Conversion
'HOW AUSTRALIA'S POLYGLOT MIX OF CHRISTIANS REGARD JEWS AND JUDAISM'.
This is obviously a huge and complex subject, so I have narrowed my focus to Christian attitudes to the conversion of Jews to Christianity. I expect that will encompass the important issues we would want to discuss in a group such as this.
FIRST - a little bit of historical background.
1. THEOLOGICALLY - the Christian drive toward conversion of Jews has always had a different edge from evangelism to non-Jews. Where non-Jews are concerned, the major impetus has been 'saving souls' for Jesus; rescuing the unbelievers, the unforgiven, from hell and damnation. Where the Jews were concerned, there was an added incentive to evangelize. This came from the idea of the End-Time, when the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth would be accomplished, and Jesus the Christ/Messiah would return to earth to reign over it. In order for this to happen, first, all of the Jews must be won for Christ - all must have converted. In other words, to enable the final triumph of Christianity, Judaism must disappear from the face of the earth. The continuing existence of the Jewish faith has always constituted a huge problem for the self-understanding of triumphalist Christianity.
2. There have been different approaches to the conversion of Jews to Christianity.
First, FORCIBLE BAPTISMS. Jews were forcibly baptised in large numbers in medieval Europe, particularly in Spain, where it was felt that the power of the font would overcome any spiritual reluctance on the part of the baptised. Throughout the history of Christianity, countless Jews have consented to baptism out of fear for their lives if they did not comply. In fact many Jews who refused to be baptised did pay with their lives, particularly during the periods of the Crusades and the Inquisition.
Secondly, there was VOLUNTARY BAPTISM of Jews on economic, social, or political grounds.
In Enlightenment Europe, the church promoted a subtle encouragement of baptism for Jews who wished to improve their chances in the fields of business or politics. This process was given legitimacy among German Jews by the rationalist influence of Jewish reformers such as Moses Mendelssohn. Aharon Appelfeld's book 'The Conversion', concerning the conversion of Austrian Jews early this century, makes it very clear that the reason for baptism was almost always pragmatic, rather than from any religious conviction. The church's willingness to baptise under those circumstances indicates its belief that it was the baptism itself that was important, rather than the religious conviction of the person involved. No matter how it was regarded by the baptised, one more Jew had entered the fold of the church, bringing closer the salvation of the Jews, and the day when God would heal the broken body of his one people, Israel and the Church. Regardless of the motives of the Jews involved, that was the Christian aim, and conversions of this kind continued right up until the Nazi persecutions in the 1930's.
3. THE HOLOCAUST - changed so much, so completely. Jews no longer sought acceptance in gentile society by means of baptism, and of course there was the new emphasis on the establishment of a Jewish homeland, where Jews were no longer required to conform to a dominant gentile society.
The post-war years brought about a huge amount of soul-searching on the part of the churches about their relationship with Jews and Judaism. There was a gradual acknowledgment of the need to re-examine the Christian beliefs that had undergirded antisemitism, and paved the way for the Holocaust. But there was also a realisation that any move to affirm Judaism as a legitimate living faith brought into question the entire self-understanding of the church. And even though the Catholic Church in its Nostra Aetate statement of 1965 affirmed the elect status of the Jewish people as People of God, that was by no means the beginning of a rapid change in direction for the whole church.
In fact, in 1967, (2 years after Nostra Aetate) the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches received a report from the Committee on the Church and the Jewish People which, in part, said this:
It is the church alone that is, theologically speaking, the continuation of Israel as the people of God, to which now all nations belong. Election and vocation are solely in Christ, and are to be grasped in faith. To speak otherwise is to deny that the one people of God, the church, is the body of Christ which cannot be broken. In Christ it is made manifest that God's love and his promises apply to all. The Christian hope for the Jews is the same as it is for all: that they may come to the knowledge of the truth, Jesus Christ our Lord.
The same statement also touched on the idea that although God's covenant with Israel remained in force, the establishment of God's kingdom on earth would come when the Jews were all reconciled to God in Christ. Some members of the committee expressed it like this:
Israel's continuing Election is seen in the fact that God has linked the final hope of the world to the salvation of the Jews, in the day when he will heal the broken body of his one people, Israel and the church.
