Antisemitism and the Online Christian Right

[Ploutos]

Some aspects of life involve racial discrimination of some sort
e.g.
- immigration policy (nationality being a proxy for race; Korean immigration law is very racialized, e.g. I have the right to live and work in Korea for 5 years at a time due to my ancestry)
- deciding which neighborhood to live in (you may want to live in a community with similar ethnicities or cultures, even if you aren't "racist" per se towards other ones)
- as a survival tactic in unfamiliar environments (this is often subconscious, and sometimes can be sinful but not always)
- deciding which church to attend (this is less of a race issue as much as it is culture)

Oftentimes race and culture blend so it's hard to say whether it's impermissible racial discrimination or merely cultural preference.

Of the four items you listed, #2 and #4 are not examples of racial discrimination; they are cultural, not racial, as you yourself suspected. I'd also argue that #3 is not racial discrimination. I can posit myself walking through a bad neighborhood. I can't deny there might be some subconscious racial profiling, but I know also that there's going to be profiling based on dress, carriage, demeanor, etc., meaning that I'm going to be very leery of white hoodlums and maybe a bit less leery of what appears to be a respectably dressed black man who appears to be on some sort of errand. Even when the profiling is based on race, it's not simply writing someone off because of their skin color. It's an internalization of hard statistics about crime rates broken down by race and zip code. That's a far cry from putting on the white hoods because a black family is applying to buy a house down the street.

That said, you've listed examples of where racial (or cultural) discrimination happens, but what I asked was if there are situations where racial discrimination (not cultural) is warranted. That it happens in a given setting doesn't mean it's warranted.

 

[No Other Name]

Some aspects of life involve racial discrimination of some sort
e.g.
- immigration policy (nationality being a proxy for race; Korean immigration law is very racialized, e.g. I have the right to live and work in Korea for 5 years at a time due to my ancestry)
- deciding which neighborhood to live in (you may want to live in a community with similar ethnicities or cultures, even if you aren't "racist" per se towards other ones)
- as a survival tactic in unfamiliar environments (this is often subconscious, and sometimes can be sinful but not always)
- deciding which church to attend (this is less of a race issue as much as it is culture)

Oftentimes race and culture blend so it's hard to say whether it's impermissible racial discrimination or merely cultural preference.

This post makes no sense to me at all.

I think it might help your confusion if you clearly defined the terms culture and race?

 

[Pictet]

Q1) Jesus had a very negative posture towards the Jewish elite of his day, should we share a similar negative posture towards contemporary Jewish elites? Or were they uniquely evil and powerful in Christ's day?

This begs the question. Why was he hostile to these men? Was he equally hostile to them all (Nicodemus, the rich young ruler)? Even his attitude to the rich and corrupt (Zacchaeus!) was actually very different to his response to those claiming religious authority without changed hearts (Caiaphas). Jesus was hostile to religious hypocrites who claim to follow God's word, who even teach God's word, and at the same time are filled with sin and selfishness, and who as a result harden their people against the grace of God.

Are there people like this in the synagogue? Of course; and the mosque, and the Gurdwara, and also many of our churches. Jesus' opposition to the Jewish leaders of his day was not so different from the reformer's opposition to the Catholic hierarchy of theirs - people who have so many privileges and claim to teach the way, but instead put burdens upon people's backs.

So, shortly, no. We should not have a negative posture towards 'Jewish elites'; we should oppose religious pharisee-ism wherever we find it, starting in our own hearts, then our own churches, and then beyond.

Q2) Puritan William Prynne wrote in 1656 attempting to maintain the expulsion of the jews from England. Is expelling a particularly threatening ethnic group of people ever justified? Or is it biblically unjust to punish the collective based an the actions of individuals?

Do you know the context in which he wrote this, or what Prynne was like? Both Goodwin and Owen were (I think?) for readmission, as were many others. I can't think I've ever met anyone who would say that Prynne was a better model for our theology than giants like Goodwin or Owen! Remember too who expelled the Jews from England - King John, pretty much unarguably our worst king ever, a political disaster, and a hideous, lecherous tyrant.

Prynne was heroic at times, but he also wasn't the nicest bloke... he'd think that a number of the members of this board should be forcefully repressed by the state for their theology. Both the arguments for and against Jewish readmission tend to depend on eschatological positions that very few hold nowadays, anyway.

As for 'is it biblically unjust to punish the collective based on the actions of individuals' - yes, very. Ezekiel 18:20 - 'The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.' That's not up for debate.

The takeaway here is simple - just because some random puritan once said something doesn't mean we have to believe it. Cotton Mather believed that the resurgent and converted Jews would destroy Islam by military force and bring the world to Christ - if we are cherry-picking random puritan opinions, why not that one? Prynne and Cotton are both wrong, if we weigh them by the standard of the word of God.

Q3) If it is true the jews have oversized influence in the p0rnography industry, Hollywood and Central Banking, should we begin opposing the particular people group that run them? Or should we merely oppose the institution and disregard the ethnicity of its promoters?

This has already been responded to. Americans and the British should be opposed by the whole world according to this argument, since our nations and peoples are by far the most influential in these areas.

Q4) What do we make of our Christian hero's who wrote 'antisemitic' material like Luther, Chrysostom and Veotius?

That they were wrong, as all human beings are about something. Voetius I'll leave to the experts, Chrysostom is complicated (especially since we wouldn't agree with him on a lot of issues!), so, Luther:

Luther wrote strongly positive material about the Jews also. His most antisemitic works come from the end of his life, when he was sick, grumpy, and angry. He was upset the reformation hadn't spread further, and upset the Jews hadn't embraced it. If you read much from this period, it's clearly not written from a good attitude! That's not meant as an excuse, incidentally - some of what he wrote was utterly awful. But it helps us see how it happened.

This isn't any different from the way we deal with our other Christian heroes. Jerome was harsh and abrasive; Whitefield was a slave owner; Zwingli killed Baptists; Augustine permitted the growth of the cult of the saints; Anselm was significant in the rise of the cult of Mary; Bernard preached the crusades; Owen countenanced a regime that butchered many in Ireland... the list goes on and on.

These men were sinners, as are we all. In this case, Luther sinned. I can still learn from him, but must separate the wheat from the chaff.