In his opening address, John R. Mott, who presided at the Atlantic City conference as he had at the ones in Budapest and Warsaw, called the attention of the participants (who attended as individuals and not as representatives of churches or other organizations) to the significance of the name of the conference and the committee sponsoring it--the "Christian Approach to the Jews." This name, the chairman of the International Missionary Council declared, "implies that there have been approaches, contacts, attitudes, practices on the part of Christians toward their neighbors, the Jews, which have not been Christian. It also implies that the changes so desirable and necessary will not come by chance or magic, or as a result of drifting and indifference, but only as Christians recognize their responsibility and take initiative to bring about the right relations. Above all, it implies that there is an approach by Christians to the Jews, as to all other non-Christian peoples, which is truly Christian, that is, Christ-like."
Though the recognition had been present in the earlier conferences, four years later at Atlantic City the need to specify the Christian approach to the Jews had become urgent in the light of what was perceived to be growing, indeed rampant, secularism. At the same time, the question as to whether or not any missionary approach to the Jews was legitimate had been posed, not only by Jews but also by some within the Christian community who were eager not to offend their Jewish neighbors. There was no doubt on the part of Atlantic City participants on this last point, of course, but they, nevertheless, went to some pains to demonstrate that their conviction was entirely correct.
Objections to the Jewish Mission
Thus the Rev. Dr. James Black, chairman of the International Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews, and the vice-chairman, Rev. Dr. John Stuart Conning, set about countering Jewish objections to the attempt at converting them to Christianity. In the process they went a considerable way toward outlining the theological position of the mission to the Jews in both its negative and positive aspects.
Black listed six reasons he had heard offered for "leaving the Jews alone" and, to no one's surprise, found none of them to be persuasive.
1) "The Jew possesses 'a good enough religion.'" For Black that was a "terrible statement. You are asking the Jew to rest his soul in a second best--and it is from that type of thing that all spiritual tragedies start." He had no doubt that Judaism was a good religion, however, and, for that reason, "it is easier to win a pagan than, say, a Jew or a Mohammedan." In his parallel address, Dr. Conning recognized that "Christian arguments justifying an approach to the Jews on the basis of the Great Commission and the example and teaching of Christ and His apostles have no weight with Jews....Jews concede that Christianity may have a mission to backward and decadent races, but for Jews to be included in such a ministry is an unwarranted assumption of superiority on the part of Christians and an affront to Jews. They scout the notion that Christianity is an advance on Judaism." But, when all was said and done, Conning's position was identical with that of Black's. "It is not a good enough religion we offer them but the best," the chairman had declared, "the only religion where to our experience the human soul can find God in His fullness."
2) The Jew "has the Old Testament--Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, the Psalms, and the Law." Moreover, the Jew "has a great and noble morality, a program of life and conduct that has made him an ethical power in history. In fact, he has everything except the New Testament and Jesus. But to us it is the exception that makes all the difference." And what a difference that was! Black put the difference in the form of a rhetorical question: "[H]ow would you like to live your life and think your thoughts in the atmosphere of the Old Testament alone? It is a dim land of uncertainty compared with the assurance and joy of Jesus Christ."
To this also Conning agreed. Those who object to including Jews in a missionary program, he wrote, "hold that Judaism has within it so much of high spiritual worth that Jews are not really subjects for evangelism at all." In rebuttal to this position, he quoted Principal W. M. Macgregor of Glasgow, who had written a book entitled The Jewish Mission a Christian Test in which he asserted that the Jews "have so much that only Christ is wanting; and there are actually people in our churches, and ministers in Christian pulpits, who seem to regard that exception as if it were of no account."
It would appear that the missionaries to Jews had a problem in addition to convincing Jews that their religion was inferior to Christianity; there were Christians who needed "converting," too.
3) "The God of the Jews is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." In refuting this objection, Black pointed to one of the continuing questions confronted by the Jewish mission: is the God of the New Testament the same God as that of the Old Testament? To assert that they are, Black avowed, "is one of these half-truths that are more ruinous than lies. Not even God is the same God if we see Him from a different angle." Therein lay the problem even with his own Scottish Christian tradition, for, he sadly confessed, "I trace all the sorrows and agonies of my covenanting forefathers to the fact that they saw and worshipped God chiefly through the Old Testament and not through the New. He was the God of warfare and intolerance and favoritism, not the Father of all His children as seen in Jesus." He went on: "In the Old Testament the Hebrew God was the one thing to be spoken of in a hush: His very name was the unmentionable thing. But to the Christian He is the nearest, dearest, and most lovable being in common thought. The Jew knows God in His profile. In Jesus we look into the full eyes of tenderness, love, and understanding." The Old Testament God and the New Testament God may very well be the same God, but Christians were privileged to see a side of divinity that was obscured to Jews.
