The ‘Jewish lobby’ and Christian anti-Judaism in Evangelicals Now
This is a guest post by Seismic Shock
Leading monthly evangelical newspaper Evangelicals Now, edited by the pastor of Chertsey Street Baptist Church John Benton, has a broad range of submitters and writers who a vast number of topics. Yet over the last few years, the paper has allowed various antisemitic and anti-Zionist motifs to be openly eschewed in its pages.
This week comes the news that Evangelicals Now has asked Stephen Sizer to review Barry Horner’s critically acclaimed book Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged.
Rev Sizer writes on his blog:
O dear. I really don’t want to have to review this unpleasant little book but those nice people at Evangelicals Now have asked me to, so I will, eventually. If Wilkinson coined the phrase “Christian Palestinianism” to identify those he doesn’t agree with Horner goes one step further and calls us “anti-Judaism” I can’t find anything positive to say about this book (yet).
Evangelical Now’s editorial policy must surely be questioned. Why has Rev Sizer been asked to review a book in which he is roundly criticized? I would have thought that the point of a book review is to have a disinterested third party point of view! This point is strengthened by Rev Sizer’s own admission of his ‘bias’ in writing about Christian Zionism.
Asking Stephen Sizer to review a book on Christian anti-Judaism further seems strange considering that he has forwarded an email by the Holocaust denierMichael A. Hoffman II, which claimed:
Judaism considers western civilization to be Edom and despises it with far greater rancor than even Muslim fundamentalists. The current alliance between the West and the Israelis and rabbis, is very tenuous and temporary, predicated on the denial of New Testament doctrine and the transformation of an erstwhile Christian western civilization into a collective golem that bombs and fights Muslims for the benefit of the Israelis.
Even more bizzarely, the only form of Judaism which Rev Sizer in practice appears to affirm is the extremist ultra-Orthodox sect Neturei Karta, whose activities include attending a conference on Holocaust denial and sending congratulations and well-wishes to Hamas.
Rev Sizer has frequently appeared on an anti-Zionist platform alongside Aharon Cohen of the Neturei Karta, a rabbi who claims that the Holocaust dead “deserved it.”
For years though, Rev Sizer has been allowed to write negatively and cynically about Jews, Zionists and Israel in Evangelicals Now.
In 1996, Sizer wrote:
“neither Dole nor Clinton will dare upset the Jewish lobby”
In 2004 came the ludicrous claim by Rev Sizer about Christian anti-Zionist Gary Burge:
“Burge has been vilified for his views and accused by the Anti-Defamation League of being anti-Semitic. I take this as a sign instead of his theological integrity and faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Rev Sizer has previously used language and concepts reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Evangelicals Now, and has also subtlycompared Israelis with Nazis:
“(Prior shows convincingly how) the Shoah has been used to legitimise state repression by Israel and attempt to silence criticism. In the words of W. H. Auden, ‘. . . Those to whom evil is done, Do evil in return.’”
Meanwhile, leading British theologian Alec Motyer has twice claimed inEvangelicals Now not to have found “any ‘Jews’ in the Old Testament”, whilstDavid Rushworth-Smith couldn’t find any Jews in Palestine between A.D. 70 and 1948.
And, in 2002, Malcolm MacGregor also made reference to a Jewish lobby in the paper when claiming of Israel:
“Well, it’s a piece of land, about 60 miles long and 30 miles wide, and is what used to be called the land of Palestine. It’s a series of problems following the setting up of the State of Israel in 1948 when thousands of Arabs were forced into exile as President Harry Truman gave in to the Jewish political lobby in New York and Britain decided to wash its hands of the problem, leaving the Arabs to sink or swim.”
Evangelicals Now today finds itself in a ludicrous situation where it is asking a reverend who is widely considered to have anti-Judaic views to write a review of a book which he openly disdains, and a book in which he himself is criticised.
Whilst Evangelicals Now has previously published fair and balanced accounts of the situation in the Middle East, its editorial policy has also allowed negative images and ideas about Jews and Israelis to be promoted in its pages.
How can this be?
Comments
| 20 March 2009, 1:54 pm |
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
I think you were looking for “espouse”.
| 20 March 2009, 2:14 pm |
whilstDavid Rushworth-Smith couldn’t find any Jews in Palestine between A.D. 70 and 1948.
They were all around my house playing kaluki and pisha paisha.
| 20 March 2009, 2:40 pm |
How can this be?
Because christianity is predicated on “anti-judaism”?
| 20 March 2009, 3:03 pm |
As a Christian, I must admit to strongly held anti-evangelical views. I won’t say “prejudice”, because that implies that my views were formulated before engaging with the issues. The reverse is the case: I used to be an evangelical, and as a result of that have wished no dealings with them for some twenty years. It is a fat cats’ faith, with nothing to say about money and greed but loads of homophobia; the suggestion that it is now branching into anti-semitism I find all too believable. In a way one becomes almost thankful for evangelicals in the US, who are all moonbats but at least tend not to hate Jews. It’s all very sad, and of course meat and drink to the atheist lobby, but all I can say is that some Christians are prepared to distance themselves very emphatically from this sort of crap.
| 20 March 2009, 3:05 pm |
And j.r. – actually it was originally predicated on Judaism.
| 20 March 2009, 3:06 pm |
Yet over the last few years, the paper has allowed various antisemitic and anti-Zionist motifs to be openly eschewed in its pages.
