The Historical Roots of the Anti-Israel Positions of Liberal Protestant Churches

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs ^ | 1 June 2007 | Hans Jansen

[Vlad0]

• The verbal attacks and boycott calls by a variety of Western Protestant, mainly liberal, denominations, as well as the World Council of Churches, have raised new interest in the origins of Christian anti-Semitism and in particular its Protestant version.

• Among the Protestants’ founding fathers, Martin Luther was particularly anti-Semitic. His writings were precursors of twentieth-century National Socialist texts. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and Julius Streicher gladly quoted from Luther’s works, even if he never recommended the physical destruction of the Jews. Luther did, however, advise burning synagogues in honor of God and Christianity, confiscating Jewish books, and expelling Jews from Christian countries. In 1985 the World Federation of Lutheran Churches distanced itself from these statements of Luther.

• Other sixteenth-century Protestant reformers such as John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and Philipp Melanchton also considered Judaism archaic but were against drawing operational conclusions from this. Another reformer, Martin Butzer, took a more favorable position toward the Jews.

• In the current anti-Israel positions of liberal Western churches nontheological influences are probably more important. Blaming Jews is for many of them a question of their own spiritual welfare and of avoiding a look in the mirror.

• Churches have taught antipathy to Jews for two thousand years. It is mistaken to think this can be overturned in a few decades. The new expressions of Christian hatred toward Israel reflect deep psychological processes.

“For several decades there has been in many Jewish circles the impression that Christian anti-Semitism was declining and would fade away in the course of a generation or two. This perception stemmed mainly from the major post-Holocaust policy change by the Roman Catholic Church in its attitude toward the Jews.

“The last three years have seen attacks and boycott calls against Israel by several Western Protestant denominations and the World Council of Churches. These aggressions raise new interest in the origins of Christian anti-Semitism and in particular its Protestant version. This requires reexploring the positions toward the Jews of major sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin.”

[Angelino97]

Some speculate that Luther didn't write The Jews and Their Lies.

I haven't studied the matter, but there's apparently a case to be made that it's a work of forgery. Someone other than Luther wrote it, either to trade on his name, or to discredit him

One theory is that the book was written by an unknown rabbi, who sought to discredit Luther among the Jews, and thus stifle his conversion attempts.

A reason for this theory is that the book apparently denies the canonical status of Jeremiah, which Luther never denied.

[irishjuggler]

I haven’t studied the issue closely either, but the theory that the pamphlet was a forgery would perhaps be somewhat stronger if it were some kind of “one off.” But my understanding is that in the 1530s-1540s, ML was pretty consistent in his efforts to have Jews expelled from various towns in Saxony and Brandenburg.

[af_vet_1981]

It wasn’t just the pamphlet;,there are letters, including the last letter to his wife the nun, cursing the Jews and complaining that neighboring Christians were harboring the Jews. He was the proto German Nazi, as all antisemites run the risk of becoming. Their hearts and minds drink poison, willingly as the grasp, like Haman, to strike at the Jews.

[Menes]

Well, Luther‘s viperous writings against the Jews date from the last years of his life, and a good number of his fellow Reformers considered these writings a disgrace.

Still, what this Germanophobic piece of gold, propagandist extraordinaire, Willam L. Shirer wrote (and quite a few of his epigones) is wrong: these writings were largely forgotten until Nazi sympathizers in the Lutheran churches dug them up again in the 20th century. Then, they came in very handy for propaganda purposes.

[Vlad0]

Yikes! I really screwed this up. In summarizing the age of the Talmud a turned "CE" into "BC", which of course is wrong.

CE = Common Era is the same as A.D. in the traditional nomenclature.

BCE = Before Common Era is the same as B.C.

I know this, but I made the mistake.

The Babylonian Talmud has two parts, the texts from circa 200 A.D. and the commentaries from circa 500 A.D. So, yes, there may be stuff in there about Jesus.

