Antisemitism

Background

The term "antisemitism" renders the German word Antisemitismus, which is generally believed to have been popularized around 1879 by the German journalist Wilhelm Marr. Scholars sometimes distinguish between anti-Judaism (religious hostility that rejects the Jewish faith) and racial antisemitism, which regards Jews as an inferior race.

Anti-Jewish sentiment within Christianity arose as the early church and the synagogue parted ways. The passion narratives of the Gospels depict the high priest Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin bringing charges against Jesus. Matthew 27:25 also records the words "His blood be on us, and on our children." On the basis of these narratives and this verse, the later church assigned the guilt of "deicide" (the killing of God) to the entire Jewish people. Today the interpretation that these texts refer to particular leaders and a particular crowd of that time is widely accepted.

Development

• 1096: During the First Crusade, Jewish communities in the Rhineland were massacred.
• 1215: The Fourth Lateran Council required Jews to wear distinctive clothing.
• 1492: Spain expelled its Jews.
• 1523 and 1543: In 1523 Martin Luther took a favorable stance toward Jews in That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew. In 1543, however, in On the Jews and Their Lies, he called for synagogues to be burned.
• Late 19th to early 20th century: Racism spread. In France the Dreyfus affair broke out in 1894, and in Russia The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery fabricating a Jewish conspiracy for world domination, began to circulate.
• 1933–1945: Nazi Germany stripped Jews of their citizenship through the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. In the Holocaust that followed, some six million Jews were murdered. Within German Protestantism, the pro-Nazi German Christians movement was opposed by the Confessing Church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisted the persecution of the Jews and was executed.

Consequences and Influence

• In 1948 the World Council of Churches, at its First Assembly, declared antisemitism a sin against God and man.
• In 1965 the Catholic Church, in the Second Vatican Council's declaration Nostra aetate, stated that responsibility for the death of Jesus cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today.
• In 1994 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America issued a statement formally repudiating Luther's anti-Jewish writings.

The Korean church has had almost no direct historical experience of antisemitism. Churches influenced by dispensationalism are often favorably disposed toward the State of Israel. At the same time, critics point to the spread of Jewish conspiracy theories in some sermons and online media, and to the practice of using "Pharisees" and "Jews" solely as symbols of legalism.

Assessment

Today most denominations and ecumenical bodies acknowledge that the church bears responsibility for giving rise to and nurturing antisemitism. Interpretations differ, however, regarding its theological causes.

• Some scholars and dispensationalists criticize so-called "replacement theology," which holds that the church has replaced Israel, as having provided fertile ground for antisemitism.
• Proponents of covenant theology and the Reformed tradition counter that understanding the church as the continuation of Israel is not in itself antisemitic. Citing Romans 11:28–29, they state that they affirm that God's calling of Israel remains in force.

How to distinguish criticism of the policies of the State of Israel from antisemitism also remains a matter of debate.