And that’s a bad thing? …Or have you gotten the meaning of ‘eschewed’ arse abut face?
| 20 March 2009, 3:13 pm |
Cipriano, I don’t disagree with the historical point, but my experience of christian anti-zionists is that they are in denial about the dodgy ground they are on: their theology tells them that jews are bad ‘cos they don’t accept jesus, but they claim to be ever so morally superior and impartial when they determine that jews are the bad in Israel/Palestine.
| 20 March 2009, 3:30 pm |
j.r. – quite right: it seems to me to be linked with the fact that evangelicals often seem to be linked with the hard Right politically, and therefore anti-semitism comes ratrher naturally.
| 20 March 2009, 3:32 pm |
I’m not able to write about this at any length now, but Moishe Rosen, who writes the intro to Horner’s book, is a big cheese in Jews for Jesus.
Jews for Jesus would have been unthinkable for all the church fathers except, perhaps, temporarily, Justin Martyr. Sizer has resurrected old fashioned patristic anti-Judaism both as anti-Zionism and itself.
Which is ironic given his sanctifying Jewish dispossession and disinheritance on the one hand, but decrying it of Palestinian Christians and Muslims on the other. His de facto alliance with Palestinian and other Islamic nationalism or Islamicism is also interesting. But what they both share is an historically imperious and literally imperial, disinheriting and dispossessive, triumphalist and supremacist, view of Jews and Judaism.
Which is again ironic, given Sizer’s harping on the allegedly dispossessive original sin of Jewish nationalism and Zionism.
It is a fundamental failure of the Christian ethic of empathy and even-handedness: do as you would be done be. Or, Before you would remove the mote from your neighbour’s eye, first extract the plank from you own.
This is why I think Sizer has virtually nothing to say about how ancient and traditional Christian ethics can or do relate to modernity. He has utterly failed to bridge that gap himself, attempting to occupy various dissociated boxes at once.
Jews are important on any such reading as they bridge the gap between pagan, pre-Christian or Islamic antiquity and modernity. Within themselves they encompass many of the twists and turns of that journey.
The Evangelical Christian narrative is one essentially of the virtuous victim, with, to the Evangelical, all the rest being strictly the actions of non-Christians, though they might profess to be so. But in this age of post-imperial and post-colonial view, and especially if one wishes to adduce Christian values and perspectives in describing and addressing the plight of Palestinian Christians and Muslims, one must address dispossessive strands within Christian discourse from its origins, especially with regard to their first and chiefest victim, the Jews, who, alone of all peoples, were that held most guilty of the worst of sins, and commensurately deserving of dispossession and exile.
Such values sit ill with Christian sympathy with Palestinian Christians and Muslims, unless an effort is made to draw a symmetry and equivalence.
I think Sizer is effectively advocating a form of Christian nationalism, though “rationalized” as a form of ethics.
| 20 March 2009, 3:36 pm |
Christianity isn’t predicated on anti-judaism. No doubt it has its anti-semites ( I’ve met a few), but from there to say the entire enterprise is founded on hatred of Jews or Judaism is a bit of a stretch.
| 20 March 2009, 3:49 pm |
And – despite what I said about evangelicals earlier – I’ve just had a look at the Evangelicals Now site, and I read there a very positive review of a book telling the story of various Christian Arabs and how they were reconciled to their Jewish neighbours and the State of Israel. I agree that using Stephen Sizer as a reviewer is a bit provocative. . But it ain’t all like that.
| 20 March 2009, 3:53 pm |
Islamic nationalism
An oxymoron, surely?…despite Hizbollah dissimulation in front of the cameras.
The Evangelical Christian narrative is one essentially of the virtuous victim, with, to the Evangelical, all the rest being strictly the actions of non-Christians, though they might profess to be so. But in this age of post-imperial and post-colonial view, and especially if one wishes to adduce Christian values and perspectives in describing and addressing the plight of Palestinian Christians and Muslims, one must address dispossessive strands within Christian discourse from its origins, especially with regard to their first and chiefest victim, the Jews, who, alone of all peoples, were that held most guilty of the worst of sins, and commensurately deserving of dispossession and exile.
Zakaryah, I appreciate that I’m not the brightest of chaps and my own prose is opaque at best, but could you summarise this paragraph for me in a couple of sentences? I don’t follow…
| 20 March 2009, 3:58 pm |
a big cheese in Jews for Jesus
Has anyone seen that dirty great sign (fink it says ‘mosheach’) as you enter Chetham Hill? If memory serves, they were ‘Jews for Jesus’…weren’t they?
| 20 March 2009, 4:13 pm |
I’m not able to write about this at any length now, but Moishe Rosen, who writes the intro to Horner’s book, is a big cheese in Jews for Jesus.
Jews for Jesus would have been unthinkable for all the church fathers except, perhaps, temporarily, Justin Martyr. Sizer has resurrected old fashioned patristic anti-Judaism both as anti-Zionism and itself.
Which is ironic given his sanctifying Jewish dispossession and disinheritance on the one hand, but decrying it of Palestinian Christians and Muslims on the other. His de facto alliance with Palestinian and other Islamic nationalism or Islamicism is also interesting. But what they both share is an historically imperious and literally imperial, disinheriting and dispossessive, triumphalist and supremacist, view of Jews and Judaism.
Which is again ironic, given Sizer’s harping on the allegedly dispossessive original sin of Jewish nationalism and Zionism.
