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Christians’ duty towards the Jews

From the Revd Stephen Barton Sir, — The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) considers it our Christian duty to evangelise our Jewish neighbours (News, 4 April). The WEA argues that Jews can become Christians and remain Jews. The WEA thus ignores both our history and also the present-day perceptions of Jewish communities. Theology cannot be read off the New Testament as if nothing had happened in the intervening millennia. Since the destruction of the Second Temple and the split between the emerging churches and the synagogues, Christians have been a distinct community. The existence of “certain sensitivities” is recognised by the WEA. These perhaps include centuries of persecution founded on a myth of supersession, culminating in the Shoah, the ultimate attempt to show that Jewish people belong only in the past. The fact of Christian collusion with the attempt to exterminate European Jews remains a wound in our history. It is not good enough to regard this as a matter for individuals: we are discussing the relationship between two major communities or peoples. The attempt to convert Jews to Christianity is, at its logical conclusion, genocidal; for it represents a wish that there be no more Jews on earth. While anyone may, led by the Spirit of God, shift their allegiance from one community to another, it is our Christian duty not to seek the conversion of Jews, but to draw closer as neighbours. This would mean studying the Hebrew scriptures and associated texts under the guidance of Jewish scholarship. It would entail the revision of prayers and hymns and lectionary that perpetuate the notion of Christian superiority. The New Testament, not least the Passion narratives, would be read in full awareness of its misuse in Christian-Jewish history; and, if invited, our participation in Jewish worship might lead to experience of God’s revelation and grace to a people to whom we owe everything. STEPHEN BARTON 290 City Road Birmingham B16 0NE LETTERS to the Editor should be exclusive to the Church Times.

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