In the meantime, the Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews continued with its long-standing preoccupations, among them the problem of antisemitism, the increased virulence of which in 1948 Conrad Hoffmann viewed as partly due to "over-ardent Zionism." Antisemitism was particularly rife in Britain, where "there are no less than twenty-two anti-Semitic agencies" which publish no less than 30 regular magazines and journals." Further, "It is known that most of the British troops evacuated from Palestine during the current summer return bitterly anti-Jewish and thus provide splendid capital for the agitation against Jewry by the anti-Semitic agencies." But antisemitism was on the increase in Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, and the Near East as well and, indeed, "one already hears not infrequently in these days, justification for Nazi anti-Semitism." No one could deny the tragic continued existence of antisemitism, Hoffmann declared, but "Merely to discuss and theorize learnedly about it and its causes, will get us nowhere and will only serve to becloud the basic, eternal and divine issues involved. More urgent now is to consider God's will and design which are involved and what must and can the Church do."

Reporting the next year on the situation in western Europe, Birger Pernow offered several examples of Jewish behavior that he said contributed to the increase in antisemitism. One will suffice: "One of our missionaries visited a displaced persons camp for Jews in Germany. She was received in a very friendly way. In a Jewish family with a 2-room flat a young girl was cooking in the kitchen. 'Is that your daughter?' 'No, our maid.' In the bedroom another girl in a nurse's dress. 'Is she your daughter, then?' 'No, our child's nurse.' Jewish families in DP camps in Germany are keeping German girls as their maids and nurses!!"

A significant change was beginning to take place, however, in the missionaries' understanding of antisemitism, and consequently in their understanding of what God's will and design might be for the Church. In the discussion on antisemitism at the 1948 Stockholm meeting, the Mildmay Mission's H. L. Ellison remarked that it was necessary to differentiate between antisemitism and anti-Judaism, suggesting that the latter "is anti-Semitic only to the extent to which it allows itself to be affected by the anti-Semitism of the masses." The next year he spelled it out fully in two papers offered to delegates at the 13-18 June IMCCAJ meeting in Edinburgh.

While antisemitism is a complex phenomenon, yet it is obvious that there are two strands in it [Ellison wrote], the former essentially social, the latter essentially religious. Except that it has been intensified by the latter, there is little to distinguish the former strand from the welter of mostly irrational dislike we find throughout the world against minority and alien groups, except in its almost universal incidence due to the world-wide spread of the Jewish dia-spora. It would be an advantage if the term antisemitism could be confined to this aspect of the problem.

The second strand can be paralleled repeatedly in the experience of so-called heretical bodies; it is essentially religious, and arises from the spiritual sins of the Jew, the Gentile, and the Church of God, perhaps most of all from the last. This aspect of the problem might with advantage be referred to as anti-Judaism. Anti-Judaism has been made the more difficult to solve by the interaction of the social element, antisemitism.

Ellison believed that the churches could do little or nothing to combat antisemitism in the larger society, but anti-Judaism was a different matter. It was the specific sin of the Church, a sin, moreover, that provided antisemitism with its particular virulence and must be fought with all the weapons the Church possessed. We have encountered a distinction between antisemitism and anti-Judaism before in these pages, that of the pre-Amsterdam paper from the Protestant Federation of France. But, unlike Ellison, the French Protestants approved of anti-Judaism, insisting that it was a laudable and necessary concomitant of evangelism. There is no doubt at all that the authors of the French paper meant the religion of the Jewish people when they spoke of Judaism: anti-Judaism meant the spiritual destruction of that religion. But Ellison's meaning was more subtle, with theological nuances that came from long direct encounter with the Jewish people. For him, anti-Judaism meant "any and every attitude which treats the Jew as inherently different--it may be better or it may be worse than the Gentile--fundamentally for religious reasons."

The religious reasons Ellison pinpointed for anti-Judaism, as he understood it, were two: the "obstinate refusal of the Jew to accept Christianity" and the "Jew stands as the perpetual challenge to the pride of the Church and the Church has hated him for it." On both counts the Church was accused.

