Uneasy Allies? Evangelical and Jewish Relations (review)

This edited collection by thirteen contributors provides a wide-ranging analysis of the relationship between American Jews and evangelical Christians. Most of the essays focus on the problem of proselytizing and support for Israel as the two most significant issues facing the relationship. In short, the general conclusion of the volume posits that significant differences between the two communities over proselytizing (something essential to the evangelical mission) should not eclipse the sincere partnership over Israeli security. For too long, these contributors claim, misunderstanding and ignorance have characterized the Jewish–evangelical relationship. The question mark in the volume’s title is well-placed, however. While the overarching conclusion appears to be that each group has enough in common (particularly regarding foreign policy) to carefully develop a strong alliance, significant trepidation over the true nature of the alliance (particularly on the part of American Jews) remains.

The collection contains some particularly valuable chapters. For example, the volume begins with Yaakov Ariel’s insistence that the United States is, and remains, a Protestant nation. Ariel challenges recent scholarship that suggests other religions have gained an equal foothold in American society and points to the myriad ways Protestantism has created and defined American values, culture, and policy. At times overstating his case (particularly in his analysis of movies and popular culture), Ariel nonetheless provides a persuasive reminder of the importance of Protestant hegemony in U.S. culture. Ariel’s contribution also furnishes the reader with a cogent analysis of American religious history that will be useful in religious history and religious studies courses. This is the foundation—and it is a strong one—upon which the following chapters build.

The contributors and editors insist that one of the greatest barriers to Jewish–evangelical relations stems from misunderstanding—Jews are ignorant of what “real” evangelicals believe about Jews and Israel, and evangelicals underestimate Jewish fears of their evangelical mission, conservative social agenda, and foreign policy support of Israel. Subsequent chapters highlight statistics that show evangelicals to be fairly well-educated, not antisemitic, and interested in interfaith dialogue (John C. Green) and that evangelicals and Jews are not as socioeconomically divergent as one might at first think (Barry Kosmin). Mark Silk argues that even assessments of premillennial dispensationalism have too often relied on stereotypes and resulted in dismissive attitudes. Silk’s chapter offers a nuanced evaluation of the complexity of modern-day premillennialists’ worldviews. He suggests that the seriousness with which evangelicals plan for the future “would seem to give the lie to the idea that they are a bunch of latter-day Millerites perched on the hillsides waiting for the end” (182). The majority of the remaining chapters address the history of the relationship between evangelicals and Jews in America, offer the Jewish and evangelical perspectives on the relationship between the two, explore barriers to full dialogue, and finally offer guidelines to engaging the other.

Other highlights of the collection include Yehiel Poupko’s particularly powerful analysis of the complicated Jewish theological understanding of Israel. He discusses the barrier to dialogue that comes from the fundamental nature of the evangelical mission to convert the world to Christianity. He notes the essential differences in the role of prophecy for the two groups, and highlights the “painful irony” of Protestant–Jewish relations in general. Poupko sums up this irony in a particularly concise manner: “On the one hand Evangelicals are great friends of Jewish national identity as expressed in Zionism and as realized in the State of Israel, and our ‘enemies’ in the matter of the faith of the Jewish people, Judaism. Many mainline Protestants are hardly friends of Israel as the expression of Jewish national identity, but are friendly to the religion of the Jewish people, Judaism, by virtue of the fact that they have renounced and do not practice the ‘mission’ to the Jews” (158). This argument is the most consistent theme of the collection—mainline Protestants are allies on the social policy front yet tend to...