One Nation leader Pauline Hanson argues Australia is “predominately a Judeo-Christian society” and should live under “one cultural umbrella”.
The term “Judeo-Christian” is shorthand, here, for a set of values that privilege Western culture. As a term, it explicitly excludes other world religions, such as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.
But this term is, in fact, a relatively recent invention that glosses over Christianity’s role in historically persecuting Jewish people. For several millennia, many Christians have seen themselves as the “chosen people”, setting themselves in opposition to the Jewish faith.
Given there is no such thing as “Judeo-Christian values”, we might do well to abandon the term.
Where did it come from?
Virtually unknown before the second world war, the term Judeo-Christian emerged in the United States in the late 1930s and 1940s as a way of combating the growth of antisemitism there.
In the aftermath of the murder of around six million Jews in the Holocaust, Protestant Americans began using the term more widely, as a way of bringing Jews more securely inside the Western tent. As such, it was a gesture of reconciliation provoked by shame and guilt.
In the second half of the 20th century, its use broadened in the US and in the West more generally to denote a set of values that separate Western from other cultures.
Fast forward to Australia and 2007, when the term was embraced by then Prime Minister John Howard: “Of all of the influences on Australian society,” he declared, “none has been more profound than that of the Judeo-Christian ethic.”
Christian anti-Judaism
As religions, Judaism and Christianity are the same age and share a common religious heritage. Both arose in the first century CE out of the Hebrew Scriptures – known to Jews as the Tanakh.
What Christians would call the “Old Testament” arose out of these Hebrew texts. Christians eventually added a collection of books, called the “New Testament”, from around the first century of the Common Era to create the Bible.
Judaism and Christianity both became “religions of the books” – albeit quite different sets of books and, most importantly, interpreted in radically different ways.
From the outset, then, the notion of a “Judeo-Christian tradition” looks a little historically shaky. Moreover, the adjective “Judeo-Christian” itself obscures the fact that, from its beginning, Christianity believed it had superseded the religion of the Jews.
Simply put, Christianity held that, for God, there was only room for one “chosen people” – namely, those who belonged to Christianity – and that the Jews had forfeited this role. Their religion no longer held any validity, Christians believed. Indeed, anti-Judaism was central to Christian self-understanding.
Pogroms against Jewish people were a feature of Europe in the Medieval period and beyond.
Even the 18th-century Enlightenment and its supposed endorsement of religious tolerance had little impact on Christians’ negative view of Judaism. In the 19th and 20th centuries, this anti-Judaism changed register into secular, race-based antisemitism.
For its part, Judaism denies that Christianity has superseded Judaism. It neither recognises Jesus as God become man, nor that God consists of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, nor that Jesus is the Messiah. Nor does Judaism accept the idea that, in Christianity, God has made a new covenant that excludes the Jews.
Essential differences
There is another, seemingly more positive Christian tradition in relation to the Jews, dating from the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Here Catholics and Muslims, rather than Jews, were seen as true Christianity’s major enemies.
Its most notable exponent was an English theologian, Thomas Brightman (1562–1607). According to Brightman, before the end of the world when Christ would return – as forecast in the Book of Revelation – the Jews would convert to Christianity. Though their religion would end, they would nevertheless retain their identity as the Jewish nation and be restored to Israel.
Brightman’s views became deeply embedded in 19th and 20th century American Protestantism.
Christian philosemitism assumes the religion of Judaism is merely a stepping stone for Jews on their pathway to embracing Christ, and that the Jews, in rejecting Christ as their Messiah two thousand years ago, quite simply got it wrong. In short, it remains deeply anti-Judaic.
“Judeo-Christian values” is a modern invention. There always has been a Jewish tradition and a Christian tradition – or, more accurately, varieties of Jewish and Christian traditions, each with their own values.
The term Judeo-Christian values continues the suppression of Jewishness by attempting to hide the essential differences between Judaism and Christianity, one of which is that each denies the validity of the other.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
