Anti-Semitism

Attitude and acts of hatred committed against Jews.

The term was coined by the German writer Wilhelm Marr in 1879 during a time when Europe was caught up in the chaotic process of national formation, when Jews—isolated in their ghettos—were viewed with intensified suspicion both as enemies of progress and as agents of modernity, greedy competitors all out to destroy national economy and identity.

Anti-semitism was a very real thing in the Western Church and was founded on the popular but mistaken notion that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus; they were as the popular slogan goes, "God-killers." Especially in the times of the Crusades it became an excuse for the many pogroms, vicious attacks on Jews and their communities.

The shock of Nazis'shock slaughter of more than six million Jews in the Holocaust, there came near universal criticism of such ethnic hatred, and Jewish hatred has since turn in many places (but particularly in USA), whether out of genuine repentance or shameful guilt, into unwavering support for modern Israel. As a result anti-semiticism has become a very useful slogan to sling at those who would raise any criticism of Israel or the Jews even when they are in clear violations of recognized agreements (e.g., the illegal land grab in the West Bank and the near-tyrannical oppression of the Palestinians). When it comes to Jews and Israel the prophetic voices we know so well from the Old Testament when Israel sinned and which ought to be a genuine voice in the Church has died. Courage has been smothered.

Yet there is another tragedy in this already tragic state of affair. Anti-semiticism is properly opposion to Semites. But Arabs are also Semites. Not only, therefore, has a word that belongs to a larger body of people been aroggated to one smaller group, but now in order not to be anti-semitic vis-a-vis the Jews, we are forced to be anti-semitic vis-a-vis the Arabs. Christians cannot be anti-Jews, but neither should we be driven into compromise by therefore treating others 'dispreferrentially' because of our fear of being charged anti-Jews (though, unfortunately, those who do so charge Christians are Christians themselves). A particular shameful example of this comes from the Urbana Missionary Conference 2019. Urbana has been one of the most used-by-God conferences in encouraging young men and women to serve in the field and is organized by the InterVarsity Fellowship (IVF), and evangelical student movement in USA. For the 2019 conference the organizing committee had invited as one of the speakers a notable Palestinian Christian. When this became known, the organization was threatened with withdrawal of financial support unless they withdraw the invitation. Shamefully, IVF caved-in. It was a day of grief for many of IVF's associated student fellowships around the world, who protested by boycotting the conference. It was a day of grief for our Lord Jesus Christ too, we can be sure. We must remain the "Third Race," and bear the courage to call sin sin whether it is committed by Jews-Israel or Arabs-Palestine or any other entity. God's righteousness requires us to do so. To fail to do so is to surrender out birth-right as the children of a holy God.