It's a little confusing because the original Babylonian Exile or Captivity of the Jews was indeed in the B.C. era - beginning in 587 B.C. when the Neo-Babylonian empire conquered Judea and forced Jews to relocate.

The era of the Talmud was many centuries later, after the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 A.D. and the diaspora of the Jews. Babylon, being one of the great cities of the Middle East at that time was a destination for many exiled Jews.

My apologies. Carry on!

[Vlad0]

Some speculate that Luther didn't write The Jews and Their Lies.

I haven't studied the matter, but there's apparently a case to be made that it's a work of forgery. Someone other than Luther wrote it, either to trade on his name, or to discredit him

Feel free to toss up any links you have that expand on this theory.

To put it mildly: I am highly skeptical of it.

Martin Luther lived from 1483–1546. To say he was an important and prominent man at the end of his life would be an understatement.

The Book On the Jews and Their Lies was published in 1543. Several years before his death. If it was a forgery it would have been refuted at the time, but it was not.

Facsimile of the first editon:

The entire first edition of the book is available in facsimile here:

https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb00023847?page=,1

From the Encyclopedia Britanica:

Luther’s role in the Reformation after 1525 was that of theologian, adviser, and facilitator but not that of a man of action. Biographies of Luther accordingly have a tendency to end their story with his marriage in 1525. Such accounts gallantly omit the last 20 years of his life, during which much happened. The problem is not just that the cause of the new Protestant churches that Luther had helped to establish was essentially pursued without his direct involvement, but also that the Luther of these later years appears less attractive, less winsome, less appealing than the earlier Luther who defiantly faced emperor and empire at Worms.

Repeatedly drawn into fierce controversies during the last decade of his life, Luther emerges as a different figure—irascible, dogmatic, and insecure. His tone became strident and shrill, whether in comments about the Anabaptists, the pope, or the Jews. In each instance his pronouncements were virulent: the Anabaptists should be hanged as seditionists, the pope was the Antichrist, the Jews should be expelled and their synagogues burned. Such were hardly irenic words from a minister of the gospel, and none of the explanations that have been offered—his deteriorating health and chronic pain, his expectation of the imminent end of the world, his deep disappointment over the failure of true religious reform—seem satisfactory.

The issue of Martin Luther's increasing anti-Semitism was an issue during his life. He published his screeds during his life, some in multiple editions.

I see no evidence whatsoever for the odd claim that he really didn't write this book. It seems very convenient for advocates of Luther to claim this in our era, but the facts simply do not support it.

[Vlad0]

I'm not quite getting your point about Willam L. Shirer. So, he's a very famous historian focused on WW2.

The article I posted is an interview with a Dutch historian with a particular focus on the history of anti-Semitism and Christianity, Hans Jansen. (Which is a common name, and there is a more famous Dutch scholar of Islam (now deceased) with the same name, but I do not believe they are one and the same person.)

This Hans Jansen has written several books on antisemitism through the ages, but unfortunately they are only in Dutch.

This one is roughly translated as "Christian Theology After Aushwitz".

[Menes]

Unfortunately, I haven‘t read Jansen‘s book yet, but I do have a beef with Shirer: his famous book is a work of craftsmanship, hot historiography. He wanted to portray teh German people as uniquely evil and antisemitic. Towards this end, he dismissed every evidence that would contradict his claim.

Furthermore, he was entirely unfamiliar with the research and writings of West German historians of the 1950s, of which there were many good ones, published in the Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. He did not mention any of that material as a source, sadly.

That makes his work a pamphlet, like that of his successor in spirit, Daniel Goldhagen, whose works are, from a scholarly standpoint, highly dubious at the very best.

It would be like stating that America had been founded upon nothing but genocide, wars and slavery, both of Africans and of indentured servants - and because of this all Americans were had the nature of hardened murderers, or other balderdash of that kind.

We have read all of those frightful assertions a thousand times in the works of Communist (pseudo) science.

My experience is that not even the Nazis in their anti-American propaganda stooped to the level of the Communists. Hard to believe, yes, but true.