There is a rising stench of antisemitism in America and around the world. It is not just propagated by those terrorist sympathizers that we see demonstrating in the streets of major cities. It is also spread among those who would call themselves “Christians” because they believe the “Church” replaced Israel and the Jews as God’s chosen people. There couldn’t be anything more misguided and against scripture. Yet this sentiment is a growing wildfire reaching to the height of the heavens. My friend, Aaron Fruh, President of Israel Team Advocates, whose mission is to change the growing anti-Israel narrative on college campuses, explained the rising antisemitism in Christianity, in The Times of Israel.
He writes: “The Evangelical anti-Zionist and Antisemitic organization Christ at the Checkpoint (CATC) held its biannual conference in Bethlehem of Judea this past May at Bethlehem Bible College. In 2017, the NGO Monitor reported that “Christ at the Checkpoint seeks to advance the Palestinian nationalist agenda within Evangelical Christian churches while simultaneously reviving theological antisemitic themes such as replacement theology…Other anti-Jewish themes promoted at CATC include the de-Judaizing of Jesus and the promotion of a racial theory of Jewish origins.” This year’s CATC conference pivoted—leapt would be a better description—from its traditional theological foundation of Supersessionism (the false narrative that the church has replaced Israel and Palestinian Christians are the rightful owners of Jewish land).
He continued, “Gone were the old-guard supersessionists like former Wheaton College New Testament theologian Dr. Gary Burge, who denies Jewish ownership of the land of Israel in his book Whose Land, Whose Promise, and on page 176 demands that Israeli Jews who do not convert to Christianity should be burned: “The people of Israel cannot claim to be planted as vines in the land, they cannot be rooted in the vineyard unless first they are grafted into Jesus. Branches that attempt living in the land, the vineyard, which refuse to be attached to Jesus will be cast out and burned.” Murderous language like this evokes the not-too-distant memory of Jews burned in the gas chambers by German Christians who took their Supersessionism to a whole new level by copying the ancient Inquisitors who favored burning Jews alive in Synagogues.
Fruh continues, “It also evokes the recent memory on October 7th, 2023, of Palestinian terrorists—inspired by Supersessionists—who burned to death Jewish men, women, and children.” Romans 11;17-18 says of the Gentiles and Jews, “… you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you.” Supersessionism is dangerous. Remember Jesus and his disciples are Jews. They wanted us all to be one. Romans 11:21 warns, “ for if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you, either.” Replacement theology, Supersessionism, is dangerous. Remember Jesus and his disciples are Jews. They wanted us all to be one.
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