Five Common Christian Teachings that Support Anti-Semitism
This last week, a Christian terrorist opened fire at a synagogue during the celebration of the Passover, killing one person and injuring three more. In a seven-page manifesto outlining his convictions and subsequent actions, the shooter espoused Christian doctrines — expressing orthodox beliefs that supported his worldview.
In the manifesto, “you actually hear a frighteningly clear articulation of Christian theology in certain sentences and paragraphs. He has, in some ways, been well taught in the church,” said the Rev. Duke Kwon, a Washington pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America, another evangelical denomination which shares many of its beliefs with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. — Washington Post article
Christian orthodoxy is a broad landscape. While I am neither evangelical nor of the Reformed tradition to which this young man ascribes, I am a pastor who believes all Christians need to take responsibility for the effects of how we understand and communicate our faith. I can grasp some of this young man’s confusion because I was raised evangelical — in a movement/denomination that adhered to an admixture of Reformed theology — and, as such, I learned to accept anti-Judaism teachings that (at the time) I would never have thought of as anti-Semitic. Most Christians don’t think of themselves as having an…
