The Wages of Supersessionism

by Dexter Van Zile (April 2014)

 

Antisemitism has gotten worse over the past few decades. Expressions of Judenhass that would have resulted in someone being summarily banished from polite society in the first few decades after the Shoah are now ignored. Anyone who harbors any doubts about this reality needs only to consider two short vignettes.

story of John Strugnell, a biblical scholar who was chief editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project. While working on translating the scrolls, he gave an interview to Haaretz in which he described Judaism as “a horrible religion.” He didn’t stop there. “It's Christian heresy, and we deal with our heretics in different ways,” he said. “You are a phenomenon that we haven't managed to convert – and we should have managed.”

What Strugnell was saying was that the Jewish people really had no reason to exist and should have been subsumed into Christianity centuries ago. It takes a lot of cheek to say such a thing to a reporter for a newspaper located in the homeland for such a people, but Strugnell, who reportedly had some mental health problems in addition to antisemitism, said it plain as day.

The response was quick and decisive. Strugnell was dismissed from his position and his career never recovered from the disgrace. In 1990, polite society was horrified by what Strugnell said, prompting his colleagues to distance themselves immediately from his comments.

a blatantly antisemitic website that in one instance published the writing of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan. Wall is listed as a consulting editor for the website.

piece titled “GOP Candidates Wear the Jewish Kippah.”

Viola Larson and David Fischler), I raised the issue with the magazine’s editor, David Heim in an effort to get his name off of Christian Century’s masthead.

Heim said. “He deserves to be on our masthead.”

was as follows: “The board does not assume a role in limiting any past or present editor's freedom of expression, or in determining what they may publish in other forums.”

Christian Century’s masthead – despite his antisemitic rants and affiliation with a website that promotes antisemitism. Strugnell was held accountable, but Wall is given a pass by both the editor of the Christian Century and its board of directors.

These two vignettes indicate that the taboo against antisemitic discourse and commentary that was present in polite society in the U.S. for a few decades after the Shoah has been erased.

Zionism Unsettled

boasted of running a successful campaign of “psychological warfare against the Zionist enemy.”

affirmed the notion that Jewish self-understanding is the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Get Ready for the Pacifists

There is a certain genius to the way the anti-Zionists in the PC(USA) have played it. First, they got the American Jewish community up in arms with a hateful little text that is nothing more than an extended assay at Jew-baiting.

Then, they will let things settle down and let the pacifists take center stage with the push for divestment. By the time the General Assembly rolls around this summer, the document Zionism Unsettled will be forgotten and people will be left to juxtapose angry Jews with those nice pacifists from the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. As events progress, the attention will shift from the ugliness of Zionism Unsettled to just how angry the Jews are.

The anti-Zionists in the PC(USA) and their enablers in the denominational headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky are not stupid. They may have made a shipwreck of their denomination, but they sure have mastered the art of Jew-baiting for fun and profit.

In Evangelical World as Well

This is part of a lethal narrative offered to Evangelical Protestants by the good folks at Bethlehem Bible College.

The Wages of Supersessionism

Why is this narrative gaining traction?

Christians and Muslims want Jews to convert to their faith, and secular supersessionists want Jews to abandon their insistence on remaining a people and maintaining their sovereign state in favor of some universal identity.

For the people afflicted with these supersessionisms, the Jews are simply not supposed to be around. They are a fossil people who should have disappeared. For these people, the notion that Jews have found a viable and enduring response to the human condition is simply anathema. And yet the Jewish people endure and achieve success.

For these people, the success of the Jewish state, and its increased effectiveness at promoting the welfare of the Jewish people, is an intolerable contradiction to their supersessionist beliefs. Ideologues, both religious and secular, will do whatever they must to protect their own toxic brand of supersessionism, no matter how disfiguring their actions are to themselves and to the people around them.

Dexter Van Zile is Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). His opinions are his own.

 

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