A New Era for Jews and Christians?
“The persecution will end when the Pope enters the synagogue.”—A Jewish proverb.
ON APRIL 13, 1986, Pope John Paul II became the first Roman pontiff of record to enter a Jewish house of worship. To the sound of thunderous applause, the pope reaffirmed that the Catholic church “deplores the hatred, persecutions and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone.” He said that his ‘visit was meant to overcome old prejudices and to secure fuller recognition of the common spiritual heritage that exists between Jews and Christians.’
In recent years other religions of Christendom have also sought to heal the age-old breach between them and the Jews. In June 1987 the U.S. Presbyterian churches released a document expressing repentance over the church’s long involvement with “anti-Jewish attitudes and actions.” On the heels of that move, the United Church of Christ passed a resolution of its own. This declared that “Judaism has not been superseded by Christianity” and that “God’s covenant with the Jewish people has not been abrogated.”
Christendom and the Holocaust
What is behind these remarkable efforts? Nothing less than an attempt on Christendom’s part to distance itself from the Nazi Holocaust. In the years immediately following World War II, most church leaders tried to ignore that the Holocaust terrors had been perpetrated by professed Christians. However, the implications of this disturbing fact were not lost upon the Jewish people.
As the years passed, Holocaust survivors began speaking up. Books, magazines, and film presentations brought the world face-to-face with the terrors of the concentration camp. The State of Israel’s fight for survival likewise focused the world’s attention on Jewry. As a result, Christendom has increasingly come under fire. As G. Peter Fleck wrote in The Christian Century: “There is something terribly wrong with . . . a religion and a civilization that could bring forth and tolerate such an abomination [as the Holocaust]. And there must be something wrong with a church that observed near total silence and inaction during the horror.”
Jewish leaders agree. Rabbi Stuart E. Rosenberg asks why, following World War II, ‘so few churches or their leaders saw that there was a relationship between the long and continuous history of Christian anti-Judaism and the end product of Nazism—the calculated murder of one third of the Jewish people.’ He noted that many church members “hid their faces, or, even worse, placidly accepted the doom of the six million in Hitler’s Europe as a divine judgment for the ‘Jewish rejection of Jesus.’”—The Christian Problem.
And Elie Wiesel says in his book A Jew Today: “How is one to explain that neither Hitler nor Himmler was ever excommunicated by the church? That Pius XII never thought it necessary, not to say indispensable, to condemn Auschwitz and Treblinka? That among the S.S. a large proportion were believers who remained faithful to their Christian ties to the end? That there were killers who went to confession between massacres? And that they all came from Christian families and had received a Christian education?”
Little wonder, then, that church leaders have been forced to reassess their position toward Judaism. A new theology in Christendom is thus emerging in which Jews are no longer spoken of as ‘Christ-killers’ or as ‘an accursed people’ but are accorded recognition and dignity. There is even talk that Christianity and Judaism may serve as ‘diverse paths to God.’
A “New Era” Beginning?
These developments have been hailed by some as the beginning of “a whole new era in relations” between Jews and Christians. Rabbi Leon Klenicki even declared that Jews should now “think about the meaning of Jesus and the mission of Christianity as a way of bringing all humanity to God.” He added: “Perhaps what God is asking is a cooperative venture.”—The New York Times, July 24, 1988.
But not all are so optimistic. Evangelical theologians in Christendom see the new liberal view of Judaism as an abandonment of fundamental Christian doctrine. Many Jewish leaders are likewise skeptical of the new peace overtures, seeing them as vague and contradictory or as simply a new face on the old game of trying to convert Jews.
For a real accord to come about, Jewish leaders believe that Christendom must unequivocably renounce its past policies of anti-Semitism, including its role in the Holocaust. They demand that church leaders dispose entirely of the notion that the Jews are accountable for the death of Jesus. They want Judaism to be recognized as a valid means of salvation, not merely a preamble to Christianity. They want Christendom to halt all efforts to proselytize Jews. And finally, many demand that Christendom give full recognition and support to the State of Israel.
But as the following article will show, even if such extraordinary steps were taken, a yawning gap would still remain.
[Picture on page 4]
Christendom cannot deny her role in the Holocaust
[Credit Line]
Bundesarchiv Koblenz