For centuries Christians knew themselves to be "not Jews." Jews were thought to be killers of Christ, killers of God Incarnate. Jews were everything Christians were not. They were avaricious, venomous, idolaters. But, worst of all, they refused to agree that Jesus was the messiah promised by their own prophets and that gentiles could enter into the covenant with God without obedience to the Law of God, the Torah. The idea that the messiah could be the vehicle for abrogation of the Torah was not only offensive to Jews, it was totally beyond comprehension. In face of that rejection, the preeminent Christian claim became that Christians were now the sole claimants to the covenant, that the church was the "new Israel," and that the stale remnants of the "old Israel" were false and presumptuous in their stubborn insistence that God's covenant remained with them. The latter-day realization that God's covenant with the Jewish people remains valid -- which Vatican II made explicit and numerous Protestant affirmations confirmed -- came, therefore, as a shock to those portions of the Christian community that were aware of or sensed its import. If that were so then Christian identity, taken for granted for centuries, was in serious jeopardy.
Or was it? If they had become convinced in, say, the fifteenth century that the Jewish people's covenant with God remained valid, there would have been no doubt about Christians' and the church's identity crisis. But in the secular world of the late twentieth century Christians tend to think of Jews as members of a religion that has nothing to do with Christianity as such. The historical fact that Christianity is, and has always been, defined by its relationship to Judaism is largely ignored (though that does not make Judaism any less foundational and Christianity any less derivative).
Because Christians and the church generally have forgotten the essential Jewishness of their faith, they tend to place the attempt to evangelize Jews in the same category as missionary efforts among people of other religions or of no religion. Jews are simply people who "do not know Christ" and can never be saved unless they do come to "know Him." In sum, most Christians today do not think about the Jewish people in theological terms, Christianity and Judaism or between the church and the Jewish people. During most of this century Christians have viewed Jews as (1) candidates for conversion and/or (2) persecuted people who, because they are human beings loved by God, should be defended (later, as Israelis, they were seen by many Christians as an oppressive people). But generally they have not been comprehended as the people of the covenant into which, through Jesus Christ, Christians claim entry. Instead they have been viewed, almost exclusively, as the victims of antisemitism, something -- particularly since the Holocaust -- that is repugnant to Christians.
The Role of Antisemitism
Christians who want Jews to become Christians and Christians who believe efforts at conversion are illegitimate agree that antisemitism is evil. So does virtually everyone else -- for reasons that have nothing to do with the definitive relation between the Jewish people and the church. When he addressed a delegation of the American Jewish Committee in February 1985, Pope John Paul II said that "Antisemitism, which is unfortunately still a problem in certain places, has been repeatedly condemned by the Catholic tradition as incompatible with Christ's teaching and with the respect due to the dignity of men and women created in the image of God" Though his words are true, they could equally well have been said about every human being; there is in them no indication that antisemitism is of a theologically different order from, e.g., racism. The implication is that what makes Jews important for Christians is their humanness, not their Jewishness. Once Jews are seen as of interest and concern to Christians solely as human beings created by God, it is unnecessary to think about them in terms of Christian identity. They no longer pose either a threat or a promise for Christian self-understanding.
Opposition to antisemitism was a theological boon to the church, for it allowed Christians to avoid the unsettling question of the Jewishness of Jesus and thus the knotty question of the legitimacy of attempts to make Christians out of Jews. As important as it is for the church to combat antisemitism on the basis enunciated by the Pope (and, incidentally, by the 1948 and 1961 Assemblies of the World Council of Churches), concentration on antisemitism, humanly defined, has served to obscure the fundamental significance of the Jewish people for the self-understanding of the church. Despite the terrors produced by theological opposition to Jews and Judaism throughout the centuries, the benign neglect of the theological question in favor of a sociological alternative has resulted in some reduction in the incidence of physical persecution, which is certainly to be applauded, but has made little change in the theological grounding for it.
Since antisemitism is universally condemned by Christians, it is useful to ask about the connection, if any, between evangelism of Jews and antisemitism. Are evangelistic efforts among Jews antisemitic? The answer to this question hinges upon how Judaism and the Jewish people are viewed. It has been said rightly that Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, but the Jewish people is not defined by Judaism. Unlike with Christianity and Christians, it is not necessary to practice or even "believe" in Judaism is order to be a Jew. On the other hand, Jews who become committed Christians are considered by Jews to be apostate, that is, they have abandoned the Jewish people and are lost to it. The conversion of Jews is therefore seen as "spiritual genocide," for if it succeeded on a large enough scale the Jewish people, as Jewish people, would cease to exist. On this reasoning, evangelistic efforts aimed at Jews are definitely antisemitic.
