Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Should Christians Seek to Convert Jews?
Christianity no longer possesses the moral right to proselytize Jews
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
February 2000Should Christians seek to convert Jews? The Southern Baptists have drawn attention to themselves with their aggressive program of evangelization directed at Jewish people. Nobody disputes anybody's constitutional right to preach to others, or for that matter to spit when their name is mentioned. My concerns are not about rights but rightness. What was offensive to most Jews and many Christians was the program's focus on Jewish festivals and the appropriation of Jewish symbols in the effort to convert.
Christians who are perplexed by Jewish outrage need to imagine how it would feel to be themselves a religious minority and have to explain to their children a barrage of public messages harshly reinterpreting Christmas and Easter.
The theology around ongoing attempts to convert Jews is complex. In chapters 9 through 11 of his Letter to the Romans, a passage that betrays his own frustration and confusion, Saint Paul puts the brakes on; he says his business is Gentiles, and he leaves the fate of Jews to the will of God.
Most New Testament books do not address the issue. Christians who seek to convert everyone rely on the passage, "There is no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved" than the name of Jesus. To complicate the matter, parts of the New Testament read outside their first-century context sound stunningly anti-Semitic.
For me. the question cannot be theological until it is moral.
Suppose those who feel a mission to convert Jews are correct from a religious point of view. Then they must realize the grievous sin against God and the Jews in the long history of oppression, abuse, and even murder that Christians either committed, permitted, or failed to protest throughout the centuries.
From the standpoint of orthodox Christianity, the sin is a double one. The most obvious is doing evil to another human being. The more insidious sin is creation of a Jew-hating culture that dominated the West for so long, a culture that makes it morally offensive to turn around and "make nice" in a supposed historical vacuum. It is not difficult to empathize with those few sects of Judaism whose adherents resort to spitting when certain references to Christians arise.
Christianity no longer possesses the moral right to proselytize Jews.
People remember, especially people who have survived persecution. On the other hand, some people who have not suffered much try to live as though the past were another country. This is usually a mistake.
Just as it is irrelevant for white Americans to say that because they never owned slaves, they have no responsibility for the culture of racism in our land, Christians who claim to "love" Jews enough to want the proclaim the Gospel to them need to think what a Jew might hear, feel and remember when that "love" is expressed.
No matter how pure contemporary Christians believe their motives to be, they must remember that they are part of a religious culture that has left a dark stain on history. The lamentable state of Palestinian Christians by no means balances the scales, but that is another discussion.
Anti-Semitism is ecumenical. Every Protestant who wants to blame the Inquisition needs to contemplate Luther's anti-Semitism and the KKK's original "Christian" purpose of ridding the south of Jews, among others. The more subtle forms of hate persist, the worse for their tastefulness.
Christians who believe themselves called to proselytize Jews and discover that the actions of Christians over the years make their words unhearable do best to own the horror and shock of recognizing that 17 centuries of casual and concentrated abuse have made impossible what they most seek to do.
We cannot escape the past. Guilt may or may not be corporate, but it certainly is communal. In the wise words of the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: "Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible."
If there actually is a mission to convert Jews, it needs to begin with an entire millennium of repentance, respect, and cooperation -- the building of bridges. It would need to include intense and grateful listening to all that Judaism has to teach Christians. Perhaps, then, in the year 3000, there would exist a climate where the insights of Christianity could be shared (not shouted) in a way that would provoke neither outrage nor bitter laughter.
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