Notes on Anti-Semitism

Some thoughts on the current anti-Semitism trends:

1. If you think the Jews of today are evil, you should read what the apostle Paul said about gentiles in his day. Most of the gentiles Paul would’ve been familiar with were Caucasian. And yet, while their skin may have been light, Paul says their minds were darkened. Read Romans 1:18ff and Ephesians 4:17ff for details. 
2. Corey Mahler is *literally* Hitler. He will take that as a compliment but it’s actually not. Like Hitler, Mahler is a neo-pagan. Like Hitler, he co-opts Christian language and categories but fills them with racially idolatrous content. Mahler is leading many impressionable but uneducated young men astray. He was properly and rightfully excommunicated. Getting some things right does not justify his errors. Mark and avoid.
3. Jesus was and still is Jewish. Is he allowed to have natural affection for his own people? To hate all Jews is to hate Jesus – and Paul, Abraham, etc. 
4. Love of people and place, blood and soil, is good and proper. But consider God’s call to Abraham at the beginning of Genesis 12: “Leave your country and your kindred.” Abraham is told to leave his people and place behind. He is called away from blood and soil connections. He is called away from his father’s house so he can become the father of a new house in a new place. Yes, new blood and soil connections will be formed downstream from Abraham’s call — God promises him a new people and place — but those connections will always be qualified by the covenant. Abraham’s call puts natural affections in their proper place, subordinate to the covenant. 
5. Many contemporary right-wing anti-Semites rightly note that (a) Jews are a “high performing people,” and so, (b) when they go bad they can really do a lot of damage. It is true that Jews are disproportionally represented in the higher echelons of politics and banking, and support very progressive views. They are very enmeshed in the corrupting influences of Hollywood, the pop music industry, and pornography. But this does not describe all Jews. For example, Orthodox Jews are socially and politically hyper-conservative. These Jews believe the Talmud (with its blasphemous claims about Jesus burning in excrement), but voted for Trump upwards of 90%. But some anti-Semities are sloppy, e.g., they’ll claim that Jews run the porn industry and believe the blaspehmies of the Talmud. As someone pointed out, this is like saying Presbyterians believe the pope is the antichrist and have lesbian pastors — when in reality, the former group of Presbyterians have virtually nothing to do with and nothing in common with the latter group of Presbyterians. Or it would be like saying Romans Catholics forbid birth control and promote abortion since the former is the church’s official teaching (held to by a small minority of Catholics) and the latter is much more common on the ground. Generalizations are fine, (e.g., Paul’s generalization about Cretans in Titus 1 or Jesus’ generalizations about Pharisees, despite the fact that we know there were exceptions) but they need to be accurate and insightful generalizations. It’s not helpful to lump all Jews in America today as if they were a monolith. The Orthodox Jews need Jesus, like everyone does, but as a group they are culturally more conservative in some ways than American evangelicals as a group. Meanwhile, the more liberal, secular, progressive Jews who are such a corrupting influence in our culture are only Jews ethnically, not religiously, and they have much more in common with other secular, progressive people in our culture. For political and cultural purposes, their Jewish ethnicity hardly matters.
6. In the new covenant, the basic antithesis is between Christians and non-Christians. This does not negate other categories — one’s sex, nationality, age, etc. all matter in social relations. We have various duties based on these other identities. But anti-Semities tend to redraw the antithesis, resurrecting the very wall between Jew and Gentile that Jesus tore down.
7. Progressives argue that there is something uniquely evil about Western civilization. They are obviously wrong about that claim, as Western civilization is the highest peak human civilization has reached thus far. Anti-Semites argue there is something uniquely evil about the Jews. Exegetically, this is not supportable from the Scripture. Even if one argues that Jews in the first century who crucified Jesus were guilty of the most wicked act in history, the curse due for that act fell upon them in 70 AD, when the old covenant came to an end. And, of course, Gentiles were also culpable in Christ’s death, as Psalm 2:1 prophesied and as the gospel accounts make clear. Paul spells all this out in Romans 1 and 2, with 1:18ff focused on the Gentiles and 2:1ff focused on the Jews, and chapter 3 reaching the conclusion that all of humanity, Jew and Gentile, are under the same sentence of condemnation — and the only way out is to trust Jesus for salvation.
8. One can reject what Reno has called the post-war consensus without embracing anti-semitism, or thinking Hitler was a Christian prince, or denying the Holocaust, or thinking the wrong side won WW2. The propriety of WW2 and its aftermath are two distinct questions. It’s interesting how many young men on X are suddenly WW2 experts. In Reno’s book The Return of the Strong Gods, he makes it clear from the outset that racism (racial malice) and anti-semitism are wrong, and many are suggesting that if you are not hostile to the Jewish people, you are in the grip of the postwar consensus. That’s absurd and certainly not the view of Gottfried, Reno, Buchanan, etc.

