. You have to die. This is the punishment that has been awaiting you because of that sin [the death of Jesus]." (Eliezer Berkovits, Faith, pp. 16-17.)


Chritian opposition to the Holocaust

There was little in the way of organized resistance to the Nazi's anti-Semitic policy's by any Christian group during thr 1930s in Europe, whether Catholic, Orthodox Christian, or Protestant. However, there were many individual Christian clergy and laypeople of all denominations who publicly and actively opposed the Nazi's anti-Semitic policies. By the 1940s, fewer Christians were willing to oppose Nazi policy publicly, but many secretly helped save the lives of Jewish people. There is a memorial museum in Jerusalem, Israel called "Yad VaShem", dedicated to these heros.




Reasons that anti-Semitism continued

Christian law forbade Christians to lend money and reclaim it with interest; Jewish law likewise had the same restrictions. But during the middle-ages, European Christian nobility often forced Jews to take on this role; over time, some Jews naturally played an important role in the economies of the Middle Ages. On many occasions, when their high-powered debtors decided they did not want to pay back their debts, they relied on the "Christ's murderers" tradition to expel the Jews and default on their obligations. To many, this would appear to be a case of misuse of Scripture and tradition to justify actions that would otherwise be condemned. (This paragraph would greatly benefit from evidence and examples.)


As with any other religion, Christianity is transmitted through the voices of men. The shape of anti-Semitism in the Christian world has changed so much according to place and time that, on nearly anyone's account, it is unfair to say Christians per se have taught anti-Semitism. But again, on nearly anyone's account, it can certainly be said that Christian anti-Semites have often turned to Christian scripture to justify their actions.



Anti-Semitism in modern-day nations

Anti-Semitism in some Eastern European still remains a substantial problem. The entry on Anti-Semitism in Poland discusses the current state of how the predominantly Catholic Polish population views Jewish people. Anti-Semitism exists to a lesser or greater degree in many other nations as well, including: Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and Syria. While in a decline since the 1940s, there is still a measureable amount of anti-Semitism in the United States of America as well, although acts of violence are quite rare.



Current attempts to convert Jews to Christianity

It has been the viewpoint of Evangelical Christians that all people must accept Jesus Christ as their Savior in order to find salvation. Howevr, some Evangelical leaders, including Pat Robertson and Billy Graham, and some churches have mellowed their position somewhat, either by refusing to specifically proselytize Jews or by maintaining that Jews are still covered by the Abrahamic Covenant.


However, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the U.S., has explicitly rejected suggestions that it should back away from seeking to convert Jews, a position that critics have called anti-Semitic but that Baptists see as consistent with their view that salvation is found solely though faith in Christ. In 1996, the SBC approved a resolution calling for efforts to seek the conversion of Jews "as well as for the salvation of 'every kindred and tongue and people and nation.'"


Many other Evangelicals agree with the SBC position, and some have similarly been supporting efforts specifically seeking Jews' conversion. Among the controversial groups that has found support from some Evangelical churches is Jews for Jesus, which claims that Jews can find their Jewish faith become "complete" by becoming accepting Jesus as the Messiah.


By contrast, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Canada and the Roman Catholic Church have ended their efforts to convert Jews. They do continue their evangelism more generally among non-Jews.


The "White Power" Movement

The Christian Identity movement, the Ku Klux Klan and other White supremacy groups claim to be very strongly Christian in nature; they are vehemently anti-Semitic, as well as racist. The Klan is also demonstrably anti-Catholic.


Reconciliation between Jews and some Christian groups

Over the last century there has been much reconciliation between Jews and Christians. In many nations there has been a remarkable decline in anti-Semitism after the horrors of the Holocaust were made public to the larger world population. Anti-Semitism among Christians has not died out entirely, and acts considered by some to be anti-Semitic have been perpetrated by purportedly Christian leaders. Nonetheless, the leaders of many Christian denominations have developed new positions towards the Jewish people over the last thirty years, and much progress in inter-faith relations has occurred.


Many elements of the Jewish community have responded favorably. In the United States, Rabbis from all the non-Orthodox movements are involved in inter-faith dialogue with many Christian churches, and even the Modern Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America was indirectly involved in talks with the Roman Catholic Church during the 1960s.



A large Protestant Christian group, the Alliance of Baptists, has broken with traditional Christian theology vis-a-vis the Jewish people. In March 1995 they issued "A Baptist Statement on Jewish-Christian Relations". This document stated that the Holocaust could only have come about because of "centuries of Christian teaching and church-sanctioned action directed against the Jews simply because they were Jews. As Baptist Christians we are the inheritors of and, in our turn, have been the transmitters of a theology which lays the blame for the death of Jesus at the feet of the Jews...a theology which has valued conversion over dialogue, invective over understanding, and prejudice over knowledge...". They then confessed their sins of "of complicity...of silence...of indifference and inaction to the horrors of the Holocaust." Finally, they issues a series of reccomended actions that they asked all Christians to join them in, namely:


  • "Affirming the teaching of the Christian Scriptures that God has not rejected the community of Israel, God's covenant people (Romans 11:1-2), since 'the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable' (Romans 11:29);


  • Renouncing interpretations of Scripture which foster religious stereotyping and prejudice against the Jewish people and their faith;


  • Seeking genuine dialogue with the broader Jewish community, a dialogue built on mutual respect and the integrity of each other's faith;


  • Lifting our voices quickly and boldly against all expressions of anti-Semitism;


  • Educating ourselves and others on the history of Jewish-Christian relations from the first century to the present, so as to understand our present by learning from our past."



The United Church of Canada issued a statement in May 1998 entitled "Bearing Faithful Witness: United Church-Jewish Relations Today." This position paper goes further than most other liberal Christians groups, and calls upon Christians to:


  • Stop trying to convert Jews to Christianity; Reject Biblical interpretations which negatively stereotype Jews, as this leads to anti-Semitism; Reject the idea that Christianity is superior to, or a replacement for, Judaism; recognize that anti-Semitism is an element of historic Christianity, but not an inherent part of it - therefore one can remove it from Christianity and still remain faithful to Christianity.


Many smaller Christian groups in the US and Canada have come into being over the last 40 years, such as "Christians for Israel". Their website says that they exist in order to "expand Christian-Jewish dialogue in the broadest sense in order to improve the relationship between Christians and Jews, but also between Church and Synagogue, emphasizing Christian repentance, the purging of anti-Jewish attitudes and the false 'Replacement' theology rampant throughout Christian teachings."


Christians for Israel


A number of large Christian groups, including the Catholic Church and several large Protestant churches, have publicly declared that they will no longer proselyatize Jews.


Recently, over fifty rabbis from the non-Orthodox branches of Judaism signed a document called Dabru Emet ("Speak the Truth") that has since been used in Jewish education programs across the U.S. Some Modern Orthodox rabbis have made statements in agreement with this document as well, but have not signed. This is because Orthodox Judaism is more strict than the other denominations in regards to the Jewish religious prohibition against inter-religion theological dialogue. (In the past, (many? all?) such dialogues were forced, and (always?) had as their sole motive the conversion of Jews to other faiths.) While affirming that there are substantial theological differences between these two religions, the purpose of Dabru Emet is to point out the common ground between these two religions. It is not an official document of any of the Jewish denominations per se, but it is representative of what many religious Jews feel.



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