That kind of belief has survived into the 1990's, notably among the more conservative or fundamentalist elements of the church, and I'll come back to a particular expression of that in a minute.
THE TURNAROUND
For the majority of mainstream Christians, there has been a continuing shift in emphasis toward a more open and accepting attitude regarding the legitimacy of other faiths apart from Christianity. This is particularly true with regard to Judaism, and has largely resulted from two developments in western society - one on the macro scale, and the other in the more domestic or local context:
1. The development of greater global communication has given opportunity for greater interaction between peoples of differing cultures and religious faiths. There is much more and continuing opportunity for people of different faiths to learn from one another and interact with one another as human beings. This is combined with greater educational opportunities for more and more people, where the old ethnocentric beliefs are being discarded in favour of a more cosmopolitan outlook.
2. The second development is the establishment of increasing numbers of multicultural societies. In Australian society, multiculturalism in effect means tolerance of those who are different, and of the values they regard as important. The aim is a more harmonious society, in which the beliefs of all are respected. This shift in the evolution of society began in the realm of the cultural, but because religion and culture are intertwined, the new emphasis on tolerance has necessarily spread to the issue of religious freedom, and acceptance of the religious beliefs of others.
The various statements from churches regarding relations with the Jewish people illustrate that development. If you look at them you can see that gradual shift in acceptance taking place over the past three decades or so. That has certainly been the experience of the Uniting Church in Australia, and I want to quote to you from one of the very latest statements regarding Christian relationship to the Jewish people - which also happens to be from The Uniting Church. This is the Statement from the UCA Assembly of 1997, regarding its relationship with the Jewish people.
Point 7.1 says: Judaism is a living faith possessed of its own integrity and vitality in its own developing traditions.
A former Professor at the UCA Theological Hall in Melbourne, the Rev. Professor Emeritus Robert Anderson, put it this way:
A distorted view of Judaism arises when an attempt is made to apply to it the religious and theological concepts that are part of Christian self-understanding. Judaism will not yield its riches to those who do not seek to understand it in its own right and according to its own terms and concepts. It is not the obverse of Christianity, nor is it the negative image of what we as Christians believe or claim about our own faith.
I believe I can say with confidence that Professor Anderson's comments are echoed by the majority of people in the UCA in 1999.
In fact that statement can be verified by figures derived from the National Church Life Survey of 1997.
Respondents were asked to indicate their agreement or disagreement with this statement: Different religions and philosophies have different versions of the truth and may be equally right in their own ways.
Of Uniting Church respondents, 65 percent agreed with the statement, 27 percent were neutral or unsure, and 9 percent disagreed. Figures on Anglican and Catholic respondents were very similar to those of the Uniting Church. Of Anglican respondents, 63 percent agreed with the statement, and 10 percent disagreed. Of Catholic respondents, 68 percent agreed with the statement, and 6 percent disagreed.
TO CONCLUDE.
As I said, the old ideas about Christian triumphalism and the conversion of the Jews do survive in some quarters in the Church. There are many complex reasons for the survival and thriving of fundamentalist expressions of Christianity, or of any other faith, but we're not here to talk about that today.
There is one particular group engaged in a deliberate mission to the Jews, which most Christians would definitely want to disown. This is the 'Jews for Jesus' group. They subscribe to the idea that all Jews must be converted before the Messiah can come again, and so they have little concern as to whether or not the converts are sincere in their religious conviction. Because of that, they encourage Jews seeking community into a sort of spiritual 'no-man's land', where they become neither Christian nor Jew. The Uniting Church is typical of mainstream Churches whose people would very much want to dissociate themselves from that sort of belief and activity.
Generation magazine recently (April 1999) published an article about such a group, which calls itself the 'Slavic Baptist Church'. On reading it I felt very concerned about the impression of Christianity which would be promoted among the readers of Generation from the ideas expressed in the article. I therefore wrote a letter in response, which Mark Baker (editor) has indicated will be published in the next edition of Generation.
Prepared by Rev Dr Lorraine Parkinson as introduction to discussion at the UCA/ECAJ Dialogue Group, held at the Great Synagogue, 166 Castlereagh Street, SYDNEY, on the 14th July, 1999. IT MAY BE REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT.