Thus the question before the Jewish missionary movement and the Church: "It is just this rejection and rebellion to the Will of God and His divine plan which has so frequently stigmatized the Jewish people. And all this one undoubtedly finds in modern Zionism. On the other hand if the first assumption [that God's promise of the Land to the Jewish people remains valid] is accepted, then we must agree, that in spite of Jewish disobedience to the will of God, God still desires to protect and to save his chosen people to the end of time in order then to gather them in the promised land and to lead them to Christ. That means that God's love is more powerful and stronger than His chosen people's opposition, his mercy mightier than His people's guilt. But which of these two points of view is the correct one?"

To illustrate and emphasize his point that there was no consensus on this question, Brunner observed that Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, both theological figures to conjure by, disagreed. "Whereas Karl Barth sees God's hands outstretched in mercy and grace over the anti-Christian life of the Jewish people and even sees in the rejection of Christ by the Jews, evidence of a certain witnessing to Christ, Emil Brunner maintains that the Jews no longer have any claim or right to nationhood. Their only hope, in his opinion is assimilation, is the dissolution of the synagogue, and their acceptance of the Christian faith."

If one were to agree theologically with Emil Brunner, then, "one may hardly accept a positive attitude towards a Jewish nationalist movement which not only strives to create a Jewish state, but also perhaps dreams of the re-establishment of the temple in Jerusalem." But the missionary adds, "Actually that would not be so unbiblical. I refer to Ezekiel who foresaw a temple in the last days with a new Jewish agricultural colonization in Palestine." For himself, Robert Brunner doubted that "the Bible gives us any valid right to oppose the Jews in their efforts consciously and actively to recreate their national consciousness and identity. On the contrary, the Bible compels us to give consideration to and to deal with such eventualities. God as it were, watches over the Jewish people unto the final day, then to present them to His Son. Meantime evangelism of the Jews is to go on compelling them to take issue for or against Jesus Christ."

Having thus posed the relevant political, humanitarian, and theological questions, Brunner believed it necessary to conclude with some words about Zionism and Hebrew Christians. He hoped not to presume upon the territory of H. L. Ellison, who was to read his paper on "The Church and the Hebrew Christian" immediately following, but, in fact, his position, an eloquent contradiction of Ellison's, was closer to that of Hans Kosmala.

"I would maintain," Brunner stated unambiguously,

that the Jew who becomes a Christian thereby automatically withdraws or excludes himself from the nationalist Jewish community. It is true that Zionism from the very beginning has theoretically at least, maintained the possibility of cooperation of Hebrew Christians; perhaps prompted to this position by the concepts of modern political liberalism....But this position has always been more a theory than a practice. In reality it merely meant that all Jews, no matter what their philosophy, indeed even the a-religious Jews, were invited to cooperate. The Hebrew Christians from the very beginning were practically excluded....Zionists...tend more and more to agreement that in the coming Jewish nation, Judaism alone shall be the established religion.

But there was "a certain tragedy," in that "these new national Jewish convictions are proving tempting bait to individual Hebrew Christians." Brunner had found some Hebrew Christians (he gave no specific examples) who were planning to withdraw from their churches, whether born into or baptized into them, in order to form Hebrew Christian churches with a distinctive liturgy. "Such efforts, I fear, ignore the fact that in the early church, the very essence of its organization, was that it was a fellowship or communion of Jews and Gentiles. Similarly, I fear they misinterpret the basic idea of a Jewish nation, which from its very beginning stressed not only Jewish nationality but also Jewish religion or Judaism. A church restricted to the Jewish national constituency is no church at all; the same applies to any other church which would limit its membership to those of a given race or nation." The point was two-fold: on the one hand, an exclusively Jewish church was a contradiction in terms, but, on the other, it would never work in the Jewish state that was to be.

Although no record was made of the debate on Brunner's paper, it without doubt caused a stir. Writing in News Sheet after the meeting, Jacob Peltz of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance reported that "No subject on the agenda of the Basel Meeting was listened to with greater depth of emotion than that of Zionism and Palestine. Nor did any subject provoke so much discussion or reflect great divergence of viewpoint on the part of the delegates." Nevertheless, as H. L. Ellison tersely recorded, the Basle meeting "with a considerable dissident minority, adopted a motion in which it regretfully acknowledged that the subject of Zionism had been too inadequately studied from the Christian standpoint for any real agreement to be reached."