In the first instance, Ellison thought Jews had good reason to reject Christianity. In a startling reversal of the arguments given by his predecessors in the Jewish missionary movement (for instance by the IMCCAJ's founders at the Budapest/Warsaw conferences in 1927) he blamed the Church's dependence on doctrine that painted a false picture of the Jewish people:

The Church did its utmost to make the Synagogue despicable and ridiculous in the eyes of men. Instead of the Crucifixion being a proof of the sinfulness of men, of all men, it became a proof of the sinfulness of the Jews. Our Lord's attacks on the Pharisees, just because they were righteous beyond the average of men and had to be shocked into repentance, were interpreted to mean that they were the meanest of men. The Church took to itself all the blessings of the Old Testament and left the curses to the Jews, and carried them out as God's servant when it had the chance. Finally and worst, it drew a picture of the Jews, not as they were, but as a priori such men should be, and that picture not merely turned the Middle Ages into a hell for the Jews, but it poisoned Europe's thought about them to this day.

Here has been the Church's great sin against the Jew, and until this is repented of and reparation made, how can the Church expect the fulness of God's blessing."

As if that were not enough, Ellison's second reason for anti-Judaism was even more disturbing:

The New Testament tells us clearly that the rejection of Christ by the Jew is by the inscrutable will of God. He would not accept the Lord of Glory, but John tells us that he could not. He does not believe, but Paul tells us that a hardening in part has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles come in, and then all Israel shall be saved. Israel stands in our midst as the perpetual reminder that it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth but of God that hath mercy. The Church has discussed the problems of God's sovereignty with all the fury and bitterness of theological strife, but it has seldom bowed itself before the simple fact, for there the last hiding holes of human pride are laid bare....No statement will be more readily challenged and denied than this, but the fact remains. How seldom one hears Paul's argument in Romans 9-11 referred to when the Jewish problem is under discussion; how seldom is it taken seriously; how seldom the Church acknowledges that Israel is still God's Israel through whom He is working out His purposes in ways little comprehended by either Church or Israel.

These insights and positions (which were to become stock-in-trade for the Jewish-Christian dialogue that became fully developed after the International Missionary Council's integration into the World Council of Churches) would seem to raise serious questions about the entire missionary enterprise. If the Church must repent of its anti-Judaism and simultaneously recognize that God's Israel continues to play a valid role in the divine economy, what then of the missionary calling to present the gospel to Jews? Ellison's answer was that the Christian life was the best and most efficacious testimony. "The mark of a true Christian is that the love of God is poured out into his heart by the Holy Spirit," he wrote. "Since the love of God embraces the whole world, the love of the Christian cannot have a narrower sphere and must include the Jew....Christians are epistles seen and read of all men and it is an important part of spiritual discernment for a man to know when he should speak of Christ and when he should allow his life alone to witness....for him to admit relationships on a basis excluding such witness is a denial of the love of Christ, and creates such an essentially false position that in the long run anti-Judaism and antisemitism will be increased rather than decreased."

After lengthy discussion, the IMCCAJ voted unanimously to refer Ellison's papers to the churches and church bodies for "serious study and concrete action."

Questions for Missionary Method

A large part of the discussion among the missionaries to Jews over the years had been about "method" and over what new methods were required, which is what the debate over the parish approach had been about. Far from simply being a struggle between the mission societies and the churches, the difference had focused on whether it was best to "approach" Jews through special ministries such as soup kitchens and preaching halls or through "normal" parish activities. But the theological, or ecclesiological, issue had to do both with an understanding of who was doing the evangelizing and who the evangelized were. The often unenunciated significance of the parish approach was that mission was the responsibility of the Church, the Body of Christ in its organized institutional form, and, correspondingly, that "the Jews" were Israel or the Jewish people.

H. L. Ellison's rejection of anti-Judaism entailed present-day repentance on the part of the Church for its sins against the Jewish people through the Middle Ages. The required repentance was not that of individual Christians and certainly not mission societies, but repentance by the Church. And the Israel who was still God's Israel was not a collection of individual Jews but the Jewish people.

That Ellison's was not a lone voice is evident from Robert Smith's lead editorial in News Sheet for January-February 1951. Calling attention to some of the more extreme positions taken by the Commission on the Witness to Israel of the Protestant Federation of France, Smith wrote that we "may take them as typical of an approach to the Jewish question which is still more common in the Continental Churches than in Anglo-Saxon Churches, but which has been gaining ground everywhere. The new approach is concerned for 'Church and Israel' rather than with 'Christians and Jews.'"

"We reject the title 'Christians and Jews,' although it is an obvious title and has often been used to remind us of obvious truths about our Christian duties in relation to the Jews," he went on.

