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The Southern Israelite
if
I Were a Christian-
Abstract of Sermon by
RABBI STEPHEN S. WISE
Before the Free Synagogue, Carnegie Hall, New York, N. Y.
If it were fitting that I should—
and if I were free to—deal with the
many problems suggested by my
theme, “If I Were a Christian,” I
would pause to consider certain ques
tions which men face. The first of
these is implicit in the substitution
of church and ecclesiasticism of dog
ma and its compulsions for what were
the faith and teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth. Obvious it is that the so-
called priestly system was not an ex
clusively or particularly Jewish vice,
but is one of the human evils bound
up with the government of churches,
whether pre-Christian or Christian.
Nineteen hundred years after the be
ginning of the Christian era, a Jew
cannot help noting that while Judaism
has largely disfranchised itself from
the evil, the church, which has grown
out of—and away from —the teaching
of Jesus, is encumbered by ecclesias
tics and ecclesiastism as the Syna
gogue never was.
If I were a Christian, I could hardly
help wonder at the great gulf that
has become fixed between such unity
and comradeship of the disciples of
Jesus as ho commended to them and
the endless multiplication throughout
the centuries of Christian churches
and sects and denominations,—much
of denominationalism growing up, as
the very term implies, around names.
If I were a Christian I should grieve—
as indeed I do, although a Jew—over
the contradiction between the word of
him who is called the founder of
Christianity, “Love ye one another,”
and the presence of a military guard
at the Church of the Nativity in Beth
lehem to keep the priests of different
groups of Christendom from slaying
one another.
If I were a Christian, I should re
joice in Saint Francis, but I should
sorrow aver a pact made by the
church of St. Francis with Mussolini.
If I were a Christian, I should have
high pride in Aquinas and Augustine,
but I should confess to shame over the
immeasurable infamy of Torqueman-
da, in truth of the Torquemadas, big
and little, who have been persecutors
and destroyers of the brothers of
Jesus in the name of Christianity. If
I were a Christian, I should pray that
the Christian church or churches
might supplement the recital of the
beatitudes by one clear call for peace,
not haggling and chaffering over the
instrumentalities of war but moving
resistlessly towards the ineffable
triumphs of peace. If I were a Chris
tian, I should wish to see my church
hospitable rather than hostile to
truth; for inhospitality to truth, or
even the truthseeker, is not a token of
self-sufficing strength but of self-
contemptuous weakness and coward
ice.
If I were a Christian, I should
give heed to the Jewish problem be
cause the attitude of men to the Jew
is always a test of the reality of
moral standards and religious claims
of civilization itself. For Christian
ity’s sake, I would not have Christen
dom judged by its attitude toward the
jew,—a.though in truth there are,
happily, multitudes of exceptions to
unchristian attitude.
In many ways, alas, the attitude of
Christendom to the Jew may be test
ed. First, there is the unashamed
persecution of Jews in unenlighten
ed or half-enlightened lands, whether
that persecution take the form of the
numerous clauses in Hungary, of the
economic boycott in Poland, or of the
student warfare of Christians upon
Jews in Roumania. If I were a Chris
tian, as I am a Jew, I should say
“There are the real stigmata of
Christ.”
If I were a Christian, I should con
cern myself not only with the obvi
ous brutalities and the unashamed
indecencies of attitude on the part of
the so-called Christian countries in
Central and Eastern Europe, but I
should be no less concerned about the
silent pogroms and the bloodless dis
criminations and the politer but no
less fatal proscriptions practiced
against the Jews in lands of civiliza
tion, things which are not to be con
travened because a few favored and,
for one reason or another, powerful
Jews are, or believe themselves to
be, exempt from the operations 0 »
the law of Christlessness as prac
ticed in Christendom. If I W( , re ’
Christian, I should be ashamed of th«
cruelty of a myriad thoughts and
words and acts of the Christian world
which are ruthlessly and devesul
ingly anti-Jewish, the chiefest out
come of which is to evoke either the
self-contempt of the surviving f ew
or the moral destruction of the un
resisting many.
If I were a Christion, as I am a
Jew, I should feel deeply ashamed
of the reaction of much of the so-
called Christian world to the anti-
Jewish needs wrought in Palestine
some months ago, even though this
reaction be abetted or half-justified
by the self-betrayal of a few out
standing Jews. The truth is that
Christendom, for the largest part, has
given of its sympathy and goodwill
to them that have warred against the
Jews in Palestine rather than to the
Jews who have been warred upon
A terrible anti-Jew ill will has been
revealed by individuals and groups
and journals within the Christian
world which have borne themselves as
if Jews were ruthless invaders and
despoilers of Palestine and slayers
of its people.
The Jews in Palestine are there
of right and not by sufferance, and
yet a most distinguished Christian,
Kirby Page, though finding it in h;s
heart to set up a contrast between
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