The essential challenge of anti-Judaism in the Bible
Do antisemitic appeals to the Bible always constitute an abuse of scripture? Would that it were so simple.
The Poway, California, synagogue shooting made plain something a lot of us didn’t want to admit: the Pittsburgh massacre was no one-off. Amidst resurgent white nationalism, Jews in America feel unsafe, and justifiably so.
In the aftermath of the shooting, an article by Washington Post religion reporter Julie Zauzmer drew widespread attention. The Poway shooter is a Christian, a member of an Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation. He composed a manifesto for the shooting that stood out for its appeal to Christian theology as legitimation for murdering Jews. Among other accusations, the shooter rehearsed the ancient slander that Jews killed Jesus.
Zauzmer reported a social media debate among some evangelical Christians: is Christian theology complicit in contemporary anti-Semitism? The question applies just as directly to those of us in mainline churches.
