McFreedom

David Bernstein has been wondering over on the Volokh Conspiracy why many Jews "are so hostile to Republicans." His first post is fairly short, and he follows up with a longer post, today. I don't have a strong opinion about this - I don't talk politics with enough Jews to know much more than their general reputation for leftism. But I was intrigued by his remarks that many Jews think evangelical Christians tend to be anti-Semitic (from the second article, "I've had so many Jewish acquaintances tell me how anti-Semitic evangelical Christians are, despite the data to the contrary..."). I have a lot more experience with evangelical Christians, and know this is a much-assumed fact. In my personal experience, this is mistaken.

First, I have to say that these memories of evangelical Christianism date from my teenage years, in the late 80s, in Georgia and North Carolina. It's possible that the evangelical circles my parents ran in weren't "mainstream evangelical" (whatever that means) and that this theology isn't subscribed to by most evangelicals. I find the whole question of evangelical theology to be an intriguing one, in much the same way urban legends are intriguing - there is no central Authority to desiminate doctrine, so the belief system bubbles up from the bottom to a degree that isn't found in most other modern Christian denominations. So, while I have no specific reason to think these beliefs are standard, nor are they given an official stamp by any church, I did encounter these basic beliefs in several communities across the south in the 1980s.

While I'd agree with David's unnamed correspondant that evangelicals "are perceived as lacking respect for the Jewish religion" (see, for example, Jews for Jesus, much beloved in some evangelical circles), there is a significant minority that takes the Vatican II view that the Old Testament is the Jews' road to salvation while the New Testament is for everyone else. But all of these views are largely irellevant because many southern evangelicals don't know any Jews; following the decline of southern Jewish communities, many southern cities no longer have significan Jewish populations, either because of assimilation or emigration. I once heard a story of a young man moving into his first college dormitory in Charlotte, NC being advised by a friend to be careful of prospective roomates who had names that ended in "itz" because they "might be yankees," completely unaware of the racist connotations such advice would have to northeastern ears.

Within these evangelical communities with no personal Jewish experience, however, there is a substantial respect for Jews in general and Isreal in particular. The common thread for this is the biblical idea that the Jews are "God's chosen people." Southern evangelicals are very impressed by Isreal's military domination of the Middle East, and consider it only proper that would-be invaders are so thoroughly defeatred by the Isreali military. As one evangelical told me, approvingly, many years ago, if you "mess with God's chosen people, you get what's coming to you."

Evangelicalism has, of course, always had a thread of millenial thinking. The "end times" and their nearness are a constant theme, and there is a significant branch of evangelical Christianity that believes that the Temple on the Mount must be rebuilt (among other prerequisites), and who support the state of Isreal as a pre-apocolyptic condition for Jesus' return to the Earth.

Now, certainly, as in any community there are bigots who don't like people of other groups, I'm not trying to say no evangelical hates Jews. But, in my experience, as the Jews have become less of a presence and more of a construct in southern society, the evangelicals have largely embraced them - if only for their utility in fulfilling their ideas of God's prophecy.