4) "Every people's religion suits it ideally like its own clothes and customs." Such a notion is "philosophically absurd," Black told his audience. "Truth is never a matter of climate or temperature or temperament....Why in the world did that Jew, Paul, come to Europe and bring a message which changed the national customs of my Druidical forefathers in Caledonia, where they offered human sacrifices on the raised stones under oaks? Did not our ancient religion suit us like the kilts we wore? Who would argue such a piece of folly for the Scottish folk? The way to defeat many a specious argument is simply to state its logical absurdity."
This analogy with the religion of the Druids was a graphic way of stating that particularistic religions are absurd rather than demonstrating it logically. Nevertheless, the Scottish missionary concluded that if "religion were merely a climatic or national peculiarity and not some form of universal truth about God and conduct I could see the point of such a curious plea. But meanwhile, I cannot--thank God! There is nothing worthy of any nation or people except the highest. That Judaism is national or ancient or worthy of respect is no argument at all in face of fuller truth."
But Jews did not concur in that assessment, as Conning made clear in his summary of various Jewish positions. He let Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver speak in his own words: "The doctrine of one universal, prescriptive religion has been in continual conflict with the doctrine of religious freedom. After centuries of struggle, liberty of conscience and the right of nonconformity have been generally conceded by all the enlightened people of the world....One religion for the whole of mankind is neither necessary nor desirable. Only the religious monopolist who is convinced that there is but one true faith will insist upon one religion for the whole of mankind."
5) "Some people point out that there are gates on every side of the City of God, and they say, 'Surely that means that there are ways of approach to God from every honest faith.' I don't deny it." Black told his audience that it "makes me smile to quote [this]; but one has no idea how often it is used and how it influences people." "Even the New Testament," he wrote, "shows us that as long as people do not know better and are living true to the best that is in them, God receives them fully. But that is not the point." The point, it turned out, was twofold: "(1) this picture of gates to the City is a New Testament picture of different approaches to Christ, not outside Him; and (2) even if it were true, that does not acquit us from withholding from others what is the joy and glory of our own life."
6) "Why insult the Jew?" This argument against missionizing Jews would take Jewish sensibilities into serious consideration. But Black had the classic answer: "It is no insult to give a man something better than he already has."
That both James Black and John Conning felt constrained to discuss objections to their mission at length is evidence that these objections had been raised, not only by Jews but also by some Christians, from the very beginning of the modern effort to convert Jews. We will encounter them time and again in the pages that follow; some, though not all, will receive answers more satisfactory than those provided by the "laborers in the Jewish field" of the late 1920s and early 30s, but, to some degree or another, they all remain at issue to the present day.
Validation of the Christian Approach
The two clerics whose presentations to the 1931 Conference on the Christian Approach to the Jews we are examining could not be content, of course, with their sometimes cavalier dismissal of objections to the missionary endeavor. "But when every objection to the inclusion of Jews in the missionary program of the Church has been considered," John Stuart Conning declared, "there are still a whole series of obligations and reasons which make it unthinkable that Jews should be left outside the privileges of the Kingdom."
Phrases such as "Jews should not be left outside" and "work for Jews" are peppered through the writings of the early twentieth-century missionaries. The suggestion clearly is that Christians do Jews a favor when they urge reception of the gospel upon them. And that despite continual and often bitter Jewish complaints to the contrary. Conning cited such complaints, though he made no suggestion that they be taken seriously by committed Christians. For example, he quoted from an article in The Hibbert Journal for January 1930 in which Claude G. Montefiore had commented on the Report of the Budapest-Warsaw conferences. "The Report," Montefiore had written, "emphasizes the need for kindness, for courtesy, for good understanding. You must love the Jews before you can hope to convert them. And to its credit, be it said, the Report speaks with much disapprobation of every kind of anti-Semitism. So far so good. But the new method will fail no less than the old. You are not going to kill Judaism, any more than you killed Home Rule, by kindness. If we dislike anti-Semitic hostility and hatred, we perhaps dislike condescending amiability and soft soap even more." To which Conning responded, "Any statement of good will to the Jews must, therefore, keep in mind this charge of having an ulterior motive." In other words, Christians needed to refine their missionary technique.
The words of Matthew 28:19-20--"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen" (KJV)--constituted the overweening theological imperative, not only of missions to the Jews but of the missionary enterprise as a whole.
