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Why Leftist Jews Distrust Evangelical Christians
When I was attending Cal State Long Beach, I remember one lunchtime when I was approached in the cafeteria by a young man. I don’t remember exactly what he asked me, but I know it had to do with Jesus, and I was immediately put off. I had spent most of my growing up years feeling like an outsider (as a Jew) and a heretic (for not accepting Jesus), and I brusquely rejected his inquiry. He politely walked away, but his unsolicited inquiry has stayed with me.
But my perspective towards Christians in general and Evangelicals specifically has changed dramatically. Due to the communities with which I socialize and my limited but sincere practice of Judaism, coupled with my curiosity about religions, I welcome input from my Christian friends and have found them to be very kind (except for one Ricochetee who believed that the Jewish religion was no longer relevant). So, I thought I might benefit from learning the nature of the relationship between Jews and Evangelicals, the complexity and diversity of those relationships, and how we might all benefit from knowing each other better.
By beginning with the Jews on the political Left, we can see the most current reasons for Jews rejecting and distrusting Christians:
The answer, I think, is that many Christian liberals see Israel as blocking the aspirations of the oppressed—who, they have decided, include the Palestinians. Never mind that the Palestinians support suicide bombers and rocket attacks against Israel; never mind that the Palestinians cannot form a competent government; never mind that they wish to occupy Israel ‘from the sea to the river.’ It is enough that they seem oppressed, even though much of the oppression is self-inflicted.
After the Marxist claims about the proletariat proved false and capitalism was vindicated as the best way to achieve economic affluence, leftists had to stop pretending that they could accomplish much with state-owned factories and national economic plans. As a result, the oppressed replaced the proletariat as the Left’s object of affection. The enemy became, not capitalists, but successful nations.
Attributing Marxist doctrine to the cause of the Palestinians was a premise I hadn’t anticipated. But considering the prevalence of Marxist ideas in this country, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
There is also another distorted set of beliefs that causes Leftist Jews to fear Evangelical Christians:
Christian Smith, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, analyzed four surveys of self-identified evangelicals and found that, while they do think that America was founded as a Christian nation and fear that the country has lost its moral bearings, these views are almost exactly the same as those held by non-evangelical Americans. Evangelicals, like other Americans, oppose having public schools teach Christian values, oppose having public school teachers lead students in vocal prayers, and oppose a constitutional amendment declaring the country a Christian nation. Evangelicals deny that there is one correct Christian view on most political issues, deny that Jews must answer for allegedly killing Christ, deny that laws protecting free speech go too far, and reject the idea that whites should be able to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods. They overwhelmingly agree that Jews and Christians share the same values and can live together in harmony. Evangelicals strongly oppose abortion and gay marriage, but in almost every other respect are like other Americans.
Yet Jews on the Left persist in holding these flawed views. When it comes to helping secure Israel’s survival, the tiny Jewish minority in America should not reject the help offered by a group that is ten times larger and whose views on the central propositions of a democratic society are much like everybody else’s.
In spite of the facts, politically Leftist Jews are highly critical of the Evangelical community:
Evangelical Christians have a high opinion not just of the Jewish state but of Jews as people. That Jewish voters are overwhelmingly liberal doesn’t seem to bother evangelicals, despite their own conservative politics. Yet Jews don’t return the favor: in one Pew survey, 42 percent of Jewish respondents expressed hostility to evangelicals and fundamentalists. As two scholars from Baruch College have shown, a much smaller fraction—about 16 percent—of the American public has similarly antagonistic feelings toward Christian fundamentalists.
There are also tensions over the belief in the end times, with a wide range of belief among the Evangelical Christians; Jews, of course, are waiting for the Messiah. A little humor goes a long way to bridging the gap:
As the late founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein said in a conference led by Israel365 Media in 2015, ‘When the Mashiach comes, we can ask him if this is his first time here or second. Till then, let’s focus on our shared values and opportunities together’.
I expect most Leftist Jews are not amused.
