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IS CHRISTIANITY CUILTY ?
By John Haynes Holmes
Dr Jo' •• Haynes Holmes, Spiritual Lead-
rf t f th Community Church, in Nenv York
In.'^er to the Question “Why Are Jenus
Prrsfcu Jf" is as Courageous as It is
Revealing.
Hut is a special cause of persecution
,%hirh - involved in the experience of
the Jewish people. ITiere can be no
j., u ht about the general cause of differ-
rmr In the same way, can there be
in , doubt a* to this special cause? What
I havi in mind, as you must anticipate,
. the guilt of the Jews, in the eyes of
•he Christian world, in rejecting and
tlaving Jesus. 'I'he phrase, “Christ-kill-
has again and again lifted the
, w0 rd ..f massacre against the helpless
kindred of the Nazarene.
Of course there is no truth in this in-
iicttnent of Israel by Christendom, save
the indictment has been deliberately
forged against a whole people in the
ntere-t of a hard-and-fast theology.
What happened in Palestine is a per-
frctly plain and also perfectly common
place chapter of history. 'I'he story of
Jesus is a story which has been written
bv nearly all the great prophetic souls.
Hius, a young radical appeared among
the common people of his country. This
radical, profoundly moved by the injus
tices of the times, began to preach revolt
and to organize agitation. It was not
l"tig before he was arrested and placed
■»n trial for sedition. The Nazarene, in
ther words, by the fire of hi* word and
the courage of his example, made him-
•elf dangerous to church and state, and
oraightway was put to death by these
two traditional instruments of tyranny
and oppression. 'I'his drama is nothing
orange. It has been enacted again and
again in a hundred different times and
place*. But when in any other case has
it been made the occasion of persecution?
Imagine our murdering Greeks today be-
catoe Socrates was put to death in
Athen*! Who thinks of torturing and
na**acreing Italians because men of Ital
ian breed and speech martyred the great
Giordano Bruno? What would we think
if a persecution was begun against Amer
ican* because our fathers killed John
Hrown, the one supreme martyr of Amer
ican history?
No persecution of this sort would ever
have been visited upon the Jews, in the
narr.e of Jesus or of any other prophet,
had it not been for the theologizing of
the Nazarenc’s story. Look at what has
happened! Very early after the death
J*'us, the Christian church trans-
formed the story of his life into a sacred
bain i of cosmic history. 'I'he church
: out by stealing the Old Testa-
mcnt making it a part of Christian scrip-
tiire* an d rewriting or reinterpreting it
II th interest of the Christian tradition.
* f c itinued its work by approaching
' e 'u* of Nazareth, transforming him
,r ° n ’he son of Mary into the son of
b d and making him the Saviour of
h* 31 • nd. It then took the crucifixion and
31 d it over into the atonement as a
'acrifice for the human race. Last-
'eized upon the Jews and deliber-
uade the whole race the villain of
'tnic play. Their first offense was
1 recognizing Jesus, one of their
ror what he was; and their second
was in destroying him and thus
- their hands against Almighty God
f Through the exigencies of a
be theology of this type did the
>ans lay on the Jews the vengeance
c Most High, and appoint them-
. agents of this vengeance upon
,he *rth.
At the very start of Christianity, in
other words, this new and wonderful re
ligion was made synonymous with anti-
Semitism. No words can exaggerate the
tragedy of this historical accident, nor
its significance in the annals of our west
ern civilization. The logic of Orthodox
Christianity is anti-Semitism. Just to the
extent that Christians believe their own
faith, they must hare and persecute Jews.
Only to the extent that they reject or
remain indifferent to their own dogmas,
can they be friendly to Israel. Which
means that Christianity, by which I mean
the theology of the church and not the
teachings of the great founder of the
faith, is itself the special cause of Is
rael’s agony! I count it something more
than a coincidence that the one country
in the world today where the Jew i* abso
lutely free of the age-old burden of per
secution and prejudice, is that one coun
try where the Orthodox Christian Church
has been wiped out by the fiat of gov
ernment. I do not argue from this, even
for the sake of my Jewish friend*, that
Christianity should be destroyed. I do
insist, however, that the Christian faith
as embodied in the creeds and organized
in the churches, must be cast aside a* a
superstition, and the religion of Jesus
restored to the simple love and brother
hood of the gospel of the Jew of Galilee.
Such are the two great and fundamen
tal causes of the persecution of the Jew*
There is the general cause inherent in
that distinctive or “different” character
which has made Israel through all the
centuries a “people.” In addition, there
is this special cause inherent in the
theological doctrine of Christendom. To
these must be added other causes, both
general and special, which play their
part, though they be less important, in
this vast tragedy. Of these I have space
to name but one.
1 refer to the fact that the Jews have
always been, and still arc today, a weak
people. In the ancient days, when they
lived within the borders of their own
country, they were one of the smallest
and feeblest of the nations of the eastern
world. Israel lay like a little village, *o
to speak, on the great highway between
Egypt to the west and Assyria and Baby
lonia to the east. Over this great highway
trampled the mighty legions of contend
ing kingdoms. When Rome conquered
the earth, Palestine was incorporated a*
a mere corner of the Empire, and her
population lost as a negligible unit in a
vast congeries of peoples. After the dis
persion, the Jews of course were nothing
but an alien group of helpless men and
women, living on sufferance in the far-
flung lands to which in despair and agony
they had fled. Even in our own time,
they remain one of the weakest of all
earth’s peoples—a mere sixteen millions
among the nearly two thousand millions
of earth's inhabitants.
Always therefore, today as yesterday,
they have been feeble, helpless, “easy
marks” for the lust and hate of those
who would injure and despoil them. V\ an-
derers upon earth’s surface, they have no
government to defend them, no flag to
enshroud them, no land to which to flee.
Even as citizens in their new-found coun
tries, loyal citizens, who have unselfishly
served the state in days of peace and
heroically died for it in days of war,
they may be cast out at any time, as in
Germany at this hour, and find none on
all this planet to give them aid or com
fort. Invariably they have lived, and
still live, as a minority group among peo-
(PIease turn to page 34)
E W S
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THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN
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l Tb
SOUTHERN ISRAELITE *
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