The gleeful cruelty of American Christian Nationalism in its vilification and targeting of undocumented immigrants and the vengeful brutality of Netanyahu’s Israel in its persecution and treatment of Palestinians are creating deep schisms in both religions. Many Christians and Jews are justifiably doing deep soul-searching and questioning the moral and ethical decisions that confront their faiths.
Christians and Jews have long traditions of social activism as at least part of the expression of their faith. Christians were at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement in the 1800’s and Jews were in the vanguard of the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s and in establishing workers’ rights earlier in the 20th century.
The conservative Christian evangelical movement, which has embraced Christian Nationalism and Trumpism in recent years, is clearly the antithesis of the Jesus that exhorted us to ‘welcome the stranger’ and to ‘love our enemies’. Similarly, the brutal killing machine and apartheid state that Israel has become under Netanyahu and his extremist Israeli partners is a far cry from the long tradition of Judaism’s solidarity with the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden.
Both religious and cultural Judeo/Christians must ultimately recoil in horror at what their faiths have become. The hypocrisy screams out for acknowledgement and correction, but hearts are hardened in many of the adherents of both faiths.
Still, there are signs of an awakening and a rejection of how these religions have been appropriated for selfish political goals. Whether this rejection will take the form of a mass exodus from religious and even cultural affiliation or whether it will provoke a reform from within remains to be seen. What is clear is that currently the most visible and vocal elements of both Christianity and Judaism have completely lost their way and are no longer a force for good, but rather a force for evil in this world.
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