Resentment still shows up in the minds of some Jews toward Evangelical Christians, and it is critically important (and is not clear from the article cited) whether the author was personally approached by Evangelical Christians:
I have no problem with your discovering Jesus and embracing Jesus and putting your faith in Jesus – I actually support that. In fact, there’s a story about the Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, founder of Chassidism, who wouldn’t ride with a wagon driver who didn’t wear a cross on his chest. He preferred to roam through the deserted tundra with a man who at least feared something—never mind the theological nuances.
But why can’t you keep it to yourselves? Why must you insist that I, too, reject my grandfather’s Torah, stop praying the way my family has done since the minus fifteen hundreds, and accept your Jesus, and in my heart, no less?
All religions are entitled to state their purpose and beliefs freely in this country. Unless a person is trapped in a situation where they are forced to listen to these ideas, they should appreciate that this country welcomes religious expression.
The last trend that I wanted to share is something called Replacement Theology:
Younger Evangelical Christians are increasingly distancing from Israel and are less likely to see any theological significance in the Jewish people. However, for many, this may not be the most worrisome development in and of itself. What is more concerning is that it is likely correlated with the fact that more young people are adopting Replacement Theology—believing that upon the birth of Jesus, the Jewish people ceased its role as the chosen people and the Church subsequently replaced them. Many of them are Millennials (34%) even though they only represent 22% of all Evangelical Christians.
These Millennials are today’s young leaders in the United States—in churches, business and government. This trend is unsettling because history has shown that Replacement Theology has produced both antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiments. Especially in European history, those holding positions of Replacement Theology have viewed God as being finished with the Jewish people and Jews as disloyal by being “responsible” for the crucifixion of Jesus. Historically, this has been the source of many antisemitic tropes.
I had not heard about this theology before, and wondered if others had. I’m not here to debate its validity, but only say that it does raise concerns for me.
Finally, this statement summed up my own views toward Evangelical Christians and Christians in general:
Well, our interests with the Evangelical community are aligned. Evangelical supporters have been Israel’s best friends. They have supported the Israeli government, have invested funds in our startup nation and donated over 1.5 billion dollars to organizations we work with. Most importantly, they believe in the same Bible Passage in Genesis that we do. Do we really want to throw out the baby with the bathwater just because we don’t agree with their eschatology?
My Christian friends, Evangelical or otherwise, are a blessing in my life. I’m so grateful for your love and support, and welcome your input to this post.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
[Cont’d]
Turning to Romans 9:6-13, this seems generally consistent with the “Replacement Theology” discussed earlier. Paul seems to be saying that not all descendants of Jacob (or Abraham) count as “Israel,” and that some Gentiles also count as “Israel.” The “elect” — meaning the believers in Jesus who will be saved — include both Jews and non-Jews, and do not include all Jews.
The end of this chapter in Romans does repeat the idea, previously discussed relating to Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, that God will punish the Israelites when they are disobedient, but will not completely wipe out their descendants.
Does this answer your questions?
It’s hard for me to make sense of this.
First aren’t most leftist Jews not especially “practicing”? So they are ethnically Jews, and tribal Jews (iWe?) but not religious.
I don’t know much about Evangelicals probably know far fewer of those than Jews, but I would imagine they are also diverse.
The arguments about what God said, or what he meant, or what he thinks now, are absurd to me.
So whatever the construct of this post it reads to me “ why does a subset of group x dislike a subgroup of y”?
Good luck figuring it out while mixing labels and assigning motivations.
An excellent, thoughtful post, Susan. It brings together thoughts and experiences that I’ve had over the decades as a Christian. I grew up in a Christian fundamentalist church and spent many evenings at prophecy conferences as a kid, and Israel was regularly the focus of speculation about the future. Over time I got past all that ‘eschatology’ and started thinking about the relationship between God’s chosen people in history and God’s widening the welcome to us Gentiles through Christianity, through a new covenant that continues the old covenant.
There are other widenings: Islam propounds God reaching out to the Arab world; and those that we used to call Mormons — now Latter Day Saints — believe God reached out to the New World through The Book of Mormon.
It all started out with God revealing himself to Adam and Eve, to Noah, and to Abraham, and the blessing to humanity has been HUUUGE.
(Regarding the modern nation of Israel: At one point I considered Pat Buchanan’s approach that Palestinians deserved as much consideration as Israel, and I liked that in principle. In real life it hasn’t worked out the way Pat thought.)