In the morning of the meeting's final day the Commission on the Church and Zionism brought in its report, which was presented by Canon C. Witton-Davies of Jerusalem. A lengthy and heated discussion followed, the consequence of which was that no agreement could be reached and the report was remitted to the Business Committee, on which no member of the Zionism Commission sat. When the Business Committee reported back to the conference's final session, H. L. Ellison submitted an entirely new resolution to replace the original. That resolution read as follows:

The International Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews assembled at Basel in June, 1947, have taken into consideration the present desperate situation of the surviving Jews in Central Europe, who even now, two years after the end of the war, are without human rights and hope. In order to escape, they are using any and every means at their disposal to make their way to Palestine.

The Committee is aware of the ancient longing of the Jews to return to their ancestral home in Palestine, and recognizes the Biblical basis for this.

The Committee realizes also how centuries of persecution, especially in recent years, has stimulated this longing, and it confesses with shame the Christian responsibility in this connection. It cannot however agree with the extreme methods now being used to achieve the realization of this longing.

In view of this whole situation the Committee wishes to urge:

1. The U.N.O. immediately take all possible steps to solve the Jewish problem and in particular to arrange the secure settlement of Jews throughout the world (including Palestine) with full citizenship and all its privileges.

2. The whole Church to engage in fervent prayer--

a) for the U. N. O. and especially its committee now considering Palestine, that its decisions may be made in accordance with God's plan and purpose for Israel; and

b) for Israel that she may be truly saved.

Though the press of time was such that the debate had, of necessity, to be brief, it was intense, with a sizable minority objecting to the parenthetical phrase "including Palestine." At the final vote there were nineteen for, thirteen against.

When the IMCCAJ met the next year in Stockholm, shortly after the conclusion of the WCC's Assembly in Amsterdam, the Basle minutes were approved with one exception: "The Report of the Commission on the Church and Zionism was withdrawn and a resolution adopted in its place calling attention to the lack of unanimity on the subject of Zionism and suggesting the calling of a special conference at sometime in the future to discuss the whole subject anew."

In the last analysis, the missionaries simply did not know what to do with Zionism, particularly when it appeared to be ascendant. Having analyzed Zionism as a nationalistic movement with no chance of success, as a vain attempt by Jews to achieve their own salvation (when the missionaries knew that salvation was only in Christ), they were unable to fit this new phenomenon into their theological framework. Even when one of their number, Robert Brunner, called urgently for a response and offered a cogent theological context for it, they still were not capable of coming to terms with a Jewish movement that would return the Jewish people to sovereignty in the Land. Consequently, they opted for the "solution" that would in years to come be the usual way of responding to Zionism and then to the State of Israel: turn it into a political matter and implore political bodies (United Nations) to solve "the Jewish problem."

The State of Israel

In its offering to the Amsterdam Assembly, the Protestant Federation of France maintained its theological and missionary thrust when it came to Zionism: "The first thing we must say to the Zionists is that the salvation of the Jews, and their personal salvation as Jews, lies not in Zionism but in their Saviour Jesus Christ. This is the most difficult, if not the most repellent, thing that could be said to them from the human point of view; because by faith alone comes conviction....It is of their salvation, and not of any material advantage, that we must to-day speak to the Jews, including the Zionists.... The Church cannot avert her eyes from the significance of Zionism for Israel, the world, and the Church herself. But she must also declare to Jews, as well as communists, existentialists, and internationalists that there is no salvation in any other than Jesus Christ."

Given that such a strong, unqualified, missionary position lay on their table, and given the ambiguity of the IMCCAJ's Basle resolution, Conrad Hoffmann and the drafters at Amsterdam faced the necessity to say something about the Jewish state, which had been proclaimed just three months before, that would maintain the missionary position and at the same time at least recognize the political situation.