It is a fundamental failure of the Christian ethic of empathy and even-handedness: do as you would be done be. Or, Before you would remove the mote from your neighbour’s eye, first extract the plank from you own.
This is why I think Sizer has virtually nothing to say about how ancient and traditional Christian ethics can or does relate to modernity. He has utterly failed to bridge that gap himself, attempting to occupy various dissociated boxes at once.
Jews are important on any such reading as they bridge the gap between pagan, pre-Christian or Islamic antiquity and modernity. Within themselves they encompass many of the twists and turns of that journey.
The Evangelical Christian narrative is one essentially of the virtuous victim, with, to the Evangelical, all the rest being strictly the actions of non-Christians, though they might profess to be so. But in this age of post-imperial and post-colonial view, and especially if one wishes to adduce Christian values and perspectives in describing and addressing the plight of Palestinian Christians and Muslims, one must address dispossessive strands within Christian discourse from its origins, especially with regard to their first and chiefest victim, the Jews, who, alone of all peoples, were that held most to guilty of the worst of sins, and commensurately deserving of dispossession and exile.
Such values sit ill with Christian sympathy with Palestinian Christians and Muslims, unless an effort is made to draw a symmetry and equivalence.
I think Sizer is effectively advocating a form of Christian nationalism, though “rationalized” as a form of ethics.
| 20 March 2009, 4:20 pm |
Hi Vilyum, I wrote you a longish answer but the pc froze and I lost it. Then accidentally re-posted my last one.
The short answer is, No. And oxymoron or not, Islamic nationalism exists.
| 20 March 2009, 4:21 pm |
j.r., Cipriano and John P.
Arguably, it isn’t the faith that Jesus and his followers, fairly described as Judeo-Christians as they pretty well followed all Jewish traditions — in that was anti-Jewish, it’s the faith that Paul so successfully promoted that was.
| 20 March 2009, 4:26 pm |
Cipriano – you’re right, there’s certainly some very positive and constructive articles in EN, which makes it a shame they do still write about a ‘Jewish lobby’. It’s the same with any newspaper and they do cover a wide range of views, still, they can do without the Jewish lobby stuff.
| 20 March 2009, 4:34 pm |
Lynne I disagree – Paul made decisions to accommodate Gentiles into the new movement without them needing to become Jews, but without in any way downplaying his own essential Jewishness or that of other Jewish people who believed in Jesus. Nor can the charge of “supersessionism” or “replacementism” be substantiated from Paul’s own writings. The Barry Horner book mentioned in the original post shows that very clearly.
| 20 March 2009, 4:37 pm |
Christianity takes jewish scripture, disposes of jewish oral law, hermeneutics and jurisprudence and reinterprets the remainder to support the theology of jesus. It teaches that jews who fail to go with the new agenda are hell-bound and that jews were responsible for killing the man-god whom they rejected.
Subsequent anti-Jewish myths such as the blood libel, poisoning of wells and witchcraft were based on this theology, leading to mass murder of jews and to the development of modern european antisemitism with its world-domination myths.
Denial of the centrality of anti-judaism in christianity is quite bizarre.
Christian anti-zionists are at the forefront of anti-jewish agitation because the idea that jews now persecute the palestinian innocents with the same malice that they persecuted jesus is simply too delicious to pass over.
| 20 March 2009, 4:57 pm |
It’s hardly surprising that the long, strong tradition of Christian anti-Semitism hasn’t gone away.
It needs to be remembered, however, that the evangelical Christian Zionist movement as such (as opposed to Christians who are also Zionists) is far from philo-Semitic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wILix2a2M2A
| 20 March 2009, 5:00 pm |
Christian and Jewish teachers and theologians are entitled to disagree over which religion is “correct” or which ideas they think are right or wrong – certainly there’s been a great deal of writing in last 2000 years in Christianity and Judaism both critical of each others’ religion and critical of one’s own religion.
The problem for society is when theological doctrine used as a weapon in a political or social context, as was seen in the Dark Ages through the social subjugation of Jews, and as we see now in anti-Zionist ‘Christian peacemaking’ activities.
It’s okay for followers of a religion to be critical of other religions, however it’s not okay to use this criticism to provoke intolerance, as, say, Hizb-ut Tahrir attempt with Islam, Neturei Karta attempt with Judaism, and the BNP attempt with Christianity (to give 3 examples when infinite more are available).
| 20 March 2009, 5:01 pm |
Again JR I respectfully disagree – I believe the NT is a pro-jewish book and that its writers used a typically Jewish hermeneutic and affirmed the oral law where it did not contradict the written law. It doesn’t teach that Jews were any more responsible for the death of Jesus than anyone else. Yes it talks about salvation for some and punishment for others – but so too does the Hebrew Bible. Yes there have been and are anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist Christians – no-one could deny or excuse that. But there have also been and are also Christians in the opposite camp – which tells me that it is not the foundational texts themselves which are the problem, but rather how some people have misused them. IMHO.
| 20 March 2009, 5:20 pm |
Most interesting. It seems that after spending a lot of time and effort demonizing Muslims, HP posters are now turning their sights on Christians as well. Zionism is in terminal decline where it sees enemies around every corner, obviously.
| 20 March 2009, 5:28 pm |
Here we go again. Like Melanie Phillips in The Spectator a couple of weeks ago, a demand for the banning the proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah with everything that that entails, and a shrieking of “anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism” if anyone objects.
