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Conference Report: 30th Biennial Meeting of the Conference on Faith and History

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 4 (December 2016)

Conference Report: 30th Biennial Meeting of the Conference on Faith and History, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA, October 20-22, 2016

By Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University

Under the title of “Marching to Zion: Judaism, Evangelicals, and Anti-Semitism,” three scholars from the Conference on Faith and History examined the relationship between American Protestant Christians, Judaism, and Antisemitism during the tumultuous twentieth century.

Daniel Hummel, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, presented “Rethinking Covenant, Land, and Mission: Jewish-Evangelical Dialogue after Oslo.” In it he recounted the history of Jewish-evangelical dialogue in the United States, which was first officially begun in 1969 with a highly publicized meeting between Billy Graham and the American Jewish leaders at the headquarters of the American Jewish Committee in New York City. While interreligious dialogue and politics do not always go hand-in-hand, they are inextricable in the case of Jewish-evangelical dialogue. Since the late 1960s, it has expanded into one of the most active fronts of Jewish-Christian dialogue, while at the same time American evangelical support for Israel was politicized in the Christian Zionist movement. Hummel argued that Jewish-evangelical dialogue has supplied evangelicals over the past 45 years with new ways of thinking about theological concepts of covenant, land, and mission. Through a combination of changing evangelical theology, exposure to strands of modern Jewish theology, and the very act of interreligious dialogue, new conceptualizations of covenant, land, and mission have helped legitimate Christian Zionism. In political terms, the dialogue has rationalized the Christian Zionist focus on a blessing theology rooted in Genesis 12:3. This theology argues that the Jewish people remain in covenant with God. by which the Jewish people are irrevocably granted the Land of Israel (as demarcated in the Bible), while the mission of Christians is to bear witness to this arrangement by de-prioritizing evangelism and strengthening the covenant through support for the state of Israel.

Timothy D. Padgett, who just defended his PhD from Trinity International University, gave a paper entitled “Diverse Discourse on Zion: American Evangelical Public Discussions of Zionism and the State of Israel, 1937-1973.” In it, he traced the evolution of what he argued were diverse evangelical perspectives on Zionism and the State of Israel in evangelical periodicals. Some periodicals, like Arno C. Gaebelin’s dispensationalist Our Hope, were eschatologically minded but ambivalent about Zionism and (later) the Israeli government. In contrast, the editor and writers at Christian Herald (including the pseudonymous reporter Gabriel Courier) were strongly pro-Israel but wholly uninterested in eschatology. The Reformed magazine, Southern Presbyterian Journal, though often published weekly, had precious little to say about Zionism or Israel. Most stereotypically, perhaps, the Moody Monthly was both uniformly pro-Israeli and motivated by eschatological theology. Next, the dispensationalist Presbyterian magazine Eternity combined ardent support for and harsh criticism of Israel. Finally, Christianity Today and its editor Carl Henry were quite positive about the Jewish state, but gave little expression to any theology of the end times. Overall, American evangelicals were generally pro-Israeli, though this did not seem to correlate with their level of interest in eschatological theology.

Kyle Jantzen of Ambrose University rounded out the panel, with “German Racism, American Antisemitism, and Christian Duty: U.S. Protestant Responses to the Jewish Refugee Crisis of 1938.” In it, he assessed the rhetoric employed by liberal Protestant writers and editors in Advance (Congregational), Christendom (unaffiliated), and The Churchman (Episcopalian) in responding to National Socialism, US antisemitism, the German Church Struggle, and the Jewish refugee crisis of 1938. Without doubt, these members of the Protestant church press–many of them church leaders–understood it to be their Christian duty to respond to a profound sense of crisis. Democracy, civilization, Christianity, and all religion were under attack from the forces of war, totalitarianism, racism, and paganism. These writers and editors named the evils of war and totalitarianism, in particular the threat that Hitler and Nazi Germany posed to the civilized world. They also fought against antisemitism and tried to aid Jews, though not without reviving centuries-old anti-Jewish prejudices from time to time, and also not without reframing the persecution of Jews and the Jewish refugee crisis as the persecution of Christians and Jews and the Christian and Jewish refugee crisis. In the end, the plight of the Jews was not uppermost in their minds. Most important to these liberal Protestant spokesmen was the reaffirmation that Christianity was the only force that could ultimately save their civilization, preserve democracy, and protect the world from self-destruction.

