Replacing Judaism

It has probably not escaped the attention of those who care that Israel and Judaism itself are not only under fire from extremist elements within Islam. In fact, the middle child of the three so-called Abrahamic faiths, Christianity, has its own elements that have still not lost the antisemitic fervour of past centuries.

What may surprise many Jews, however, is that far from being just the fringe elements of Christendom, some of the biggest detractors of Judaism and Israel come from the mainstream churches. By contrast, some of the greatest supporters of the Jews and the Zionist ideal in recent times have been non-mainstream evangelical Christians.

The reasons for this strange state of affairs are well documented. From the time that Christianity completed its split from Judaism at the beginning of the fourth century, the various Christian creeds have practiced what has come to be known as replacement theology, sometimes also referred to as supersessionism. The basic premise is quite simple: when the Jews rejected Jesus as the messiah, God supposedly cancelled his contract with Israel as his chosen people and transferred it to the Christian church.

As far as Christendom is concerned, the spiritual consequences of this are, at best, that God has no specific plans for Israel and the Jews – they’re just like any other nation. At worst, Jews and Israel will rot in hell for their audacity of rejecting the other worldly claims of a Jewish boy. Spiritual consequences aside, for Jews the practical consequences have been 1700 years of unrelenting antisemitic violence from so-called Christians acting in the name of their loving messiah.

Many evangelical Christians don’t hold to supersessionism. They believe that the contract with Israel still stands while they also have their own newer one. Therefore they are strong supporters of Israel and Zionism. They believe, however, that in order to be “saved” Jews will eventually have to accept Jesus as their messiah and they’re only too pleased to convert them to their brand of “messianic Judaism”.

It is against this background that we see large segments of the mainstream Christian body vociferously denigrating Israel to the point of supporting Palestinian terrorism. Three large mainstream churches in particular – Presbyterian, Anglican and United Methodist – as well as others, have all publicly been harsh critics of Israel and have sided with their enemies in recent years. The above-named churches have also introduced Israel divestment policies within their dioceses. The Catholic Church in contrast, has since Vatican II was convened in 1965 disowned replacement theology, although there are large pockets within Catholicism that still subscribe to it.

When one recognises and understands the premise of replacement theology, the context of what can only be described as church sanctioned antisemitic pronouncements become clear. The sentiments expressed recently by the acting vicar of the Anglican Church of East Malvern, Bishop John Bayton, that Israel was founded by the descendants of biblical racists and murderers and, in the case of Joshua, the first holocaust perpetrator, is a case in point. Are these sentiments any different in essence from the antisemitic sentiments emanating from Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian territories, which claim that Jews are descended from Apes and Pigs, poison water supplies and drink the blood of non-Jewish children?

In January 2002, the State of Victoria introduced the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act. Within three months, two evangelical Christian pastors were successfully prosecuted for conducting a closed seminar in which they allegedly ridiculed aspects of Islam, while quoting from the Koran. If these two pastors were indeed acting outside the law, is it too much to speculate about the legality of an Anglican vicar very publicly making denigrating statements about the foundations of Judaism? Or is there an exception to the rule when it concerns Jews and mainstream churches?