Why should Christians care more for Israel than for a country in which the Constitution requires that the President be a Christian (Lebanon)? Or a country in which there are Christian-majority provinces, and Christian festivals as public holidays (Syria)? Or a country in which there are three reserved parliamentary seats for Christians (Iran, where there is also a reserved seat for a Jew)?
Does the President of Israel have to be a Christian (or is one of Israel’s official languages a European language, as one of allegedly less Western Lebanon’s is)? Are there Christian-majority provinces, or Christian festivals as public holidays, in Israel? Are there reserved parliamentary seats for Christians in Israel, which certainly contains all-Christian villages?
President Obama clearly suffers from none of your delusions. Even Hillary Clinton has been ordered to snap out of them, or at least to go through the motions of having done so. Still, it is always good to have a laugh at someone still living in the mercifully vanished world of George W Bush.
And of course there are no Jews in the Old Testament! Do Jews sacrifice animals? Are they polygamists? Even leaving aside which of them is the legitimate continuation, Judaism is no more the religion of the Old Testament than Christianity is.
I have to add that it is in Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, that there is still a Temple (the Person of Jesus Christ, as He Himself taught – and thus also His Body, the Church), a Sacrifice (the Mass), and a Priesthood offering that Sacrifice within that Temple. Judaism does not even claim to possess these things.
Judaism is a reaction against the recapitulation in Jesus Christ and His Church of all three of the Old Israel, Hellenism, and the Roman Empire. Specifically, it is, like Islam, a Semitic reaction. There are also Graeco-Roman reactions, whose core texts are, like the Talmud and the Qur’an, polemically anti-Christian.
| 20 March 2009, 5:30 pm |
Seismic Shock: Absolutely. And yet I think the problem is that irrational religious beliefs, such as that a particular group of people should or shouldn’t have a piece of land, will inevitably lead to dreadful events. mankind really does need to find a way to move beyond this awful insane nonsense because however pretty some of it is it hurts and kills people.
Shrewsfan: Whatever the NT says or you think its writers intended is irrelevant to this discussion. You are in denial about two thousand years of history.
VoR: utter twat. Zionism is no longer relevant because its objectives are long since achieved.
| 20 March 2009, 5:31 pm |
Voice of reason: by the same logic, those who criticise Christian Zionists like Pat Robertson and John Hagee are in actual fact ‘demonising Christians’.
| 20 March 2009, 5:38 pm |
David Lindsay, you’ve clearly read a lot into this blog post which isn’t there.
It’s about: should Stephen Sizer be writing a review of a book on Christian anti-Judaism written by a Christian?
Sizer is in no way your average Christian critic of Judaism. Some of his opinions about Judaism appear to be gathered from Holocaust deniers, and the only form of Judaism he’s proud to be associated with is one which celebrates Hamas rocket attacks on Israel.
| 20 March 2009, 5:45 pm |
If this really is just “Should he review a book that is highly critical of him?”, then why not. Happens all the time. How could it not, when you think about it? There are only so many people working in any given field.
But again I say, this is what appears to be an increasingly aggressive campaign – I refer you again to the Phillips article – against any suggestion that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, Whose Church is the True and Everlasting Israel. In other words, against Christianity simply as such.
It is not anti-Semitic to object to this campaign, nor is it anti-Semitic to counter it in terms as polemical as its own from the Talmud (and earlier) onwards.
| 20 March 2009, 5:51 pm |
Right, David, what bit are you referring to in the Melanie Phillips article?
The reasons Sizer shouldn’t write the review are given above – it isn’t just the book’s highly critical of him, it’s the various other reasons listed in the blog post and my above comment at 5:38pm.
| 20 March 2009, 5:52 pm |
The short answer is, No.
Furry muff…but that paragraph was incomprehensible (at the risk of provoking your ire).
And oxymoron or not, Islamic nationalism exists.
I don’t see how it can dear fellow, at least not ‘nationalism’ in the narrow sense of advocacy on behalf of a nation state. Hamas, Hezbollah, MB all make similar allusions, in line with scripture, to a greater Islamic nation that is pan-global. If it seems as if Tamimi and co. are so intent on reclaiming al-Quds to the exclusion of any longer term plans for Islamic hegemony, I put that down to expediency; they do argue after all for a Muslim Palestine (wherever that is) being the duty of the ummah to establish.
Whilst I barely have more than a superficial understanding of Marxism, it would seem to me that these pan-global Political islamist aspirations fit nicely with similar hard left tropes.
Christianity takes jewish scripture, disposes of jewish oral law, hermeneutics and jurisprudence
Follow the ‘law’ to the letter too, do you? Had it not ‘disposed’ of narrow, ethnocentric commentary and done away all together with jurisprudence, Christianity would be stuck in the same legalist quagmire as literalist Islam, just not as universal.
Thank heavens for Jesus the Jew is all I can say.
| 20 March 2009, 5:58 pm |
“Right, David, what bit are you referring to in the Melanie Phillips article?”
All of it.
“The reasons Sizer shouldn’t write the review are given above”
Basically, you have to be Avigdor Lieberman, or at least John Hagee.
| 20 March 2009, 6:03 pm |
such as that a particular group of people should or shouldn’t have a piece of land
Isn’t that the sort of thing those ‘no-borders’ extremists advocate? You mean to say that if I owned a house in Rush Green, had bought and paid for it with my own blood, sweat and tears, I have no more right to that land than Mr and Mrs B’taan down the road?
| 20 March 2009, 6:04 pm |
Could you give me a sentence where Melanie Phillips “demands for the banning the proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah with everything that that entails”?