But, though the Great Commission was the missionary charter, there were additional validating factors for the Jewish mission, as Conning pointed out by quoting with approval from a work entitled Christ and the Jew, published by the Church of Scotland and written by the same Macdonald Webster quoted above. Webster had compiled a list of seven "arguments" for mission to Jews:
There is the argument of need--one of the nations without knowledge of the saving grace of Christ. There is the argument of gratitude--the debt we owe to the Jewish people for the highest we possess. There is the argument of honest reparation--an appeal to our conscience, the claim of the Jew against us for humane and Christian treatment in requital for the evils, iniquities, and persecutions of ages. There is the argument of self-defense--a people able, virile, persistent, but non-Christian, menacing many of our cherished ideals. There is the argument of the open door--access almost everywhere amongst them for the missionary of the Cross. There is the argument of hope--the abounding success of work for the Jews and the serious consideration now given by masses of them to the claims of Jesus. There is the argument of Holy Scripture--the command of our Lord which should be quick as fire in the heart of the Church.
These "arguments" present a curious mixture, represented on the one hand by "gratitude" and on the other by "menacing." Suffice it to say that they all indicate the urgent necessity to bring the Jews to Christ.
John R. Mott had opened the conference by calling for a specific Christian approach to the Jews, a call that Conning answered by carefully differentiating between evangelism and proselytism:
In proselytism the aim is to detach a convert from the traditions, associations, and concepts of the religion in which he was brought up in order that he may be numbered among the adherents of the new faith....In evangelism the concern is not the gain or prestige that may come to any organization through the converts who may be secured, but the sharing with them of a divine life, a quickening and transforming experience of God's redemptive love in Jesus Christ....Christ was an evangelist, He did not proselytize. Paul, as distinguished from Jewish missionaries, was an evangelist. Their concern was to bring gentiles under the yoke of the Law and number them in the company of Israel. Paul's controlling purpose was to make Christ known to those who had never heard His name....Our very best thought should be given to the possibility of a return to apostolic principles.
The distinction between evangelism and proselytism was to remain important for the justification of mission to Jews in subsequent decades when "coercive proselytism" was denounced in the 1970s and beyond, long after the impetus for overt mission activity had waned. But, unlike the later concern to avoid coercion, which was based on a general adherence to an affirmation of human rights, the emphasis on evangelism as enunciated by Conning contained a determination not to deprive Jewish converts of their Judaism. Thus the vice-chairman of the Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews could declare that "Jews charge Christians with cherishing the deliberate purpose of destroying Judaism, the religion in whose bosom Christianity was nourished, and the synagogue, the spiritual home of Christ and all His apostles. They claim that conversion to Christianity always means loss to the synagogue and to the Jewish community. While the blame for this doubtless rests with the Jews themselves, yet may we not hope that a movement will arise within the synagogue itself whereby the spiritual values of the ancient faith may be retained while giving a full and glad welcome to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord."
The missionaries were genuinely puzzled by the Jews' strenuous resistance to their efforts, for over and again they made it clear that they cherished not the slightest desire to abolish Judaism. On the contrary their most profound wish was to offer Jews something--Jesus Christ--that was the fulfillment of Judaism itself. "Christianity is necessarily missionary," Black explained. "That phrase is often misunderstood, as if Christianity sought to impose itself ruthlessly upon other faiths and replace them. But our faith is missionary in the only true sense, that it wishes to share and impart all its own joys and fruitfulness to others....In this particular, so far as the Jew is concerned, I am not bringing him an alien faith. I am bringing him the fruit and completion and crown of his own. I am not coming to him with some Greek philosophy, or English morality, or American psychology. I am coming to him with Jesus, born a Jew, whom all generations have seen to be the crowning glory of the Jewish faith."
Most of the themes of the Jewish missionaries' song were present in James Black's report on the Budapest-Warsaw conference and in his and John Conning's addresses to the conference at Atlantic City. They set the stage for further discussion of missionary strategy, of literature for the Christian approach to the Jews, and of antisemitism. The fifth of the thirty-six paragraphs in the Atlantic City findings summed it up:
We believe that, having found in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, the supreme revelation of God and having discovered our fellowship with Him to be our most priceless treasure and the only adequate way to spiritual life, we should have an over-mastering desire to share Him with others and very specially with those who are His own people according to the flesh. We therefore have a clear and compelling evangelistic purpose so to present Jesus Christ, by word and deed, to the Jews, that they may be attracted to His personality and recognize Him as their Christ, as in truth He was and is.
Digswell Park, 1932
The first full meeting of the IMC's Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews convened at Digswell Park, near London (Welwyn), 13-14 June 1932, one year after the Atlantic City Conference. In the absence of Chairman James Black, who had tendered his resignation, John Conning, vice-chairman, presided.