The letter that the Apostle Paul writes to the Romans, a book in the Christian Bible, has some material on that relationship between Jews and Christians, and I’ve often found it helpful. At one point Paul writes about the future of Israel in the 26th verse of the 11th chapter of that letter to these Roman Christians:
Paul, originally a practicing, ethnic Jew, makes it clear that Israel holds a special place in human history, and God will fulfill his covenant with his people.
There are books about this. The first author whose name comes to mind is Bat Ye’or, an Egyptian refugee who has written extensively about the plight of Christians and Jews under Muslim rule, from the time of the conquest to the present.
I recall one scholar who, delving into the actual history of what Arab Muslims said, reporting that a large part of the rage against Israel stemmed from the humiliation of being defeated by the Jews–more precisely, because the Koran and Hadith taught that the Jews were a contemptible people, divinely ordained to be forever subjugated by the superior Muslims. After centuries of treating Jews with contempt and cruelty, it was intolerably shameful for a tiny number of “inferior” Jews to defeat the mighty Arab armies. And a further humiliation was to see those Jews prosper and “make the desert bloom”–not to mention seeing Jews not just in Israel but around the world excel in every intellectual field while the Muslim world remained backward in so many ways.
I was so surprised and pleased when I found out that on Ricochet there was even ONE Christian who was not a believer in the “pre-tribulation” eschatology. I was (as I only half-jokingly refer to it) “excommunicated” forty years ago by my first Church for being post-tribulation regarding the Biblical harpazo or “rapture”. And I’ve heard from a lot of the same folks, using the same thinking, that Jews are passé, as well — which I utterly reject.
But anyway, to the point of this article, I have to ask (without looking it up on wikipedia) what’s an Evangelical? I suppose it is something that was intellectually and persuasively proposed decades ago, much like capital-C conservativism.
Absolutely.
It’s strange to me that anyone could say such a thing. That has always been since its beginnings a communist led movement.
I would agree that G-d changes His mind a number of times. If you are saying that those actions explain your premise that He changed His mind regarding the covenant, I would again say that he at no point says He has revoked it from the Jews. We’ll need to disagree.
Not entirely. The Haj Amin al Husseini was a creature of the British Mandate, which was playing divide and rule with the Husseini and Nashashibi clans. There was an election for Mufti of Jerusalem; Amin al Husseini was the low vote getter of four candidates but the Brits wanted a highly placed Husseini as a counterweight to the rival clan, and put Amin in the role with a life tenure. Oops.
He was not a communist; nor was Arafat (IIRC al Husseini’s cousin or nephew.) The USSR was big on promoting “national liberation” movements (except for the ethnic groups from the Soviet Socialist “Republics”) so long as it suited its foreign policy and revolutionary objectives. If nothing else, when they took over a country, they already knew who was good at guerrilla tactics and clandestine organizing; as in Poland, they coopted some and whacked the rest. I’ve long believed that the Tet uprising in Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh’s way of killing two birds with one stone: attacking the US, and killing off a lot of the VC, who might well have posed a threat to his rule when he took over.
Some Palestinian factions were indeed Marxist. Marxian thought influenced virtually every revolutionary, guerilla and terrorist movement of the 20th century, even ones that were at least nominally religions.
And apropos of nothing, the CPUSA realized in the late 1920s that the working class was not as receptive to revolution as they would have liked, and added promoting racial division to their planning. That by no means denies that there were problems how workers were treated (the labor movement was divided between pro-and anti-communist factions) or that Jim Crow laws, their northern equivalents (for example, at one point it was illegal for black people to live in Oregon) or the cultural underpinnings of all the above weren’t evil.
But
This is what I found in my research. Feel free to comment on it.
That’s a knee slapper!
I seem to recall that Haj Amin al Hussein was more of a fascist (albeit a thoroughly Islamic one.) Is that incorrect?
Hm. Thanks.
I’ve never heard of that theology either. I wonder if that’s what actual Replacement Theology says, or just a ridiculous caricature of it. Replacement Theology says the Church replaces Israel as G-d’s people, but I’m fairly confident it’s not “upon the birth of Jesus.”