But there were other factors in the equation as well. Missions other than those to Jews had long been at work in the Middle East. These missions and the people with whom they worked had been devastated by the Arab-Israeli war, the war known in Israel as the War of Independence. They were missions sponsored by many of the same churches who supported the IMCCAJ, most of them British or American. On the eve of the opening of the Amsterdam Assembly, a group of churchmen active in what was still, in many respects, a war zone, sent two telegrams to the World Council, one appealing for relief and the other appealing for understanding. The appeal for relief was given to Committee IV(D) on Christian Reconstruction and Inter-Church Aid, while the appeal for understanding became the responsibility of Committee IV(B) on the Christian Approach to the Jews. This latter telegram read: "Visser 't Hooft World Council Amsterdam Netherlands. Following clergymen and laymen in Palestine belonging to churches participating in World Council importune Council to examine Palestine problem in light of principles of Christian justice with the view to recommend rectification of obvious wrongs. Total missionary enterprise imperiled by widely prevailing view that Christian world has not made impartial study of question." It was signed by a Quaker, an Episcopalian, an Anglican, a Lutheran, and a Presbyterian.

Keeping these components in mind, it is possible to analyze the statement produced by Committee IV(B). The three paragraphs in question read as follows:

The establishment of the state "Israel adds a political dimension to the Christian approach to the Jews and threatens to complicate anti-semitism with political fears and enmities.

On the political aspects of the Palestine problem and the complex conflict of "rights" involved we do not undertake to express a judgment. Nevertheless, we appeal to the nations to deal with the problem not as one of expediency--political, strategic or economic--but as a moral and spiritual question that touches a nerve centre of the world's religious life.

Whatever position may be taken towards the establishment of a Jewish state and towards the "rights" and "wrongs" of Jews and Arabs, of Hebrew Christians and Arab Christians involved, the churches are in duty bound to pray and work for an order in Palestine as just as may be in the midst of our human disorder; to provide within their power for the relief of the victims of this warfare without discrimination; and to seek to influence the nations to provide a refuge for "Displaced Persons" far more generously than has yet been done.

Missionaries to Jews had always resisted antisemitism, understanding it to be an obstacle to their missionary efforts, a position that the Amsterdam statement had strongly taken in the main body of its Report: "Anti-semitism is sin against God and man." Moreover, more than once Jewish missionaries had expressed the conviction that Jews themselves contributed to antisemitism by what they did and said. Thus, when Amsterdam was worried that establishment of the State of Israel "threatens to complicate anti-semitism with political fears and enmities," what was meant was that by establishing the Jewish state and fighting a war to sustain it, Jews were giving cause for the intensification of antisemitism, which, in turn, would make the missionaries' task all that much harder. The IMCCAJ and its member agencies had not hesitated to engage in "politics" during the Nazi period when Jews and Hebrew Christians were clearly victims. To support, defend, and protect Jews under those condition was to struggle against antisemitism. But now, with the State of Israel, a new and different challenge was before them. The "political dimension to the Christian approach to the Jews" was precisely that Jews were now the "politicians." In this first paragraph, the missionary perplexity was clearly evident.

The sentence--"The establishment of the state 'Israel' adds a political dimension to the Christian approach to the Jews and threatens to complicate anti-semitism with political fears and enmities"-- is agonized, both grammatically and in what it tries to say. But it depicted a genuine fear that Jews were making antisemitism worse, when it was bad enough already. There were those in the Assembly, however, who felt it was too limited, did not include enough. Ernest Perkins, for instance, felt that "the emergence of a State of Israel raised cultural and social issues far wider than political issues." His concern was noted, but nothing was added to the sentence.

The second paragraph, however, broadened the focus considerably. The motion by Canon Henry Wolfe Baines of the Church of England, and the rationale for it, tell a story in themselves:

Dr. Baines thanked the Chairman and the Assembly for allowing him, as an alternate, to speak in this matter. He was more glad that this had been the case, as he wished to make a point agreed upon by the Alternates' Committee IV, dealing with the Jewish question. It was stated in the Report that the Assembly had no wish to interfere with such questions at the Government level, and with this the Alternates' Committee had been in entire agreement. But it was within the province of the Assembly, indeed it was the duty of the Assembly, to affirm to the responsible authorities of the nations concerned that this problem was more than a political one, it was spiritual. If the Assembly failed to say anything to that effect, the Alternates' Committee had held that it would be failing in its bounden duty, and missing an opportunity never likely to recur. He wished to move an amendment to section V, to read as follows; beginning at the word "judgment":

"...we appeal to the nations to deal with the problem not as one of expediency, political or economic, but as a moral and spiritual question that touches a nerve-centre of the world's religious life."