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Questions for anti-Semitic “Christians”:

Much of the NT was written to instruct Christians about how to deal with their persecutors, most of whom were Jewish. Are you willing to follow those instructions? The book of James is particularly relevant here since it addresses precisely this issue. If you are angry at the Jewish people, will that anger accomplish God’s righteous purposes?

It is true that the generation of Jews that crucified Jesus came under a special curse. But that curse was fulfilled in 70AD when the temple and city of Jerusalem were destroyed, just as Jesus predicted. Do you agree that Jews are under no special covenantal curse post-70AD?

What do you do with the fact that Jesus, seated in heaven at his Father’s right hand, ruling over all things, is still Jewish in his humanity, and will be Jewish for all eternity? When you say derogatory things about Jews in general, are you excepting Jesus, and if so, how is that noted?

In light of Romans 2:28-29, are you willing to call yourself a “true Jew”?

If Jews are a race, and races are supposed to be arranged in a hierarchy based on IQ (as some seem to want to do), then shouldn’t whites willingly submit to Jews since Jews (as a group) have higher IQs than whites (as a group)? I think this whole way of thinking about racial superiority/inferiority is rather ridiculous, but white supremacists use the IQ argument to claim that blacks are inferior. But if that is the case, whites are inferior to Jews and Asians.

Finally, are you willing to be called a child of Abraham since he was Jewish? Are you willing to be united to a Jewish Savior? Are you willing to spend eternity in the new creation with many, many Jews? 

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Some conspiracy theories prove to be true. Some do not. Some are obviously plausibe given what we know of human nature. Others are quite obviously false given what we know of human nature.

Today’s anti-Semitism on the right feeds into and flows out of conspiracy theories. Jews are thought to be hiding behind everything evil that happens in the world. Jews drive the great replacement, destroying white civilizations and culture. Jews control politics, entertainment, finance, etc., across the globe. It would be easy to get the impression that Jews practically possess divine attributes — they are omnipresent, omniscient, etc. Obviously, this is simply false. I do not doubt many Jewish people are and have long been involved in all kinds of evil things — but the anti-Semitic conspiracy just goes too far, and is implausible. Jews are not the only sinners, you know?

This conspiracy also makes one wonder why white people are such dupes. How do they keep falling for Jewish lies? Why are Jews able to constantly trick and manipulate white people into self-sabotage? (Certainly, whites are capable of self-destruction as a group — and it isn’t hard to show that progressivism is a form of cultural and national suicide for whites — but is a Jewish conspiracy the best explanation for this?) Bottom line: These Jewish conspiracies make white people look dumb — very dumb since we cannot act in our own best interests.

What about the claim that Jews are uniquely evil? Or that Judaism is uniquely evil? I am not an egalitarian. I do not think we have to say that all false religions, or all adherents of a particular religion, are equal (that is, equally bad). There are gradations. Further, the most evil religion at one time in history might not be at another time in history. Some adherents of a false religion might be especially pernicious while others are relatively benign. Exegetically, there is no biblical rationale for claiming that Jews are uniquely evil. Thus, it must be an empirical question. So here we go:

How does one measure the evil of a particular group? How many “evil points” do Jews get compared to Muslims, Hindus, Satanists, Mormons, and so on? Who’s keeping score and tallying all this up? How does it compare to the “evil points” that plain ole vanilla progressives/secularists get? Or apostate (progressive) Roman Catholics and mainline Presbyterians?