The agenda was crowded. Not only were various structural committees appointed, a new chairman elected (Dr. J. A. C. Mackellar), and important papers read, but the Constitution was drafted and approved for submission to the IMC for adoption. According to the Constitution, the Aims of the Committee were:
a) To study the Jewish world in its various aspects, to develop wise policies and an effective and comprehensive programme.
b) To co-ordinate missionary work among Jews throughout the world so as to prevent overlapping of effort, provide for the effective occupation of neglected areas and to become a means of communication for the sharing of knowledge, experience and methods.
c) To foster the production and circulation of literature for Jews appropriate for present-day needs as well as literature for Christians to emphasize Christian responsibility toward the Jews.
d) To stimulate action in the various Christian communions with the purpose of enlisting local congregations in a ministry to the Jews in their parishes.
e) To enlist the co-operation of such agencies as the Y.M.C.A. and the Student Christian Movements in definite service for the Jews.
As was the case in the missionary movement in general, so with the special mission to the Jews a major concern was to coordinate the activity of the various missionary agencies. We have already seen that there was overlapping, particularly in Palestine, of work by several mission stations while, at the same time, large areas with sizable Jewish populations were scarcely "occupied" at all. Thus paragraph (b) was central to the Committee's rationale.
Of no less importance was the development of appropriate literature (c), both for consumption by Jews and by Christians. The Rev. Henry Einspruch of the Salem Hebrew Lutheran Mission in Baltimore, Maryland, had sobered the Atlantic City conference when he declared that he could say "without fear of contradiction that ninety-five per cent of our present literature could be scrapped without loss. I am not oblivious of the fact that some of it has accomplished good, but by and large, I am persuaded that the harm has far outweighed the good." Nevertheless, at Digswell Park it was decided not to create a central bureau to produce literature "owing to the apparent lack of unity and outlook on the part of the various missionary agencies."
Paragraph (d) pointed to a continuing discussion among the missionaries to Jews concerning what to do with Jewish converts. Should separate congregations be established for Jewish Christians? or should they be incorporated into existing churches?
But there was another reason to "stimulate action in the various Christian communions"-- money. Unlike many of the missions to the "heathen" (Jews, as we have seen, were in a special category, neither Christian nor pagan), the Jewish missionary agencies were woefully under-funded. The Constitution stipulated that the Committee's budget "shall be prepared by the Committee and shall be governed by the provisions governing the finances of the International Missionary Council, but always with the understanding that the budget shall be wholly supplementary to the income and expenditures of the Council. No financial obligation on account of the Committee shall be assumed in excess of the assured income provided annually by the co-operating agencies and individual contributors."
The necessity to raise its own funds meant that the Committee was dependent on agencies, churches, and individuals, largely in Great Britain and North America. The financial report to the Digswell Park meeting revealed that, of a total income for 1931 of $7,838.32, $2,051.19 came from churches, mission organizations, and individuals in Great Britain and Ireland while $3100.62 came from North America. $880.00 was raised by sale of literature, principally copies of the Atlantic City conference report and the Committee's publication, News Sheet--the balance from the Budapest-Warsaw conferences was $7.02. Not one cent was recorded as having come from continental Europe or Palestine. The mission to the Jews was clearly an enterprise of English-speaking peoples.
But money was the least of genuine concerns. Far more important was the mission itself, the passionate necessity to offer the gospel to the Jews and find ways to persuade them that it was their salvation, as well as that of gentiles. The papers missionaries gave at conferences and the other reports they wrote of their work seldom mentioned the number of Jews whom they baptized, though the enthusiasm with which they spoke, and their description of the desperate spiritual plight of the Jews, would suggest that vast hosts of Jews were becoming Christian. Occasionally, however, actual numbers were mentioned.
One of the most successful mission stations was that of the Church of Scotland in Budapest, founded in 1841. The biographer of one of its early missionaries "finds that even success can become monotonous, and so he proceeds to give a list of converts for the first ten years. By 1851 sixty-eight names are given, and he dwells not only on the number but the quality of them, and gives it as his opinion that no other mission to the Jews has been so successful." The mission went into a decline after that, but later, in "the decade before the [Great] war, under the supervision of the Rev. J. MacDonald Webster, the great days of the mission had come back again. During that time even more Jews had been baptized than during the first ten years of its existence--those 'Pentacostal' years which had filled the first workers with delight."
But reliable figures were few and far between, as Göte Hedenquist, the second Secretary of the IMCCAJ, pointed out. "There are no accounts or statistics available showing how many Jews have become Christians since the beginning of [the twentieth] century," he wrote. "Most of them have merely been received as members of a local Christian parish like any other new members."
The full institutionalization of the IMCCAJ did not come any too soon, for an issue that had always been critical for the Jewish mission had begun to assume terrifying aspects: antisemitism. The ways the Christian Approach to the Jews dealt with antisemitism were critical, not only for the development of the mission but also for the theology of the missionaries themselves. And to look at that specific aspect of the Christian Approach we now turn.