Much of her article was actually critical of the institutional church for not speaking out against Islamists who actively persecute Christians in totalitarian states – unless you have an extremely Eurocentric understanding of Christianity, surely most people will understand this as pro-Christian and not anti-Christian?
“Basically, you have to be Avigdor Lieberman, or at least John Hagee.”
So you’re saying that Christians have to choose between John Hagee and Stephen Sizer’s muddled views on Jews/Judaism/Zionism/Israel, and there’s no alternative?
| 20 March 2009, 6:14 pm |
Vilyum Hi-yes:
Not talking about buying houses. Talking about god giving stuff to people.
| 20 March 2009, 6:34 pm |
Vilyum Hi-yes:
Not talking about buying houses. Talking about god giving stuff to people.
My fault: just stirring. Glad to hear you’re not a red though.
| 20 March 2009, 6:39 pm |
“Could you give me a sentence where Melanie Phillips “demands for the banning the proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah with everything that that entails”?”
She calls it “the ancient Christian canard of supercessionism” and “ancient theological bigotry”, and regularly bangs on about “replacement theology”. This is what she means.
The “alternative” to Hagee’s view is as I set out, the standard Protestant version of which also seems to be Sizer’s view. He is not “muddled”, you just happen to disagree with him.
And, like Phillips, you are unused to being spoken to in such terms: like her, you really did think that Christians in general and, it must be said, Catholics in particular were just going to keep turning up for ever in order to be harangued and insulted without a word of protest, and that you could even demand that the very proclamation of Jesus as the Christ be banned with every expectation of success.
Forty years of this we have had, and for what? Has Hollywood become any less anti-Christian in general and anti-Catholic in particular? Has the BBC? Has the State of Israel? And now this, an organised campaign fundamentally to make Christianity illegal in Britain because Jews do not believe in it.
| 20 March 2009, 6:52 pm |
“You mean to say that if I owned a house in Rush Green, had bought and paid for it with my own blood, sweat and tears, I have no more right to that land than Mr and Mrs B’taan down the road?”
Vilyum – if you happened to have been married to – and then divorced from – Mrs B’taan, you might find yourself with no right to it at all. (And yes, all right, I am speaking from bitter experience.)
| 20 March 2009, 7:00 pm |
“I don’t see how it can dear fellow, at least not ‘nationalism’ in the narrow sense of advocacy on behalf of a nation state.”
Thank you for acknowledging Islamic nationalism exists. This Muslim blogger agrees:
http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/challenging_islamic_nationalism/
Further, Muslims can be nationalists of individual national states or movements.
E.g. a Palestinian Arab Muslim nationalist, or, as I implied, a Palestinian Arab Islamic nationalist.
There is a problem with the term “Islamic”, I agree. But partly that derives from their being no commensurate adjective for the substantive “Muslim” other than “Muslim”, which I also use sometimes.
Further a nationalism may be tinged with or comprise an Islamic discourse, to varying degrees e.g. Arab nationalism and nationalists who often appealed to Islamic discourse, such as Yasser Arafat and Nasser.
I was also referring to Islamic discourse hence “Islamic”.
I don’t care if you do not understand what I wrote. That is your problem, not mine.
| 20 March 2009, 7:37 pm |
If anyone doubts the existence of “Muslim nationalism”may I remind them of the “Istanbul Declaration”, signed by Daud Abdullah and other shitheads sucked up to by Western dhimmis, in which the sovereignty of the “Islamic Nation” is constantly mentioned….
| 20 March 2009, 8:36 pm |
“And j.r. – actually it was originally predicated on Judaism.” Cipriano.
In my own (High) church the sung services are described in the service booklets as deriving from”the Jewish tradition”.
Jesus, all the disciples and S Paul were and are Jews.
As for not being able to find any Jews in the Old Testament – words fail me. Certifiable, obviously.
| 20 March 2009, 10:43 pm |
an organised campaign fundamentally to make Christianity illegal in Britain because Jews do not believe in it.
David Lindsay, aren’t you at all embarrassed to come out with this shit?
| 21 March 2009, 1:59 am |
Will someone please explain the objections to John Hagee? I am not being facetious, but my understanding is that he has rejected “replacement theology” (instead with the concept that Jews have a permanent compact with G-d and access to heaven as full as a Christian). It seems to me that he is not about an ingathering in Israel for the purpose of imminentizing the Eschaton, but (perhaps oversimplifying) believes that when the Messiah appears, faithful Christians will say “welcome back,” and faithful Jews will say “welcome.” Maybe I’m wrong (wouldn’t be the first time) and certainly some of his views on other topics are not exactly progressive nor to my taste.
I’m not being facetious. Please show me the ant-semitic content of John Hagee’s work. But I wouldn’t look to a theological scholar like Bill Maher to inform my opinion.
| 21 March 2009, 2:29 am |
Hagee’s toned down a lot recently – people thought him OTT because of the way he links ‘End Times prophecy’ with global politics, and he upset a lot of people by claiming that the Holocaust was a punishment from God.