And further, there is the problem of failing to distinguish or practically account for the distinction between ethnicty and religion. When we say that Jews are uniquely evil, are we talking about an ethnicity, defined by DNA/ancestry? Or are we talking about a religion? How do we separate out the damage Jews do because they are Jewish versus the damage they do because they are sinners, because they have embraced progressivism, etc.? Even if one argues that Jews were the primary masterminds behind the rise of cultural Marxism, developing the architecture for a movement is not the same as implementing it, and there simply aren’t enough Jews to account for the widespread damage cultural Marxism has done. One could argue that feminists or HR departments or the black women who run organizations like BLM or the widespread number of Roman Catholics who are involved in and vote for Democrats, or any number of other demographic groups are largely responsible for our cultural wreckage. Even if Jews are heavily behind the supply of porn and Hollywood filth, that does not mean they create the demand for it, which statistically must come from Gentiles. And so on. These things are way too complex, and implicate far too many demographic categories, to focus exclusively on the Jewish people.

The same is true politically. We can find sublte ways in which Jews have encouraged Zionism or dispensationalism in American churches. We can find ways that they have infiltrated political administrations and shaped foreign policy in a way that served Israeli interests more than American. But American evangelicals and conservatives are fully responsible for the theological and political convictions they have come to. No one actually forced dispensationalism on the church, nor could they have. Our own theological and historical ignorance left us vulnerable.

Far too many young men I’ve seen attracted to anti-semitism seem to be looking for a scapegoat to blame for their own struggles or failures in life. Boomers, the Jews, Churchill, FDR, LBJ, MLK, and others take the blame — and no doubt all of those figures have been culpable for terrible sins. But every generation has its own battles to fight. And even if life is harder today — a debatable proposition in some ways — simply scapegoating Jewish elites or whoever does not actually fix anything.

When someone tells me about all the horrible things Jews are involved in, rather than dispute the point, I usually ask: So what’s the cash value of this? What do you plan to do about it? What do you want me to do about it? Are you calling for violence? It seems that sometimes the very same guys who deny that the Holocaust happened wish that it had — a rather odd position to be in, to say the least. One cannot take Hitler’s hatred of the Jews as proof of his Christian faith (ala Mahler) while simultaneously arguing that the Holocaust really didn’t happen because the math doesn’t work out. Anti-semites on the right need to figure out what actually happened in Nazi Germany and then tell us if they think it was good or bad. As someone who looked into the evidence for the Holocaust many years ago, I affirm that the Nazis unquestionably committed massive atrocities, whether the numbers given are fully accurate or not. That the Holocaust itself happened and that it was a great evil should be undisputed facts of history for any Christian. To say otherwise betrays willful historical ignorance and moral blindness.

Sometimes, it’s argued that past generations of Christians were anti-Semitic. Supposedly anti-Semitism is built into the Christian tradition. We are given Luther quotes where he says terrible things about the Jews. This is cited either as something we are supposed to be embarrassed about or as cover for modern day anti-semitism: “If you’d excommunicate us for our views of the Jews, you’d also excommunicate most of the Reformers.” But carefully reading those quotations from Luther (and others) reveals their target was not racial or ethnic, as we’d think of those categories today, but religious. Luther was aiming his barbs at a false religion, not a race. Pre-modern people did not even think of race the way we do today, so they probably could not be racists in the sense that the category later arose. The concerns of Luther and others were with the religion of a people and the culture it produced. What is often thought of as anti-Semitism in Luther is really just Luther’s prophet-like denunciation of a false religion. Note that Luther also attacked the “Turks” – an ethnic or racial category to us, but a religious one to him (Turks = Muslims). Supposed I attacked Mormonism as a false religion full of stupidity, ignorance, and immorality (e.g., polygamy). If someone responded by asking, “Why do you hate white people so much?” (since most Mormons are white), they would be missing the point of my critique. In lambasting Mormonism, I am not attacking a race of people, I am attacking a idolatrous religion. I believe Mormons can repent and become Christians — and Luther believed Jews could repent and become Christians as well. Nothing in Luther, properly understood, would underwrite modern day anti-semitism or any other form of racial malice towards a people group. Luther’s practice would underwrite scathing denunciations of false religions and worldviews in the present day — something we probably need more of than we are presently getting from the church.

