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Southern jews and evangelticals coming together Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-06-faith-edit_x.htmhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-06-faith-edit_x.htm
Southern Jews and evangelicals: Coming together
Posted 8/6/2006 7:49 PM ET
By Mark I. Pinsky
For a century spanning the Civil War and the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the tiny minority of Jews in the American South lived in an uneasy relationship with the white Christian majority. The two communities were divided by faith and — to a lesser extent — by racial attitudes. Jews did not accept Jesus as their savior, and many felt at the very least uncomfortable with the assumptions of white supremacy, segregation and racism. As a result of this dual challenge to Southern sensibilities, fundamentalists often viewed their Jewish neighbors with suspicion and antagonism, if not with outright anti-Semitism.
Much has changed in recent decades, thanks to the rise of the modern suburban evangelical movement. Fueled primarily by evangelicals' Bible-based support for Israel, and unconditional support for the government's territorial claims — most recently evidenced by their support of Israel's current battle against Hezbollah — relations between Southern Christians and Jews are better than ever before. In fact, a Quinnipiac University poll in May of more than 1,500 voters nationally found that self-identified evangelical Christians were more kindly disposed toward Israel than was the U.S. population as a whole. A new movement, called "Christian Zionism," has created an odd, if sometimes ambivalent kind of "philosemitism."
For example, in November 2005, more than 1,000 evangelicals from central Florida gathered at a local hotel and raised more than $100,000 to buy an ambulance for Magen David Adom, Israel's Red Cross. Local rabbis delivered both the invocation and the benediction. As event sponsors promised, there was no effort to proselytize any of the estimated 200 Jewish guests. The Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio gave a thunderous keynote address supporting the Jewish state that he could easily have delivered at a rally for Israel's hard-line Likud Party.
Yet this new relationship is not without tension, a wary marriage of convenience. Initially, many Southern Jews were disturbed and skeptical about what they saw as a dramatic shift in Christian attitudes after years of experiencing social isolation and, in some cases, alienation.
To be sure, divisive issues remain, such as the persistent and touchy matter of proselytizing — which is central to evangelicals and anathema to Jews. The Southern Baptist Convention continues to fund ministries targeting Jews for conversion. Even Hagee was recently criticized for supporting a cable television system that broadcasts testimonies of Jewish converts to Christianity into Israeli homes. Abraham Foxman, of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, called this "inappropriate, insulting and offensive."
An uneasy alliance
This nascent, tenuous alliance between evangelicals and Jews is also something of a devil's bargain, which both sides approach with some wariness. Proselytizing merely highlights a gulf between most members of the two groups on an array of domestic issues, including abortion rights, stem cell research, the role of women, gay rights, government intervention at life's end, plus religion in public schools and other, more symbolic separation issues.
There is also the burden of Southern history, which older Jews take seriously to this day. Before any genuine reconciliation could take place, some old but still-traumatic grievances had to be addressed.
In 1915, a Jewish factory manager named Leo Frank — convicted of a murder that most historians now agree he did not commit — was lynched by a white mob in Marietta, Ga. The episode was "a nightmare come true for the Jewish South," according to Eli Evans, author of The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South. In 1986, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles posthumously pardoned Frank.
In the early morning of Oct. 12, 1958, 50 sticks of dynamite ripped open a wall of Atlanta's Hebrew Benevolent Congregation. The temple's rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, was a World War II chaplain who had landed with the Marines on Guadalcanal. In the months before the bombing, Rothschild's fearless support for civil rights from his pulpit had provoked controversy. The five white supremacists accused of the bombing — one defended by an Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan — were tried twice but never convicted.
And in 1964, there was more chilling violence. Northern civil rights workers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both Jews, were killed and found near Philadelphia, Miss., with their African-American colleague, James Chaney. At the time, the murders and the presence of many other Northern Jewish activists complicated life for Southern Jews, putting their loyalty to the South in question in the minds of some of their neighbors.
However, many feel that much of the emotional component of these historical claims has been settled in full. In recent years, through numerous public expressions of repentance, white evangelical leaders have acknowledged implicitly that their Jewish friends and neighbors were right all along on the moral issues of racism and segregation.
My experience
I was raised a committed Jew in the Northeast, later relocating to Southern California. In 1995 I moved to central Florida and, for the first time in my life, found myself living in a sea of believing, faithful Christians. The cold shock felt like total immersion. But for the past 10 years, while covering evangelicals as part of my beat, I have learned more from them and about them outside my newspaper office. At Boy Scouts and PTA meetings, in my doctor's office, in my neighborhood and in the grocery line, I have come to understand this complex tribe of believers as people, rather than as talking heads — or subjects of my stories.
Many of my childhood friends in the Northeast and my old West Coast neighbors are perplexed by increased evangelical influence on America's politics and culture. Media-anointed leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Richard Land puzzle them. But at the grassroots, I find that the gap between Jews and evangelicals in the Sunbelt continues to narrow.
What is emerging is a more nuanced, sophisticated relationship that is less one of ecumenism than of familiarity and mutual respect for shared theological roots and support for Israel. Southern Baptists, Missouri Synod Lutherans and Orthodox Jews still oppose interfaith worship. Yet Jews and Christians — increasingly friends, neighbors and co-workers — are finding that their suburban, middle-class values and aspirations are similar. Ideally, they want healthy, stable marriages; good higher education for their children; an active commitment to the poor, the disadvantaged and the environment; and a diverse sense of community.
It's a healthy development. Perhaps this Jewish/Christian camaraderie can be instructive for a nation too often divided by political, philosophical and religious rancor.
Mark I. Pinsky, religion writer for theOrlando Sentinel, is author ofA Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.
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