Hagee has however given millions and millions of dollars to Israel, given $8.5 million to Soviet immigrants to Israel, and met with every Israeli PM since Menachem Begin. I suspect his support for Israel in itself is main reason why lots of Christian anti-Zionists detest him, rather than his theology.
| 21 March 2009, 4:09 am |
I appreciate your answer. I am a non-religious Jew. But I can understand (if not agree) with his linkage of the end times to world events, from his perspective as a bible believer. And I didn’t think that his Holocaust comments were anti-semitic. Again, from a religious perspective, I could see a belief that when you stray from what G-d commands, you get punished. Much of the Old Testament pushes that lesson. And I don’t think Hagee ever said that this made the Nazi’s or Hitler less evil.
I have read a couple of his books, trying to decide if he was, in fact, another wolf in sheep’s clothing with regard to the Jews. Interestingly though, if I remember correctly, he argues against the ingathering as a trail toward Jewish annihilation (and with the latter as a necessary precursor to the rapture), saying that the evil of WWII reduced the Jewish population by the percentage prophesized (1/3,2/3 — I don’t remember his numbers) and that another massacre wasn’t biblically correct.
The phrase that I remember from his books, and repeated over and over, was to the effect of “blessed are those that bless israel, and cursed are those that curse Israel.” (Not an exact quote). And his feeling that America’s greatness was predicated on its favorable disposition to Jews, Judaism and Israel, and when that fails, so will the USA.
I realize the above doesn’t sound like it comes from someone who says he’s not religious, but there it is. Was it Bakunin who said “you say that I contradict myself. I’m human. I contradict myself.”
| 21 March 2009, 5:15 am |
Was it Bakunin who said “you say that I contradict myself. I’m human. I contradict myself.”
It was Walt Whitman.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
| 21 March 2009, 5:48 am |
Are Christian Teachings Inherently Anti-Jewish?
Professor of History and Social Thought David Nirenberg reviews American New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen’s’ Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism
A small taste…
It is easy to conclude, as the Catholic theologian Rosemary Reuther did in 1974, that “the truth of the Gospel” already encodes the negative teachings about Judaism that Nostra aetate rejects. “Christian scriptural teaching and preaching per se is based on a method in which antiJudaic polemic exists as the left hand of its christological hermeneutic,” she wrote. And “if we wish to reaffirm the gospel without this anti-Judaic left hand, we must analyze and reconstruct the basic dualisms which shaped early Christian self-understanding. ” To put it another way, those who want to claim that God does not condemn the Jews cannot simply dismiss the anti-Judaic content of the gospel. Nor can they ignore the diverse reading practices through which myriad Christian communities in the past two millennia put that content to the hard work of making sense of their canon and their cosmos. In place of continuity, the Christian argument against anti-Judaism needs to invoke rupture. It must posit the formation of a gap between what it understands as Jesus’s own teachings about Jews and Judaism and the more sinister form those teachings eventually took in the canonical gospels; between the “spirit of Christ” and the widespread anti-Jewish beliefs and practices that many Christian communities eventually came to think of as the “truth of the Gospel.”
| 21 March 2009, 11:11 am |
Thank you for acknowledging Islamic nationalism exists. This Muslim blogger agrees:
http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/challenging_islamic_nationalism/
He doesn’t agree at all. The fellow who writes is ignorant of fiefs such as Timur Lane and Ashoka the Great who both espoused nationalism long before any colonial ‘interference’.
This could come straight out of a Mawdudi treatise:
The people who bought nationalism to the masses of the colonial nations were those with European educations, but who were largely excluded from being truly ‘British’ or ‘Dutch’ by racism. Despite the fact that racism is often individualised and psychologized, racism is better understood as an integral facet of nationalist and patriotic ideologies.
And the only sentence where he alludes to a putative Islamic nationalism:
Those fanatics who support the London suicide bombings of 7/7 follow a mutated genus of this disease – one which swears allegiance to a reified ummah and a king-god, whilst rejecting other ‘nations’ as the spawn of Satan. Indeed, extreme Islamic nationalism is at the heart of the debased theologies informing all global khalifa movements.
…is drivel. He cites the 7/7 bombers as somehow misguided Islamic nationalists who have ‘reified the ummah’, when he should know that Allah ‘reified’ the Arabic word ummah some 40 times in the Qur’an in relation to peoples and nations with discrete characteristics. Further, Allah did not restrict his use of ummah to refer to determined geographic boundaries, but rather to metaphysical boundaries and systems of ethics.
Using the words Islam and nationalism in the same context is misleading. Though I would agree that some Muslims have and continue to advocate nationalist goals, this has little if anything to do with a radical departure from Quran’ic ontology
| 21 March 2009, 11:26 am |
When I read David Lindsay’s comments I was genuinely concerned and puzzled, so off I went to find the Melanie P. article.
Having read it, I must say David that I really do think that you have misunderstood her.
As I understand it, when she talks about ‘the ancient Christian canard of supercessionism’ she is refering to the fact that from a Jewish point of view,to put it simply, the Christians came along and decided that God was now on their team and that he had in fact abandoned the Jews in favour of the new kids on the block.
Obviously that seems wierd to Jews, but to turn it into an interpretation of a call for the banning of Christianity is at best far fetched.
David L. also writes ‘Jesus is the Messiah, whose Church is the True and Everlasting Israel’.
Now this I found a little tricky to understand. I realise that Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah -that’s the whole difference between Judaism and Christianity- but the second half of the sentence seems to negate Judaism and imply that the Christian Church is the only legitimate form of belief.