Replacement Theology is itself something like a caricature of what the New Testament says. The best succinct phrasing I can give is: The Church grew out of Israel; Israel became the Church.
Thanks, St. A. Could you explain what this means?
I’m reminded of a friend of mine who was a pastor with the Vineyard Church in CA. He had a strong faith, and I always appreciated speaking with him. One day I asked him with all respect whether he thought I would not go to heaven because I had not accepted Jesus as my personal saviour. He hesitated, then said he would have a hard time believing that a person like me would not go to heaven. It was an indirect answer, but a sincere and truthful one.
To answer your question, an Evangelical is a Christian who believes it is incumbent him/her to share the Good News of God’s grace.
That seems awfully biased and trite. It is a certain type of Protestant evangelical that came up with that.
Evangelical means that they are very vocal and public about their faith. There are Catholic evangelicals too. An evangelical is someone who evangelizes about his faith to others openly and often emotionally.
G-d’s people are a community. That community took in some Gentile members after the Messiah came.
I’m confused. I really don’t know what you need explained. The sentences mean what they mean, and they seem clear enough to me.
I could point you to Paul’s analogy of the vine if that would help. But it may be a bad idea to go any further into this without more background knowledge. It’s one of the subtler aspects of NT interpretation.
The place to start is, probably, to unlearn anything you think you’ve learned about the New Testament and start with this: It’s a bunch of writings by Jews of the Second Temple era (plus Luke and maybe one or two other friends who aren’t actually Jews) interpreting Torah, Writings, and Prophets and announcing the fulfillment of certain prophecies.
In the NT itself, Matthew might be the easiest place to start, and the letter of James. (Almost certainly not Paul.)
In secondary sources, I can make suggestions. N. T. Wright is very good on this.
Well, technically the word congregation or assembly, or what has been called the “church”, is a direct translation of the Hebrew word for congregation, and in the New Testament the Writer of Hebrews (Hebrews 2:12) shows that the Hebrew word applies to 1st-century Christians as well. The Hebrew congregation of the saints and the Christian congregation of the saints, at least according to the Scriptures, are one and the same congregation across time.
Getting back to Leftist Jews, as with all Leftists, they are Leftists first, and everything else later; including Jews, and Americans. Everything they think, and learn , and know, is seen through the lens of Leftism.
Are there any Christians that don’t believe this? So, I guess, all Christians are evangelical.
I’m pretty sure New Testament Greek use of ecclesia and verbs like synago is meant to capture that same Hebrew terminology. They are references to it, via Septuagint use of the same vocab.
Change by addition only. And the addition is, of course, a fulfillment or unfolding of the old revelation.
Was it?
https://ricochet.com/297418/the-covenant-the-covenant-and-the-covenant-understanding-christian-theology-in-context/
Ok. But it’s also consistent with the analogy of the vine. Israel and the church are the same community.
All Christians should be evangelical (it’s commanded), but many don’t practice it.
I have listened to some discussions featuring Rabbi Tovia Singer, who explains why he thinks Christianity doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It’s very interesting.
The New Testament Is Wrong! – Rabbi Tovia Singer
This explains it to me. Sorry that I didn’t see that at first.
Not specifically about leftism and Jews, but I may have a perspective that will be helpful. As my never-read bio in Ricochet says, “bar mitzvahed in 1964, baptized in 2011.”
Jews know hardly anything about Christians. In Hebrew school, we weren’t presented any discussion at all about who Jesus was. Not even someone we rejected. Just not discussed. But I believe that at some point, that will be discussed and interesting and culture changing understandings will emerge. Since I also believe that all scripture old and new testament is True, that is where the discussion needs to take place. This is ultimately a spiritual problem and the guidebook is the bible.
Did God know that the Jews (mostly) would reject Jesus? Of course. Did then Jewish leadership miss the seemingly obvious connections with prophesy? Of course. Are we still living with those same beliefs and their consequences? I think so and when the politics has a generation or two, or maybe less, to work through this, I believe God’s plan will be evident, whatever the outcome.
Others have written about why Jews tend to vote Democratic. They’re not wrong, but incomplete. This is a conflict worthy of participation, in whatever way it comes to you. Read the Torah and don’t stop till you get to Revelation.