But one further caveat: Suppose Luther was an anti-semite in the modern racial sense. We are not committed to the infallibility or Martin Luther (or John Calvin, or Martin Bucer, or Robert Dabney, or any other saint from a previous generation). If Luther did harbor racial animosity, we should say so, acknowledge it as a sin, and commit ourselves to doing better. We can appreciate the great heroes of the faith without whitewashing their sins or papering over their flaws.

Just as the recent controversies have revealed that a lot of people do not know nearly as much about WW2 history as they think, so it has also revealed a much wider historical ignorance. It is sad to see poorly educated young men (who would be better off reading good books than scrolling on X) get duped because they are historically ignorant. Yes, our historical narratives should be carefully scrutinized and tested, but changing your views on history to get the thrill of holding transgressive views is not actually a way to do sound scholarship.

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If someone held the following set of views, how would they be categorized by those involved in the current fracas over race, ethnicity, and anti-Semitism?:

1. This person believes that the US should not be sending billions of dollars to Israel. He is not a strict isolationist per se, but wants a much more restrained foreign policy that focuses more exclusively on what serves the best interests of ordinary Americans. He believes Israel has the same right to defend itself in a just war as any other nation, but does not believe that the American taxpayer should foot the bill. (He would say the same about Ukraine.) The modern nation-state of Israel has done some terrible things that should not be excused. Since it is a largely secular, progressive nation that is rather hostile to Christians, there is no reason for us to have a unique affection for it.
2. At the same time, this person hopes that in Israel’s conflict with radical Islam that the Israelis win. In his judgment, while Israel is a secular, progressive state, which is problematic, it seems to be less of a menace to the world than radical Islamists like Hamas. If Israel crushes Hamas, it will be good for the world. Of course, if President Trump brokered another peace deal in the Middle East, that would also be good. 
3. This person is committed to covenant theology. Thus, the formation of Israel as a nation-state in 1948 is of no prophetic or eschatological significance. Modern Jews have no special promise and no special curse; the Jews’ special covenant status ended in 70AD. The true children of Abraham are those who are united to Jesus by faith (Galatians 3-4). The church is the new Israel, including believers of all nations. Modern non-Christian Jews do not worship the same God as Christians. They need to be evangelized and converted if they are to be saved. This person is postmil so he does believe the Jews will become Christians en masse in the future but they are not some kind of special key to the Great Commission. 
4. Thus, while there may be a very narrow sense in which we can speak of a “Judeo-Christian” cultural tradition (e.g., Western civilization was produced by the saturation of European nations in the whole Bible and the church received the inheritance of old covenant Israel), there is absolutely no such thing as “Judeo-Christian” religion. The term “Judeo-Christian” should generally be abandoned because it confuses core issues. 
5. This person recognizes that modern Jews are often a high performing people, for good or ill. Their genetic endowments mean they will often rise towards the top. Their cultural contributions in both directions should be recognized for what they are. He is not convinced that unbelieving Jews are “uniquely evil.” (How would one measure such a thing? Where do other groups rank in relation to the Jews?) But it is obviously true that many secular, progressive Jews, like secular, progressive Gentiles, are doing great damage to American culture and heritage. Orthodox Jews, ironically, are more likely to believe the blasphemous Talmud but also more likely to be politically and culturally conservative. While he recognizes the legitimacy of ethnic generalizations (eg, Titus 1), he is really not that interested in ethnic or racial identity politics, and would rather label other Americans according to their worldview than some other identity category. He does not see the main conflict of our time as a racial one but a conflict of faiths/religions.