Then there was this:
‘And of course there are no Jews in the Old Testament! Do Jews sacrifice animals? Are they polygamists? Even leaving aside which of them is the legitimate continuation, Judaism is no more the religion of the Old Testament than Christianity is.’
Well this is a big one to tackle on a blog, but it does indicate to me a lack of understanding of the way in which Judaism evolved and adapted after the destruction of the second temple and the reasons for those adaptations.
I personally think that the reason Judaism has managed to survive longer than any other monoatheistic religion is precisely because of its flexibility and pragmatism. But the fact is that we celebrate the same festivals and live according to the same principles as those set out in the OT, (which Christians don’t of course, apart from the mitzvot adam lihavero) so I find the suggestion that there are no Jews in the OT a little off course.
There are, BTW, people who look forward to the building of the third temple and the reinstatement of the traditions associated with that.
Surely, David, the whole point of belief is that it is precisely that; belief in something which cannot and should not be proven.
If one begins to try to ‘prove’ things about God then belief becomes irrelevant and faith becomes meaningless.
I therefore regard any attempt to present any religion as right or wrong as totally futile. Each of us believes in whatever we personally find most appropriate (including atheists) but none of us really knows if we’re right. If we did, there’d be no point to the exercise.
This is why evangelicals of any creed worry me deeply. Anyone who thinks he exclusively knows what God wants and/or that he has a direct line to God is dangerous.
The very essence of faith is that all of us know, yet none of us know. We need to have the humility to recognise that.
| 21 March 2009, 12:05 pm |
Vilyum, he does say there is such a thing as islamic nationalism, as you then go on to contrarily, paradoxically implicitly acknowledge. I didn’t say he, i or you approved of it. As another observed, ummah is sometimes translated as Nation. Indeed a likely derivation of ummah is the hebrew ‘am, people or nation, since muhammed was borrowing such a concept for the community of Islam, the less scholarly derivation from alif mem, mother, notwithstanding (though that does not exclude a common semitic root meaning progenitor or tribe either).
| 21 March 2009, 1:47 pm |
Lbnaz, thank you for the correct cite. Mymemory sometimes isn’t that great; I’ve googled Bakunin more than once in the past, trying to find that quote — obviously without sucess I think my error comes from their similar looks:
;)
| 21 March 2009, 4:20 pm |
Israelinurse – this Christian agrees with every word of your post. Though “monoathestic religion” is a rather wonderful typo!
There is an urban myth about Jews who go around on Good Friday shouting “One-nil” but I’ve never met one.
| 21 March 2009, 4:56 pm |
Incidentally, the first instance of the term “ioudaismos” occurs 2 Macc 8, 1:
“Judas Maccabeus and his companions entered the villages, secretly, summoned their kinsmen, and by also enlisting others who remained faithful to Judaism, assembled about six thousand men.”
To say this post-dates Christianity is, of course, ridiculous.
| 21 March 2009, 6:19 pm |
Zak…I’m posting on behalf of Vilyum (he’s currently incarcerated in a Turkish jail so doesn’t have unlimited access to the net)
Vilyum, he does say there is such a thing as islamic nationalism, as you then go on to contrarily, paradoxically implicitly acknowledge.
I guess I did, didn’t I…silly me. Sorry about that old thing. I often put my foot in it, so often it’s best to ignore me.
I didn’t say he, i or you approved of it. As another observed, ummah is sometimes translated as Nation. Indeed a likely derivation of ummah is the hebrew ‘am, people or nation, since muhammed was borrowing such a concept for the community of Islam, the less scholarly derivation from alif mem, mother, notwithstanding (though that does not exclude a common semitic root meaning progenitor or tribe either).
Yes, I think you’re right as regards ummah. Nearly Oxfordian was the first to discuss the common root on here. The word in Arabic for mother is also ‘umm (أمّ), composed of the letters ‘alif and meem, so ‘ummah (أمّة) is a related. They are both derived from the verb ‘amma (أمّ), which amongst other things means ‘to lead prayer’ – ironic given the modern reformist struggle for women to be allowed to lead congregational prayers.
It also underlines why I’d very much like to learn Hebrew, fascinating language that it is.
| 21 March 2009, 6:42 pm |
Cipriano -oops! that was a classic, wasn’t it?!
I’ve never heard that urban myth. To be honest, I don’t think many Jews even know when Good Friday is and most years they’ll be rushing around making preparations for Pessah.
| 21 March 2009, 9:07 pm |
Melanie Phillip’s spectator article highlighting Rev. Stephen Sizer http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/features/3409686/beware-the-new-axis-of-evangelicals-and-islamists.thtml was predicated on this meeting in south west London http://www.palestinecampaign.org/index7b-2.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=3&l2_id=62&content_ID=478.
As a peace activist in the Tooting constituency of Sadiq Khan the human rights lawyer and Labour Government member, I wrote to him questioning his participation on a platform with Sizer but have still to hear from that local lad made good.
| 22 March 2009, 11:32 am |
Sizer can’t or won’t answer the many charges leveled at him so now he is using bully-boy tactics and threatening to use the police. See the comment he left at this blog: http://largebluefootballs.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-convince-people-that-you-are-not.html
He also posted the comment on his own blog site: http://stephensizer.blogspot.com/2009/03/if-i-was-james-mendelsohn-christian.html you can’t leave comments on this blog as Sizer turned them off!
| 22 March 2009, 5:21 pm |
Hi Nick, I agree with you – I don’t think Hagee is antisemitic in expressing those views – he believes in God and believes he has a relationship with the Jewish people, and his beliefs about the Holocaust I think are an attempt to reconcile the covenant with historical events – it’s a debate which takes place within Judaism, and I see no reason why it cannot take place within Christianity either.