We reject it because whatever might be brought under that heading, however true so far as it goes, would be superficial and sentimental and would not go far enough. It is as members of the Church that we have a real responsibility for the Jews. It is as representatives of Israel, the People of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, that the Jews really challenge us. Their very existence and their destiny in the history of the world are a sign and a memorial to the Church, recalling its own origin and mission. So long as we concern ourselves with Jews as individuals, we can try to simplify the problem by saying that Jews are like all other human beings, and that any special characteristics can be historically explained. But Israel cannot be historically explained. We cannot say that Israel is like other nations, or that its People are like ordinary human beings, any more than we can say as Christians that Jesus Christ was an ordinary human being. If this word "Israel" applies in any sense to the Jews, the Church is bound to recognize a special relationship to them and a special responsibility for them. The Christian Approach to the Jews may seem but a small part of the world mission of the Church. Yet unless it takes this part of its mission seriously, it cannot carry out its world mission, because it cannot be the true Church.

Though the missionaries were scarcely aware of it, they were in the midst of a major conceptual shift in their theological understanding, both of the Jewish people and of themselves. A considerable precipitating cause of this shift, requiring it in fact, was the necessity to come to terms with the State of Israel, which Smith labeled "The Great New Factor." "We shall not all agree," he observed, "in interpreting the great new factor in the situation, the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel. Some Christians may be inclined to regret that the ancient Biblical word has been 'degraded' by becoming associated with earthly politics. We may feel that something has been lost through the materialization of a term which Christianity has done so much to spiritualize. Ought we to abandon our use of the word?"

Smith did not think so:

On the contrary, it is surely in the providence of God that 'Israel' is a factor in world politics as well as a theological idea....But whatever the reality may turn out to be, whatever disappointments and disillusionments are in store for the Zionists and for Christians who are lovers of Zion, we cannot regret that Israel has been put on the map, if only as a signpost to the Kingdom of God which is the only real fulfilment of the hope of Israel. There will be no excuse now for forgetting the challenge of Israel. It will always be with us as a this-worldly reality. It will be a constant reminder to the Church, which claims to be the true Israel, that Israel is meant to be realized, that it is not only an ancient, vanished kingdom or a pious hope. It was because of our failure to realize a Christian world in which the destiny of Israel might be fulfilled that the kingdom of heaven suffered this violence. If, after all, it is not the Kingdom of God on earth, who are we to complain?

At the level of missionary methodology, they were confronted with a challenge that was even more of a challenge because of their new theological acumen: the Goodwill Movement, which had become a genuine competitor to the traditional "Christian Approach to the Jews."

Conrad Hoffmann believed the Goodwill Movement was a consequence of Christendom's failure to solve the age-old problem of antisemitism. Setting the stage for remarks to be made by J. H. Grolle and Hans Kosmala at the 1948 and 1949 meetings (which were discussed above in Chapter 4), Hoffmann noted that the

promotion of goodwill, understanding and cooperation between Jews and Christians is replacing evangelism for many. It is relatively an easy way out. It is alluring in its prospect and therefore attracts. It definitely involves doing good to Israel, but is such 'doing good' at the sacrifice of evangelism adequate for professed followers of Jesus Christ. This question raises the whole issue of tolerance versus evangelism, of religious freedom versus Christian imperialism or appeasement. These are issues on which the Church needs to give a clear and unequivocal answer. Is Jesus Christ the supreme revelation of the Will of God for man on earth? Israel challenges an answer from the Church.

To-day the Church finds itself as it were between two chairs with reference to Jewish evangelism. On the one hand it either provides funds to let others do the work or being repelled by some of the methods employed does nothing, or on the other hand contents itself with cooperation of goodwill promotion which involves no evangelism. As a result evangelism of the Jews is evaded, and with all too few notable and honorable exceptions is not done.

The handwriting was on the wall and Hoffmann knew it. "An important if not priority issue," he summed up, "is that of the relationship of evangelism to tolerance. Can we promote tolerance and also carry on evangelism?"

Three years later, in his report to the Hemer meeting, the director continued to be worried about the implications of the Goodwill Movement. "Are we Christians," he wrote, "compromising on Christ and in our preoccupation with a multitude of varied interests and activities, all good and worthy in themselves, losing sight of a priority function of the Church, namely the Gospel and God's design for Israel. Or are we as Christians and members of the Christian Church in danger of falling prey to the temptation of syncretism largely fostered by our Jewish friends? Is our God the same as the God of the Jews? If so do we thereby relegate Christ to a minor role and therefore no longer central in the Christian faith, whose roots are all in Judaism?"

It was a question that would in later years be raised in various ways during the debate about "dialogue or mission," which would continue to be debated within the churches and the ecumenical movement for decades, as the "goodwill" position gained in theological, as well as practical, respectability at the expense of the strictly missionary emphasis.

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