Christians...we must denounce Anti-Semitism

My heart hurts. Yesterday, in a senseless act of terrorism, 11 lives were ended and many more people were injured. Tonight, I am sitting here thinking about my own community--several years ago, the local synagogue put a sign outside the temple that let people know it was a Jewish congregation. Many of the elderly Jewish members of the congregation, had been Holocaust survivors or had lost family in the Holocaust and were worried about the fact that Anti-Semitism is alive and well in our nation and they felt putting the sign outside would invite trouble. 

The student Rabbi at the time said that the community should be proud to let the world know where they worshiped and honestly I agreed with the sentiment. After all, it's the 21st century and anti-semitism is so 20th century...or so I thought until yesterday, when I read that 11 people had died and all of them senior citizens. As a Christian, I immediately thought about evil that is wrought against "my spiritual cousins." As the names started to come out, as well as ages, I heard one was a holocaust survivor. Earlier today, I read on twitter that the "survivor" wasn't a Holocaust survivor--but here is my belief--she was 97 years old; she may not have been in Europe during the Holocaust, but what if her family was? What if she lost someone in a concentration camp?

Today, however, the various news sources have written about the victims, and what caused the shooting. I get it, the shooter was a non-Trump supporter, hater of Israel. However, we've not spoken out about what we really need to stand against! 

Christians, we must denounce Anti-Semitism. I was reading the ERLC website and have chosen to use their 6 reasons as to why we, Christians, must denounce anti-semitism. 

1. Anti-Semitism is hatred of the Jewish people

A human rights agency of the European Union once attempted to craft a working definition of anti-Semitism:

“[Anti-Semitism] is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”[1]

Some will say this is only a working definition of what anti-semitism is and while that is somewhat true; Christians are called to love. Matter of fact, Ruth, a Moabite, gives us our true first example of how we should view the Jewish people and God when she pledges her life to her mother-in-law Naomi “But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” 

2. Anti-Semitism is contrary to Imago Dei

As confessing Christians, we learn from the very beginning of the biblical narrative that anti-Semitism is contrary to the biblical teachings of the Imago Dei. Specifically, Genesis 1:27 tells us, “God created man in His own image, He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female.” “In the image of God.” This is a distinction given only to humanity amidst a vast and diverse creation. It is not merely that humans are at the top of a creation hierarchy. It is that we are in a different category altogether.

I love how the United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline states “We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God,” 

To speak, therefore, of any fellow human being as equivalent to—or lesser than—an animal is anti-human and, ultimately, unbiblical. Yet this is exactly what we find in anti-Semitism: the dehumanizing of human beings. Along with other forms of racism and xenophobia, anti-Semitism dehumanizes a very special member of God’s creation, a creature who bears the Imago Dei.

3. Anti-Semitism is an indicator of ethnic and religious intolerance

Where anti-Semitism is found, we also find intolerance of and persecution of other ethnic and religious groups. Anti-Semitic attitudes, rhetoric and actions mark the least free and most oppressive societies on our globe. U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power observed that anti-Semitism “is often the canary in the coal mine for the degradation of human rights more broadly. When the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Jews are repressed, the rights and freedoms of other minorities and other sectors are often not far behind.”

An account by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, (USCIRF) shows clear evidence anti-Semitism often corresponds with persecution and targeting of other minority groups. For example:

• In Egypt, where the media and government authorities permit anti-Semitism to run rampant, we see persecution of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baha’is, among others.
• In Iran, where leaders have a history of denying the Holocaust, and calling for the destruction of the state of Israel, we witness imprisonment and torture of converts to Christianity, and other faiths like Baha'i and minority expressions of the Muslim faith.
• Where anti-Semitism persists in Belarus, other minority faiths are denied registration and Baptist churches are raided by the government.[2]

That is but a glimpse of the data, but the point is clear. Where anti-Semitism remains unchecked, persecution of other ethnic and religious groups also persists. Anti-Semitism is a problem for all human beings, not just Jews. It warns of other existing or future human rights abuses. Anti-Semitism is a worldview of thugs and despots.

4. Anti-Semitism is contrary to the behavior of a civilized people

Anti-Semitism is contrary to the behavior of a civilized people. By any measure, the countries mentioned above are not healthy, thriving societies. Instead, their governments aggressively antagonize and persecute their own citizens. Their governments collude with non-state actors to blame the Jewish people for their own self-imposed poverty, violence, and instability. Or, the government looks the other way and permits social hostilities to abuse Jews. A nation marked by rampant anti-Semitism is not a country entitled to normalized relations with the United States. Those complicit in either propagating or excusing anti-Semitism are no friends of freedom and, therefore, no friends of the United States of America.

5. Anti-Semitism is contrary to God’s gifts of freedom of thought and religion

Jewish identity is not limited to religious expression, of course. But to the extent religious expression is part of what it means to be Jewish, hatred of the Jews qualifies as hatred of a religious people and their beliefs. Thus, anti-Semitism is contrary to God’s gift[3] of freedom of thought and religion. God created humans as autonomous creatures. His instructions in the Garden gave us the responsibility of choosing our eternal allegiance. Even God did not pre-program us to blindly believe in and worship him. If the Creator granted individuals with a responsibility and freedom for belief, certainly it is wholly inappropriate for another human or temporal institution to persecute another on the basis of religious belief.