However I think the main focus of Christian Holocaust theology should be to acknowledge the theology, words and actions that allowed many Christians to participate in the Holocaust, and how Christians can take a stand to prevent anything similar from happening again. Hagee’s political Zionism I suspect is his effort to do his utmost to ensure this, although I think Hagee goes too far in his political romanticisation of Israel and by extension all Israeli policies.
I also don’t think contradicting yourself is necessarily a bad thing – to append a well-known phrase, One Jew Two Opinions!
| 23 March 2009, 5:03 pm |
David Lindsay
Here we go again. Like Melanie Phillips in The Spectator a couple of weeks ago, a demand for the banning the proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah with everything that that entails, and a shrieking of “anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism” if anyone objects.
Why should Christians care more for Israel than for a country in which the Constitution requires that the President be a Christian (Lebanon)? Or a country in which there are Christian-majority provinces, and Christian festivals as public holidays (Syria)? Or a country in which there are three reserved parliamentary seats for Christians (Iran, where there is also a reserved seat for a Jew)?
As someone who is neither a Jew nor a Philo-Semite even asking this question is dumb. Basically for all the same reasons that we should care more about South Korea than North Korea. That has nothing to do with the fact that 30% of South Korea are Christians, but that they are a democracy promoting reasonable standards of religious (and other) freedom.
You may as well ask why we supported Japan and not the USSR during the cold war when many Russians were Christians. Even thinking about the question makes me feel that my IQ is shrinking.
Even viewed just purely from a parochial persecution of Christians point of view, many Arab states are prominent persecutors of Christians, or places where non-state actors persecute Christians,
http://www.persecution.org/suffering/country_info.php?PHPSESSID=a492abe5396e6a148884a6965ec753fa
Israel just isn’t on the radar screen on that front.
| 23 March 2009, 5:34 pm |
Seismic Shock
However I think the main focus of Christian Holocaust theology should be to acknowledge the theology, words and actions that allowed many Christians to participate in the Holocaust, and how Christians can take a stand to prevent anything similar from happening again. Hagee’s political Zionism I suspect is his effort to do his utmost to ensure this, although I think Hagee goes too far in his political romanticisation of Israel and by extension all Israeli policies.
Blaming Christianity for the Holocaust is like blaming pop music for the AIDS pandemic. Saying that Christians should examine themselves for the roots of the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust is insulting and bigoted (and I say that as a non-Christian). Charles Darwin bears much more direct causative relevance to the Holocaust than Jesus of Nazareth in my opinion. Should writers on evolution examine their souls to see what responsibility they have for creating the conditions for the Holocaust?
| 23 March 2009, 9:30 pm |
Gunga Din,
thanks for that. I didn’t realise Vilyum was in jail. Whoa…
I wish I had more time to study Arabic. As it is, I’m supposed to be learning Syriac (and am spending too much time learning Welsh).
But thanks for telling me that re. Vilyum. I assume its a political thing.
| 23 March 2009, 11:31 pm |
Tentacle – I am not blaming Christianity for the Holocaust. There’s a good quote (I think in Hitler’s Willing Executioners) which says something like ‘the Holocaust was an ungodly act committed by ungodly men, but it would not have been possible without centuries of antisemitic church teaching.’ Certainly there were many many Christians who opposed Nazism such as Barth, Niemoller and Bonhoeffer. Yes, every group under the sun should allow self-criticism and self-examination – by no means just Christians.
I was talking about the main direction for Christian Holocaust theology (its own theological field), not Christian theology or even Jewish-Christian relations. I mean that there are Holocaust theologians who for my liking adopt a far too fatalistic approach. This is not to accuse them of antisemitism or bigotry by any means, it’s just an observation.
| 23 March 2009, 11:31 pm |
Tentacle – I am not blaming Christianity for the Holocaust. There’s a good quote (I think in Hitler’s Willing Executioners) which says something like ‘the Holocaust was an ungodly act committed by ungodly men, but it would not have been possible without centuries of antisemitic church teaching.’ Certainly there were many many Christians who opposed Nazism such as Barth, Niemoller and Bonhoeffer. Yes, every group under the sun should allow self-criticism and self-examination – by no means just Christians.
I was talking about the main direction for Christian Holocaust theology (its own theological field), not Christian theology or even Jewish-Christian relations. I mean that there are Holocaust theologians who for my liking adopt a far too fatalistic approach. This is not to accuse them of antisemitism or bigotry by any means, it’s just an observation.
| 11 May 2009, 7:32 am |
Here’s an interesting discovery. Asides his partner, the chiefest acknowledgement of John Rose for his Pluto/SWP-UCU publication, The Myths of Zionism, is none other than the great historian and academic in Jewish studies, Michael Rosen:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9787928/The-Myths-of-Zionism
If the issue of Sand’s historical theses being right or wrong were so immaterial, why the investment in proving them right, Michael?
“Yet over the last few years, the paper has allowed various antisemitic and anti-Zionist motifs to be openly eschewed in its pages.”
Um, I don’t think that’s what you mean. Look up “eschew”.