The use of this inaccurate and misleading theological description is symptomatic of the theological confusion which lies at the heart of the so-called “Messianic” movement. To elect to follow Jesus as Messiah may be a Jewish person’s choice. But when that choice is made, the person has relinquished Judaism as Jews understand it. That person is now a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ. That person is now a Christian of Jewish antecedents.
The fact that some Presbyterians may choose to continue to classify that person as Jewish means that we — as Presbyterian Christians — are telling Jews how they should define themselves. That is condescending and it distorts the New Testament call to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15, 25).
This distortion points to an even larger theological issue which Kurtz skirts by focusing on Jews as an ethnic group. The issue here is not “de-WASPing” the gospel. The issue is that the Jewish people are participants in a vital, continuing covenant — first established with Abraham and Sarah — which continues to the present day. Jews have not been superseded by Christians; they have not been replaced in God’s divine economy by the church. The apostle Paul makes this clear in Romans 9:4-5, 11:1-2, inter alia. These passages do not deal with ethnicity; they deal with the divine election of God.
Are we as Presbyterian Christians prepared to say that the eternal promises given by God to the Hebrews and the Jewish people can be abrogated, cancelled, superseded? I hope not! Because such a position opens the door to the possibility that God could cancel the promises he has given us.
This is not a liberal/conservative issue. This is a profound issue of biblical interpretation. To deal with it primarily in terms of ethnicity is to miss just how serious it is. Individual Jews may choose to become Christians just as individual Christians may choose to become Jews. But to support institutional efforts to convert Jews — (which Kurtz appears to favor) — is to place us corporately in an untenable position in regard to the promises of God for Jews and for us. Jews are not like any other ethnic group; they are in fact the people chosen by God to bear God’s revelation to the world. We are privileged to be grafted on the tree of their covenant by grace.
This critical view of organized efforts to convert Jews is one shared by many evangelicals today. Whenever we talk about Jews, we must recognize that by their covenant they are already with the Father. This fact raises profound questions about the meaning of salvation — questions suitable for dialogue. It does not validate corporate conversionary efforts toward Jews or repudiate Jewish election.
One prominent evangelical friend has said to me: “The only legitimate approach we can make to the Jewish people today is on our knees.” When Kurtz says Christians have been “domineering” to the Jews he understates the case exponentially. We have a tragic 1,900-year history of persecution, oppression, exclusion, barbarism, forced conversion, killing and maiming to answer for, to repent for, to make amends for and to accept responsibility for. The church played a major role in preparing the soil for the Holocaust which was largely implemented by persons who were baptized and taught in the church.
We are called to be witnesses to the truth and love of Jesus in all circumstances and to all peoples. Responsible witness to Jews should be characterized by repentance and respectful dialogue conducted in an appropriate spirit of mutuality.
The Christian church is only at the beginning of the process of repenting for who we have been and what we have done to the Jewish people. Anti-semitism is on the rise in Europe; it is pandemic in the Middle East. Our witness must include accepting responsibility for a future in which marginalizing, vilification, mayhem and killing of Jews is contested, repudiated and overcome.
Whatever the merits of de-westernization may have in regard to our approach to other groups, it really does not apply to Jews. Jewish thought is at the core of western civilization; consider the central role of the Ten Commandments, for example.
What is at stake here, rather, is whether Presbyterians want formally and institutionally to be part of a process which, if followed to its logical conclusion, would ultimately lead to what Karl Marx called “a world without Jews,” a process Jews and many Christians view as a form of “spiritual genocide.”
Such corporate conversionary effort is an enterprise at variance with much in Scripture, with our Reformed theology of covenant and promise, and with our role in the world today as responsible reconcilers. Do we really want to turn back the clock to the pre-Vatican II era? Great strides have been made. Pope John XXIII showed us the way. Presbyterians have provided stellar leadership, for example in the study document “A Theological Understanding of the Relationship Between Christians and Jews” (1987).
New Church Development is an important priority for our church. It must not be compromised by further support of enterprises that will engender widespread and continuing objection from Presbyterians across the theological spectrum.
Posted Jan. 12, 2004 
William H. Harter is the minister of the Presbyterian Church of Falling Spring in Chambersburg, Pa., and a founding member of Presbyterians Concerned for Jewish-Christian Relations.
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