6. This person rejects the main features of the post-war consensus. He is patriotic. He rejects globalism and the welfare state. He despises all forms of Marxism. He appreciates the free market but is not a market absolutist. He wants laws that protect and support families rather than subvert them. He opposes no-fault divorce and abortion. He wants his nation to have borders and he knows unfettered immigration has been a disaster so deportations are necessary. While he realizes that the facts surrounding American involvement in WW2 are complex, he’s glad to view WW2 American soldiers as heroes and (like C S Lewis) believes our cause was basically just, even if our leaders flawed. He’s glad Hitler was defeated and thinks anyone who views Hitler as a “Christian prince” is an ignorant or evil fool. It’s good the Nazis were defeated and it’s good America eventually won the Cold War, though American foreign policy has been pretty messed up for a long time now.
7. He is even willing to admit that those who think WW2 was avoidable or that an alliance with Stalin was questionable have a point (though looking at map of Europe from the early 1940s will explain why Churchill decided to side with the commies to defeat the Nazis rather than the other way around). But this is no way makes him think “the wrong side won” or that Hitler was somehow morally superior to Churchill. He is also willing to admit that Holocaust numbers might have been inflated — but has no doubt the Holocaust really happened and really was a massive atrocity.
8. He thinks much of the unique hostility to the Jews from the right comes from a failure to distinguish race from religion. The problem with unbelieving Jews is just that — they are unbelieving — and so they do what all unbelievers do. The problem with Jews is not racial but religious. And that’s why the only solution to whatever problems Jews cause is Christ — they need to be converted to faith in him.
9. He thinks “white boy summer” is generally either silly or dumb. Why the focus on race? Why not “Christian boy summer”? Or “American boy summer”? Especially since not all white boys share anything like the same language, culture, religion, or even nationality. This person thinks that racial identity politics is a dead end, theologically, politically, and practically. Racial identity politics might play well and get traction in a bubble on X but it is not going make any headway in the “real world” — and indeed, will only hurt the cause of conservatives. He is not sure that speaking of the “woke right” is the best way to describe rightwing racial identity politics, but many of the came criticisms applied to critical race theory on the left also apply to its manifestation on the right. Biblically, God has organized humanity into nations, not races; nations, not races, are covenantal entities; and nations, not races, are the objects of the Great Commission. This person subscribes to the Morgan Freeman school of race relations: The best thing we can about racism is to stop talking about it!
10. Finally, this person really does believe their such a thing as the sin of racism, even if charges of racism (like abuse and so on) are greatly exaggerated and inflated. Racism is a form malice based on race. Because race in the modern sense is not really a biblical category, the sin of racism is implicit rather than explicit in the Bible. But it is clearly present, e.g., in the parable of the Good Samaritan, we see that refusing to help someone because of their ethnicity is an inexcusable sin. Race should not have any bearing in matters of guilt or innocence in a court of law; in that sense, the legal system should be colorblind. Affirmative Action and DEI programs are forced injustices. Wanting the nation to have a sane and responsible immigration policy and real, enforceable borders, is not racism but common sense. People should be free to exercise in-group preferences in their social lives, business dealings, and so on. As Jeremy Carl has pointed out, the main form of racism in our day is anti-white racism. Among American blacks, the biggest crisis is not racism, but fatherlessness, stemming largely from the sexual revolution and welfare state (with both arose for related reasons in the 1960s). But the answer to anti-white racism is not white supremacy or white identitarian politics. It is impossible to defeat racism with more racism. If there is no such thing as racism then whites cannot be the victims of it and there is no solid ground to stand on in opposing anti-white DEI policies.