6. A lesson from history

Protestant Christianity learned our lesson on anti-Semitism the hard way in the 20th Century. As historian Timothy George accounts, aside from the Barmen Declaration of 1934 there was little in the way of protest from the organized church in Germany and Europe during the rise of Hitler and National Socialism. Instead, following the Holocaust that slaughtered 6 million Jews, the Evangelical Church in Germany and the Baptist Union of Germany could do nothing but issue statements of remorse, confessing they themselves shared in the guilt through their own “omission and silence.”

Regrettably, our own Convention was not exempt from this guilt. In 1936, Southern Baptist leaders visited Berlin to attend the Baptist World Alliance Congress:

“They met under the banner of the swastika, received greetings from Hitler, and returned to America with glowing reports on the great things happening in Germany. They specifically minimized the totalitarianism and glaring anti-Semitism which was obvious even in 1936.”[4]

Those who either fostered or ignored anti-Semitic attitudes were not merely on the wrong side of history. They were, as Russell Moore might put it, on the wrong side of Christ. Millions of our fellow human beings paid for our indifferent attitudes with their lives. Therefore, Southern Baptists have since resolved to no longer stand idly by when anti-Semitism rears its evil head. As we continue to witness new and virulent forms of anti-Semitism here and around the globe, Southern Baptists will–with God’s grace, and hopefully the broad spectrum of evangelical Christianity–stand up and yell, “stop” on behalf of Jewish people.

Notwithstanding the above dark history, Southern Baptists have otherwise commonly expressed solidarity with either the Jewish people or the state of Israel for nearly 100 years. A 1919 resolution called on the U.S. government to provide relief for displaced Jews. A resolution in 1947 called for the U.S. to admit 400,000 displaced Europeans in the aftermath of World War II, including Jewish populations. In this spirit, the following are excerpts from the Southern Baptist Convention’s most recent Resolution On Anti-Semitism, worth quoting at length:

WHEREAS, Southern Baptists deplore all forms of hatred or bigotry toward any person or people group; and

WHEREAS, Scripture speaks of God’s love for the Jewish people, through whom God has blessed the world with His Word and with His Messiah, our Lord Jesus; and

WHEREAS, There is a rising tide of anti-Semitism across the globe, which manifests itself in despicable acts of violence and harassment against the Jewish people; and ...

WHEREAS, Populist expressions of anti-Semitism are becoming widespread in some     European countries to a degree that has not been seen since World War II; and

WHEREAS, The bloody history of the twentieth century reminds us of the unspeakably evil legacy of anti-Semitism; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention… denounce all forms of anti-Semitism as contrary to the teachings of our Messiah and an assault on the revelation of Holy Scripture; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we affirm to Jewish people around the world that we stand with them against any harassment that violates our historic commitments to religious liberty and human dignity; and be it finally

RESOLVED, That we call on governmental and religious leaders across the world to stand against all forms of bigotry, hatred, or persecution.

And I am going to add a 7th reason Christians MUST denounce anti-semitism: 

First, anti-Semitism is totally inconsistent with the stated attitude of Jesus toward the Jews. To believe that Jesus is the Messiah or Christ and then not reflect His attitude toward the Jewish people is the height of hypocrisy, let alone a fallacious inconsistency. Jesus was born a Jew, He lived as a Jew, and He died a Jew, by His choice. Even His resurrection was molded after Jewish expectation. He lived in the midst of His Jewish people and He loved them with a love unparalleled in the annals of Jewish history. Even when it became apparent that a large number of His people had rejected His Messianic claims, Jesus wept over a city that not only missed His arrival, but also a city that would come under the Roman destruction in the very near future. Jerusalem, the golden, would become Jerusalem the ruin (Luke 19:37-44).

Even in His hour of death, He prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). His dying heart desired forgiveness, not revenge! Is it any wonder that Jesus told His disciples that love would be the one undeniable evidence that they had been with Him (John 13:34-35)? He commanded them, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). One can argue against a doctrine and fight against a cause, but when love is felt, the message is heard! The early Jewish believers were known for many things, but none more forcibly than their undying love for their Messiah and their Jewish kinsmen. It is utterly inconsistent to despise those who are so dearly loved by Jesus Himself. Prejudice must fade in the dawn of His love.

Early Jewish leadership of the Church

Second, anti-Semitism is absolutely inconsistent with the attitude and teaching of the Apostles, the early Jewish leaders of the Christian Church. They were not only loyal Jews who had come to believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, but they also wrote the documents of the New Testament. They knew Jesus personally and willingly died as martyrs rather than renounce Him. The Apostle Paul, more than any other, carried the good news of the Jewish Messiah to the farthest corners of the earth. And yet, wherever he traveled, he never bypassed the Jews; he always went to them first. God’s program begins with the Jews (Romans 1:16). Paul’s greatest sorrow was that many of his kinsmen had rejected their Messiah. This great Apostle’s love for his Jewish people was so intense that he was willing, if it were possible, to surrender his own salvation and suffer the eternal judgment of God, if they would only come back to Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. “I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from the Messiah for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:2-3). His prayers were constantly rising before the throne of God on their behalf: “My heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is their salvation” (Romans 10:1).

Paul realized that Israel’s future was anchored in her great heritage. The Jewish people “are beloved for the sake of the fathers” (Romans 11:28). God’s covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not broken and irretrievably cast aside. The promises stand firm and secure. Like Jesus before him, Paul foresaw a day in the distant future when Israel would experience all of the Messianic blessings, that glorious day when the nation would turn to Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world (Romans 11:25-29). The Apostles would have been appalled at the centuries of anti-Semitic hatred. It is absolutely inconsistent with not only their love and concern for the Jews, but also with their hope for Israel and her future.