In his history of the World Council's involvement with the Palestinians, Michael Christopher King commented on this second paragraph, specifically on the sentence with which the Alternates' Committee agreed. "The world Council of Churches," he wrote, "has not usually been slow on taking a stand on international matters which challenge the Christian conscience, but its reaction to the cable asking for understanding of the Palestinian point of view on the 'establishment of a state Israel in Palestine' was a clear-cut refusal to take a stand: 'on the political aspects of the Palestine problem and the complex conflict of "rights" involved, we do not undertake to express a judgment' reflects the inability of many ecumenical leaders to believe that the same group of people whom they had helped in their time of vicious persecution could possibly be the aggressors in a struggle against another people."

King read more--and less--into the second paragraph than actually was there. Those who sat on Committee IV(B) tended to be pastoral rather than political in their approach. And given the fact that they had not had the time or information needed to sort out the "rights" and "wrongs" of the "Palestine problem," it made good sense for them to suspend judgment. Indeed, even in the last decade of the twentieth century the "rights and "wrongs" of the Arab-Israeli conflict are still unclear. But the sentence inserted by Canon Baines' amendment stands as a clarion call to the churches, missionary societies, and nations demanding that the struggle in the Middle East be seen as "a moral and spiritual question that touches a nerve centre of the world's religious life."

The third paragraph calls for the relief of persons, no matter who is right and who is wrong, and for as just an order as possible in Palestine. The details of that call were spelled out in the report of Committee IV(D), which had received the "relief" cable. It, too, begs for assistance to people in need and makes no political judgment:

The World Council of Churches, recalling that the origin of its Refugee Division was the concern of the churches for Jewish refugees, notes with especially deep concern the recent extension of the refugee problem to the Middle East by the flight from their homes in the Holy Land of not less than 350,000 Arab and other refugees.

It receives, with an urgent sense of its Christian duty, the appeal which originally came from Christian leaders in Palestine. It records appreciation of the prompt co-operation offered by the U.N. Mediator in Palestine with the projects of relief initiated by the churches and inter-church bodies, and in commending the actions in this field already taken

RESOLVES:

to urge the churches to include in their provision for refugees additional emergency help for the urgent situation in the Middle East, and to channel this help in such a way as both to achieve a distinctive and maximum Christian effort in this field, and to ensure its co-ordination with the measures initiated;

to recommend that, through its refugee commission, the World Council of Churches should:

1. appeal for money, food, medical supplies, and blankets;

2. in conjunction with the International missionary Council, appoint a special Field Representative to co-ordinate Christian action with the Mediator's programme;

3. urge and assist all Christians in Palestine and the neighbouring countries to co-operate in this work in every way practicable.

In many ways, the Amsterdam Assembly proved to be the high point of the Jewish missionary movement. The existence of the State of Israel did indeed "complicate" antisemitism, and the changing self-identity of the Jewish people, which increasingly came to understand itself in terms of the State of Israel, was to create additional unforeseen issues and problems.

After the Amsterdam Assembly the relationship with the World Council of Churches became increasingly important to the Committee on the Christian Approach to the Jews. So much so that it makes sense to understand its work, and particularly its theology, in relationship to the second (Evanston, 1954) and third (New Delhi, 1961) WCC Assemblies. The IMCCAJ's constitution had been altered in 1947 to take into account the growing involvement with the World Council, and interest in the Jewish missionary cause throughout the churches had been stimulated by the visibility given to the Amsterdam Assembly statement (largely through the efforts of the IMCCAJ). Moreover, some of the most important events having to do with the Christian approach to the Jews were to take place as cooperative ventures with the World Council.