This person considers his views on these issues to be a matter of sanctified (Christian) common sense and wonders why there is so much controversy over these issues even in the Reformed church camp of which he is a part. He is thankful these views are not common in his denomination, but does not want to see them spread.

So, how would you judge a person holding to this package of convictions? I think he’s on the right track.

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A few more notes:

1. Buchanan rightly warned that revenge racism is not the answer to anti-white bias in the culture. The answer to DEI is not affirmative action for whites. In-group preferences in familial, social, and cultural matters are not examples of racism. But at a legal level, we really do need a color blind society in which there is no partiality. These fine distinctions often get blurred. Also, it should be noted that anti-white bias in hiring practices is already illegal and we should be fighting all instances of it in court instead of letting it slide by. 

2. It’s possible to want a sane border/immigration policy without being racist – obviously. In fact, unrestricted immigration hurts black Americans as much, if not more, than white Americans. It’s bizarre that many people seem to think white Americans are the only ones with something at stake in stopping the immigration insanity. 

3. The accusation of racism is pretty meaningless at this point. But so is the charge of boomerism and a lot of other derogatory labels that get thrown around. The problem is that this does not mean there is no such thing as racism, boomerism, etc. Racism is not an explicit category of sin in the Bible, but that’s because race itself hardly registers as a biblical category. The real sin of racism is usually a form of partiality, or malice, or envy. It’s a specific form of failing to love one’s neighbor. We should reject and refute false charges of racism, but one would not have to peruse this app for long to encounter real race-based hatreds. Two things can be true at once: charges of racism are greatly overblown because the left uses this charge against anyone who espouses positions they don’t like, and yet racism continues to be a real problem in some quarters. 

4. It’s obvious that if you go woke, you can never go woke enough. The woke god is never satisfied and always demands more. This is why I’ve said wokeness is an acid that eats through everything unless someone puts a stop to it – and that requires rejecting the very essence of the woke/progressive worldview. I do not think there is such a thing as the “woke right” but I do wonder if a similar dynamic takes place on the right, eg, once one gets “based,” is it ever possible to be based enough? There is a sense in which those on the right can lose their transcendent theological and moral framework, and get radicalized in a way that mirrors leftwing radicalization.

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When Democrats and progressives blame various social ills on the “racism” of conservatives, they are usually just trying to cover for their own failed policies.

For example, the welfare state has been a catastrophic failure for blacks and has nearly destroyed the black family in America. Fatherlessness has led to disordered and broken communities, especially in urban America. But rather than back up and evaluate the effect of their policies on the family, particularly black families, progressives blame conservatives for their supposed “racism” and double down on the welfare state. Thus, things go from bad to worse. 

The reality is that, human nature being what it is, no group of people of any race can thrive and prosper when their families are broken, or families aren’t even being formed. There is no set of policies and no economic system that can produce widespread prosperity if the families of that society are not in tact. Family is not optional. Family is foundational to happiness and prosperity. 

It’s the same with feminism. By every objective measurement, feminism has made women unhappy. The more feminists get their way, in terms of public policy and cultural support, the less happy women are. But what do feminists do? Do they step back and evaluate the real world outcomes and impact of their worldview and policies? No. They blame conservatives for their supposed “misogyny” and double down on feminism, which only makes things worse. 

There is such a thing as political repentance – of turning away from policies that don’t work. The left needs a heavy dose of it.

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You will not defeat critical race theory with another version of the same thing. You will not defeat racism with more racism, and you will not defeat identity politics with just another form of identity politics. You will not defeat Zionism with anti-Antisemitism. You will not defeat Marxism with some other kind of cultural Marxism. Male chauvinism cannot overcome feminism. White supremacy will not answer the challenge of multicultural globalism. You will not defeat the woke left by creating a woke right. 

Bottom line: what works for the left will not work for the right. Becoming the mirror image of the left to defeat left is actually not a winning strategy.

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Much of the “racism is good crowd” misses what is at stake in the ongoing debates (if they can really be called that on X and elsewhere.

