Why Jews don't like Evangelicals, &c.

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Why is it that Evangelicals love them some Jews -- and really love them some Israel -- but it's a sentiment that's largely unrequited?
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http:
//www.ethicsdaily.com/article_detail.cfm?AID=6311

"It is interesting at great political rallies how you have a Protestant to pray and a Catholic to pray, and then you have a Jew to pray. With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew. For how in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the true Messiah? It is blasphemy."--Bailey Smith, president, Southern Baptist Convention, Aug. 22, 1980.

There is an adage that 20 years' worth of hard-won theology can be undone by a single 20-minute sermon. Bailey Smith's statement about God's not hearing the prayers of Jews is the illustration of that principle par excellence.

The Southern Baptist leader's offhand remark, at a national affairs briefing in Dallas sponsored by the Moral Majority, wrecked nearly 20 years of the most adventurous and productive interfaith dialogue that Southern Baptists had ever attempted with Jews.

http:
//mediamatters.org/items/200601050004

Robertson blamed Sharon stroke on policy of "dividing God's land"

Summary: Pat Robertson suggested that Ariel Sharon's stroke occurred because he was "dividing God's land."

Evengelicals believe that anyone who does not believe that Christ is the son of God & has not asked him into their hearts are NOT going to heaven. It has been interesting to see so many Evangelicals (Pat Robertson, etc.) the last few years trying to make peace & talk like they just LOVE Jews. IF you listen to them carefully it is not that they love Jews but they are looking for the second coming of Christ. They believe that in order for Christ to come, Isreal must be restored, etc.

On the flip side, kind of sounds like what the Islamic extremest believe except they want to take everyone out getting to the same point. Not so sure if push came to shove that the extreme RR would not do the same given a charismatic leader.

BTW, I know many Evangelicals who DO NOT agree with the abortion/gay issue stance that you see the EXTREME RR pushing. Perhaps, that is why they are so disenfranchised with the Republican Party. They believe that these things are between God & the person.

it's a sentiment that's largely unrequited

Might have something to do with the (largely, though I'm sure not universally, correct) perception that Evangelical support of Israel is based firmly in an end-times eschatology that ultimately ends up with the Jews either converted or destroyed.

I used to spend a lot of time among Jews, and still read a number of Jewish magazines (Reform Judaism, Moment, Zeek); and while there are differing opinions, there is a large school of thought that simply doesn't trust the intentions of the Evangelical Israel-boosters, and feels that it's only a matter of time before they (the Evangelicals) turn around and throw them (the Jews) under the wheels of the cosmic bus.

Evangelicals strongly oppose abortion and gay marriage, but in almost every other respect are like other Americans.

I wasn't aware that, outside Evangelicals, there was a majority of Americans in favor of both. Maybe, maybe abortion. But the numbers against gay marriage have been high.

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Evangelicals don't love Jews, they love Israel. For American Jews, they can tell the difference between being coopted and being really understood.

Posted by: Daniel | February 6, 2008 9:54 AM
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Nicely put - Ann Coulter said during an interview that she loves Jews so much that she wants them to become Christians.

Jesus on the Cross.

That is why Christians (Evangelicals) love "Jews."

Serioulsy.

When you read Wilson's article, all he talks about is Israel. It's as if the domestic experience of Jews in the U.S. doesn't exist and all they care about is Israel. That kind of blindness to the Jewish experience and viewpoint is not an indication of someone who really understands the issue.

"Evangelicals deny that there is one correct Christian view on most political issues..."

Ahem, but what does the religious right believe, you know the constituency that allegedly has political power? As far as I can tell there's a host of social issues (aka political issues) that the Religious Right intimately connects to their Christianity. Isn't that after all what makes the Religious Right, religious ie religion is the basis for and gives rise to one's political and moral beliefs.

Abortion, gay rights, prayer in school, divorce etc. I know exactly what position the religious right takes on those issues because that movement directly translates their religious views into political ones.

The only way that survey works in Wilson's analysis is if you elide the two, which is ridiculous.

It’s been my experience that most Jews don’t care too much for any believing Christian, regardless of whether the individual is Evangelical or not. Believing Christians are always just a few steps away from re-imposing the Inquisition, dontcha know?

I first noticed the intensity of this dislike starting about 12 years ago, when joining Internet discussion groups. Anonymity provides cover for candor, which is a good thing, as I at least consider myself more knowledgeable for it.

That was a nice comment, Donny. Also the Psalm 51 thing. You have to give credit where credit is due.

Interesting post Rod. Do you sense the ecumenical dialog that has been happening for the last half-century or so, is hitting a wall? It seems to me that every side is hardening - secularist, various Christian denominations, Muslims, etc...could the classical liberal view of the tolerant society be fracturing? I'm not sure - just asking.

Sorry, every year the Christmas season involves people writing letters to the editor of the newspaper explaining how if I don't celebrate your holiday I should shut up and pin a picture of Jesus to my lapel anyway because this is a Christian nation and I'm welcome to find another country if I don't like it.

'Trotsky'

This is a typical example of Jewish hyperventilating. No one is telling 'Trotsky' (nice monikker, a muderous revolutionary) to celebrate anything, and certainly not put images of Christ on your clothing. But the 80-90 percent of us that are nominal or practicing Christians want to be able to wish each other 'Merry Christmas' in public, we want the corporations that make so much money off the 'season' to acknowledge what that 'season' really is, even if for nostalgic reasons. There is a sense I get that many Jews are at war with the majority culture/religion out of sheer resentment -- even in this country which has generally been very good for them.

