“There’s a big difference between building bridges across cultures to foster understanding and building bridges so you can run across and ransack the other side”

Most modern-day Protestant fundamentalists believe that the Jews are (at least until Jesus’ return) God’s chosen people. If Christ himself was Jewish, and followed Jewish tradition, the thinking goes, why shouldn’t Christians consider the ways their savior actually lived and practice the rituals he practiced? Many evangelicals have traded contempt of the past for a respectful, almost fetishistic view of Jews and, now, Jewish tradition. What this means in practice is extremely complicated. There’s a big difference between building bridges across cultures to foster understanding and building bridges so you can run across and ransack the other side.

Maud Newton, “Oy Vey, Christian Soldiers”, The New York Times Magazine (24 March 2013), 49.

Leave a Reply