Jewish seminary opens talks with evangelicals

NEW YORK — The prestigious Jewish Theological Seminary has sponsored dialogues with all sorts of American religious and ethnic groups over the past 67 years, but never with evangelical Protestants — until last week.

Conservative Judaism’s prime campus was the site for respectful talks between national-level figures from both faiths, with participants agreeing on support for Israel and greater willingness from each side to learn about the other. But there also was evident wariness on domestic politics, reflecting the complicated relationship between the two groups.

Planning for the meeting, co-sponsored by Baylor and Temple universities, began in 2002. It probably wouldn’t have happened in years past. One expert panelist, University of Akron political scientist John Green, noted polls that show evangelicals are no more negative toward Jews than other Americans and that their attitudes have softened markedly since an anti-Semitism survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League in 1964.

Yet the timing of the meeting coincidentally pointed up rising tensions between the two groups. Just last month, the heads of two major U.S. Jewish organizations unleashed incendiary attacks on conservative religious activism, in which evangelicals stand in the forefront.

Director Abraham Foxman told the Anti-Defamation League’s national leadership “the key domestic challenge” now facing Jews is arrogant “Christian Right” leaders’ campaign to “Christianize all aspects of American life.”

“The stakes for the Jewish community could not be higher,” he said.

Foxman targeted the work of evangelical groups including the Alliance Defense Fund, American Family Association, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family and Florida-based TV preacher D. James Kennedy.

Meanwhile, President Eric Yoffie rebuked the “Religious Right” at the Union for Reform Judaism convention, though he did not name evangelicals as such.

“What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God?” he asked. “When they cloak themselves in religion and forget mercy, it strikes us as blasphemy.”

A third figure, Reform Rabbi James Rudin, will turn up the heat with a January book, “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us” (Thunder’s Mouth). Rudin’s assault is significant because he spent 32 years with the mainstream American Jewish Committee specializing in Christian relations.

Until recently, Rudin considered himself an optimist. Now he believes America’s “most significant internal struggle since the Civil War” is imperiling the Constitution and democracy.

To Rudin, “the extreme Christian right” is campaigning to impose theocracy — or, as he prefers, “Christocracy” — and take “permanent control of the major political, cultural, educational, medical, judicial, economic, media and legal institutions of the United States.”

Jewish complaints about evangelicals have historically centered on their zeal for converts, in some instances specifically seeking out Jews.

The new furor is political. Foxman, Rudin and Yoffie are variously concerned with issues such as abortion, gay marriage, civil unions, embryonic stem-cell research, school prayer and Bible-reading, “intelligent design,” abstinence education, the right to die, assisted suicide, judicial nominations and government aid for “faith-based” charities.

Of course, tradition-minded Jews and Catholics often agree with the evangelical activists. David Neff, editor of Christianity Today magazine, said in an interview between sessions at the conference that evangelical “values voters” don’t see themselves as pursuing “a move to Christianize America, but to shore up the morals of a decadent society.”

During the public panels, the evangelicals were understandably at pains to emphasize their movement’s political diversity.

Richard Cizik, Washington representative of the National Association of Evangelicals, told the meeting that some pursue a “power strategy” but most evangelicals don’t subscribe to that model. “Most evangelicals know in their hearts that’s wrong.”

“You have nothing to fear from evangelicals,” he said.

Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center said that “evangelicals, theologically, have strong convictions, but when it comes to public life they have learned to put them aside.”

Such utterances caused Mark Silk of Trinity College to remark: “It would help if more moderate voices from the evangelical community were heard above the din.”

Yaakov Ariel, a native of Israel who teaches religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said evangelicals’ insistence on a religious “open market” was largely responsible for producing America’s strong commitment to religious freedom.

Taking issue with “smug liberals,” Ariel said evangelicals are “the backbone of democracy,” not a danger to it. “There is nothing more democratic than the evangelical movement,” he said.

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