Preferences are not the same as duties. Arguments are being made against positions no one holds. Very few involved in these conversations seem to know the Bible well, nor do they seem to know how to make an actual argument from nature.

If a white person prefers to marry another white, that is not a sin. The preference is fine, and most people will have this kind of preference. But if it is claimed they have a duty to marry another white and it would be a sin to marry a non-white, that is obviously an extra-biblical, sinful, and legalistic requirement. There is no duty to preserve a race in and of itself. (One could argue we do have obligations to our nation – I would agree with that – but nations and races are two distinct categories.) Whether or not Moses became a polygamist is debatable, but setting that issue aside, there was no sin or defect involved in taking a Cushite wife. Boaz was not defective or unnatural in taking a Moabitess wife. Etc. These cases are not the norm, of course, but they are fully approved by God.

Preferring to marry someone of the same race is not a result of the fall. Neither is preferring to marry someone of another race. But all racial animosity is a result of the fall. Natural affection – storge – does not end with people of the same race as me. All humans of all races are naturally bound together as fellow image bearers. All humans are the same “kind” in the language of Genesis 1. It’s true that all white people are my brothers and sisters in a sense because of genetic connection – but I have a genetic connection with humans of all races in an ultimate sense, as both nature and Scripture attest.

Recasting racism as a virtue has to be one of the absolute dumbest things I have ever encountered in my life. I think Stone Choir turns guys into damned fools (I’m speaking literally) – or at least turns their brains to mush. Its obsession with the flesh is manifested in the works of the flesh. No Christian could think the behavior this stuff produces is fitting and godly.

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Martin Luther was not anti-Semitic, at least not in the way that term is usually understood. He was anti-false religion. He had scathing things to say about the Jews because he opposed their religious faith, just as he had scathing things to say about the Turks because he opposed their Muslim faith. (Note that in the case of Muslims, Luther identified adherents of a false faith with an ethnic category. He did something similar with the Jews of his day.)

Martin Luther did not operate with modern racial categories at all. He was not a racist in any proper sense of the term. His opposition to the Jews stemmed from their theology and resultant practices, not their genetics or physical lineage. He saw the Jewish religion (Judaism) as a false religion and, because Jews rarely converted in his day, a threat to the Christian society in which he lived.

Luther said many terrible things about the Jews that he should not have said. Some of what he said should be done to Jews was likely hyperbole, and would make even the staunchest theonomist blush (eg, he wanted synagogues burned as an application of Deuteronomy 13), but such rhetoric was not uncommon in Luther’s day. Lutherans in recent generations have rightly condemned much of what Luther said and distanced themselves from it. But it’s important to understand that for Luther, the issue was religion, not race. He should be read along the lines of an old covenant prophet attacking a people who have fallen into idolatry rather than a modern racist bigot who targets people because of physical features.

In his final sermon, Luther said this about the Jewish people: “We want to treat them with Christian love and to pray for them, so that they might become converted and would receive the Lord.” This not the attitude of a man opposing a people because of their racial heritage; rather, it is the view of a man opposing a false religion, hoping they will convert to true Christian faith. The very fact that Luther would long for the conversion of the Jews, or even hold it out as a possibility, must be the lens through which we view all his anti-Jewish writings. To put it another way, Luther’s view of the Jews in his day was more like Jeremiah (pronouncing a curse on unrepentant Jews) than Hitler (hating Jews because he sees them as an irredeemable cancer on humanity).

Of course, it would be the Reformed branch of Protestantism that would develop the most hopeful view of the future of the Jewish people. Either through a particular futurist reading of Romans 11:26 or a more generalized postmillennial eschatology, many Reformed Christians came to believe that God will ultimately convert and save the Jewish people. This does not necessitate believing the Jews somehow have a “special” role in God’s economy apart from Christ (the way Dispensationalists do), but it does mean we can trust God will convert them, even as he promises to convert all people groups (Psalm 22:27f).