BTW the war on Christmas rhetoric seems to be a Catholic thing.

It’s been my experience that most Jews don’t care too much for any believing Christian, regardless of whether the individual is Evangelical or not. Believing Christians are always just a few steps away from re-imposing the Inquisition, dontcha know?

It's not dislike, Scott, it's fear. Not even going into the fact that we are only 60 years off the Holocaust, when basically every Xian on the face of the planet turned their back on us, it's the fact that anti-Semitism in the country was rampant at the time, that there were school and corporate quotas, restrictions on town, neighborhoods, hotels, etc.

This stuff doesn't leave the conscientiousness very quickly.

That is why Christians (Evangelicals) love "Jews."

Gee, why the use of quotation marks, "Donny"?

Does anyone remember that the Southern Baptist Convention put out a guide to evangelizing Jews just prior to our holiest holidays in 1996? It was pretty blunt that this would be a good time of year to bring over as many Jews as possible.

Not to mention that the SBC funds "messianic" organizations which try to convert Jews through lies and deceit. It isn't a good feeling to have to send one's child out into the world knowing there are wolves trying to lure him out of his covenant and family.

It's a trust issue. There is none.

Well, Mr. Wilson seems remarkably unaware of what is called Philosemitism in the literature. Which Jewish scholars basically agree is an attitude that buries substantial unresolved anti-Semitism underneath it. For a somewhat extreme example, German Neonazis are highly supportive of Israel and Israeli sabras- they admire their determination, their onesided fight for land and domination with Arabs and Palestinians, the Settler intent to outbreed the Savages they battle daily, the rigid sacred materialism and nationalism and divinely ordained glorious destiny that is the ideology. It's just real Jews, serious manifestations of Judaism and Jewish faith, and Semitic/desert peoples' cultural conventions and habits they can't stand.

In Wilson's article there's a lot of Philosemitic attitude in patronizing form, some of which is just patronizing and the rest mostly a denial of Judaism and culturally Semitic group identity as the core of Jewish life, reducing Jewish interests to the existence of Israel and "liberalism". I think he could learn a lot from e.g. Thorleif Boman's "Hebrew Thought Compared to Greek" (1961) about the pre-Christian European assumptions and ways of thinking by which he misanalyzes American Jews and the history of Jews in the West. Ironically, that deep Semitic-European conceptual clash is the root of anti-Semitism in the West when one side absolutized its claims or they were taken to be irreconcilable. (When viewed and lived as tolerable and as complementarity, it's led to the famous creative 'symbiosis'.)

Jews are necessarily more aware of this pattern and the underlying realities than most European cultural traditionalists, of course. (Martin Buber's "On Judaism" lectures and essays of 1912-30s contain much of the same observations vis a vis European cultural norms and way of thinking as Boman's book of 1961.) And if you do scratch your average elderly American Evangelical or orthodox Believer hard about Jews and Judaism, in my experience the result is usually quite morally ugly.

Wilson, if he were wise, might also want to consider what it would take for American Evangelical society to survive as truly a small religious and pseudoethnic minority without majority sympathy, i.e. needing to stand on its merits and historical record rather than numbers. Just about every religious group will or has had to choose between numbers and internal integrity in its clash with Modernity and majorities unfavorable to it. The long term survivors are those who choose integrity, relinquishing institutional wealth, group political power and status, and peacefully letting loose or rebellious adherents go- often a large proportion of the membership. Rigidity or orthodoxy are not qualities identical with integrity, it must be noted, though they are often the most successful substitutes.

There's a curiosity noted in cultural or social anthropology, which is that societies expand to a unit size of between 15 and 20 million people, and then either growth continues but the group splits, or people leave or die until population sinks below the critical number again. Functional cities/metro areas tend to obey the 15-20 million matured social unit model rather nicely, e.g. New York or Los Angeles in the U.S., and subregions like California or countries seem to obey it fairly well. (Texas seems to be in some turmoil about whether it will form one or two mostly overlapping ones; if two, one will spill over geographically into Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.)

In aggregate, the world population of self-identifying Jews has likewise held around to that putative mature societal unit size this century, and that despite the millions lost in the Holocaust. The eventual integration of Israelis with Palestinians will be an interesting challenge, but that lies two generations away or so. The unit size also poses an interesting set of considerations about the future of American Christianity/ies, given how increasingly identified particular kinds are becoming with regions and ethnic descent.

Cleveland,

The digital handle is the alpha and omega of my attraction to Communism. However, the easy answer to your question is that millions of Jews lived in the old Russian empire and were terribly oppressed therein. They thought the old order was worth overthrowing -- and in fact I'd say they were right.

Alas, history is filled with tragedy, and the new order wasn't much better. We've gone through a few orders since in Russia, and it's still only a little better. It's enough to make you believe in the Fall of Man.

Cleveland, I submit that there is a much simpler explanation: given the Christian hegemony in western governments and politics, communism is simply one of the few avenues open to a Jew gaining a similar level of power.

It's not the Church, it's the closed doors of a private club. Only solution: start one's own club, and gain enough power to displace the other club.