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Review of Eugene J. Fisher and Leon Kleinicki, eds., The Saint for Shalom: How Pope John Paul II Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations: The Complete Texts 1979-2005

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2012

Review of Eugene J. Fisher and Leon Kleinicki, eds., The Saint for Shalom: How Pope John Paul II Transformed Catholic-Jewish Relations: The Complete Texts 1979-2005. A Publication of the Anti-Defamation League (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2011), 363 Pp., ISBN 0-8245-1544-7.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The striking changes in Christian-Jewish relations in recent years have been described as the most significant theological development of the past century. The abandonment of age-old Christian hostilities and prejudices and their replacement by a positive and productive dialogue between partners now marks the altered pattern of relationships. This unprecedented step has been most notably pursued by the Roman Catholic authorities, ever since the historic pronouncements of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. This new stance became consolidated as part of Catholic teaching and practice particularly during the lengthy 26-year reign of Pope John Paul II (1978-2005). It is therefore a welcome step that we now have in English translation a complete edition of the texts of this Pope’s speeches and writings on the subject of Jews, Judaism and the State of Israel. (Previous but incomplete editions were issued in 1987 and 1995.)

As Eugene Fisher notes in his valuable introductory commentary, John Paul II’s views on these topics were conditioned by two seminal events of the mid-twentieth century: the Nazi mass murder of millions of Jews and the subsequent re-establishment of the State of Israel. The theological repercussions of these developments for all Christians became a constantly repeated theme of the Pope’s discourses. The re-creation of Israel in 1948 overthrew one of Christianity’s oldest slanders against the Jews, namely that they were destined to be a wandering people, exiled from their Promised Land, because of their rejection and execution of their Messiah, Jesus. The theological shock of seeing a new and vibrant Jewish state resulted in a radically altered and much more positive view which John Paul embraced throughout his reign. This was a tangible sign of the wider positive relationship with the whole Jewish people throughout the world, based on the recognition that Jews and Christians were spiritual partners. This new stance excluded all previously-held notions of Christian triumphalism, which had for so long regarded Judaism and the Old Testament as being superseded by the more enlightened Christian witness. Instead John Paul repeatedly stressed the common bonds with “our dearly beloved elder brothers”, as exemplified in his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 2000, his visit to the Jewish memorial at Yad Vashem, and his prayer at the Western Wall, which are here reported in full.

No less urgent was the Pope’s repeated emphasis on the need to examine and rectify the calamitous indifference displayed by the Christian community when the Nazis attacked and persecuted the Jewish people. Having himself witnessed these crimes in his native Poland, John Paul could not fail to be aware of the vocal criticisms about the earlier silence of the churches and their leaders, including his own predecessors. He was therefore wholly convinced of the heavy burden of Christian guilt and of the need for gestures of repentance and solidarity. Vatican loyalties here competed with a genuine desire to express remorse and to build a new relationship through discussion and dialogue. These affirmations were to be matched by recurrent pronouncements about the need for Catholics to combat every vestige of anti-Semitism and to oppose all forms of racial intolerance. In Pope John Paul’s view, the painful legacies of earlier centuries were to be replaced by a repeated stress on the common spiritual patrimony shared by Jews and Christians.

As the documents in this collection show, Pope John Paul II’s striking and continued commitment to the cause of reconciliation has meant that these teachings have now become the new orthodoxy. It is indeed inconceivable that any future Catholic leaders could disavow John Paul’s advocacy and tireless endeavours. He has thus earned the sobriquet “The Saint for Shalom”.

Nevertheless, as Fisher admits, controversies still remain. Many Jews still have their doubts about the genuineness of this new Christian attitude after so many centuries of hostility and the world-wide phenomenon of religiously-based anti-Semitism. Many still voice criticisms about the policies of the war-time Pope Pius XII. The convoluted politics of the Middle East and the Pope’s evident sympathy for the plight of Christian Palestinians still continue to muddy the waters of Christian-Jewish relations. Yet these documents provide the evidence for John Paul’s courage in being the first Pope to profess his admiration for the Jewish people’s valiant adherence to their faith, and to affirm energetically the common commitment of both Christians and Jews to pursue justice and peace in the world.

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