FROM THE ARCHIVES: NEW ISRAEL:

The season of the lambs: Christians are trying to analyse their responsibility for anti-Jewish prejudice, and to examine their own faith's Jewish roots (The Economist, Apr 7th 2004)

FOR the Judeo-Christian world, this is the week. For Jews, celebrations of Passover or Pesach--recalling the children of Israel's escape from Egyptian bondage--reach their central moment. Over a family meal, millions of households have remembered the lamb's blood which the Jews in Egypt daubed on their doors to escape the angel of death. All over the Christian world (this is one of those years when the western and eastern halves of Christendom celebrate on the same date), the story of Easter or Pascha, which draws deeply on Passover symbols, is being relived. As people hail the resurrected Jesus Christ, they rejoice in their own redemption "with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish". Thus, in many corners of the world, there is talk of lambs being slain, either literally, or as a metaphor for God incarnate.

For many centuries, the Christians' season of hope was a time of fear in Jewish ghettos, as religious fervour spilled over in murderous anti-Semitic violence. Now, though the demon of anti-Semitism is far from dead--and is on the rise in certain parts--the sort of anti-Jewish sentiments that were directly inspired by Christian preaching are a thing of the past in most areas of the historically Christian world. This has been largely brought about by the deep and searching dialogue between leaders of the Christian and Jewish faiths, as both traditions struggle to make some spiritual sense of the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi death camps.

A token of the new Jewish-Christian understanding is the passage into common, unselfconscious use of the term Judeo-Christian to describe the religious heritage of the western world. Even now, admittedly, the word is not problem-free. Colin Powell, America's secretary of state, stumbled into a controversy last autumn when he said of Iraq that it was "an Islamic country by faith, just as we are Judeo-Christian". Out of deference to Americans of other religions or none, Mr Powell quickly corrected himself, saying "we are a country of many faiths now".

American Muslims nonetheless protested strongly, pointing out that in certain ways--in particular, its reverence for Jesus and Mary--Islam is closer to Christianity than Judaism is. They urged that some new, more inclusive term (Abrahamic, perhaps) be found to describe the commonality between all three monotheistic faiths.

But Mr Powell's use of the term does reflect something real in recent religious history. Over the past half-century, Christians have tried harder than at any time in the previous two millennia to analyse their own faith's responsibility for anti-Jewish prejudice and violence; and to look at their own faith's Jewish roots.

If you attended a seder last week you'll have no problem understanding why Americans put the "Judeo" in Judeo-Christian. At least when telling the story of Exodus, Judaism is a theology of liberation from oppression. Perhaps because the Muslims so quickly became overlords, Islam contains nothing similar.

[Originally posted: 4/07/04]

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 29, 2010 1:15 PM