The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel

1. American Protestants and Jewish Persecution, 1933–1937

| 1 1 American Protestants and Jewish Persecution, 1933–1937 Jews should celebrate the birth of Christ—what is good for the Christian, after all, is good for the Jew. At the end of the 1930s the Christmas edition of the most important Protestant journal in the United States, the Christian Century, issued this stern directive. Jews, the editors argued, should celebrate the birth of Christ as a goodwill gesture to Christianity’s universalism and American culture. “If the religion of Judaism is good for the Jews,” it insisted, “it is also good for gentiles. If it is not good for gentiles, it is not the best religion for Jews.”1 Religious differences, in other words, would not be tolerated. Such a warning reflected the attitude of liberal Protestantism in the United States during the 1930s—Protestantism was American culture. Many scholars have argued that antisemitism in the United States marked its high point during the decade of the 1930s. Isolationism and the trauma of the Great Depression provoked both xenophobic attitudes and assimilationist impulses. At the same time, however, American Protestants were confronted by the increasing persecution of Germany’s Jewish population by the Nazi Party. American Protestantism’s hesitancy to directly confront and condemn the persecution (a still unfolding development) reflected strong antisemitic tendencies in American society. Questions of acculturation and assimilation collided with the great crises of the era—worldwide depression and reaction against modernity—to create a reactionary impulse in American Protestantism . Although some notable mainline Protestants called attention to German persecutions of the Jews and others began mobilizing to support the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, few Protestants were concerned about either issue. Isolationism and pacifism dominated political discussions among Protestants. Evangelical Protestants, a small minority in the 1930s, refrained from political activism on behalf of the Jews. They invoked prophetic implica- 2 | Protestants and Jewish Persecution tions for the mounting persecution of the Jews in Germany and the growing numbers of Jewish immigrants to Palestine in the interwar period, but they did not politically engage these issues. Despite the lack of widespread reaction against Nazi persecutions, activism on behalf of the persecuted, or mobilization to support Zionism, American Protestantism lay on the cusp of dramatic changes that would transform the religious and political landscape of the United States in the decades to follow. The decade of the 1930s offers a stark contrast to the political mobilization that would follow in the next decade. Protestants and Anti-Semitism In 1933 mainline Protestant influence in American politics, education, and culture was unquestioned. The United States had always considered itself a Protestant nation. Although, in many ways, religious minorities found a safe haven in the United States, with its constitutional separation of church and state, they often—whether Jews or Catholics (the largest religious minorities in 1933)—found that their access to America’s highest echelons of power was barred, including admission to the best schools, business opportunities, and representation in government, civic organizations, and clubs.2 American antisemitism was widespread. Recently historians of antisemitism have challenged the conventional argument that the history of American antisemitism is “exceptional,” that “it was rarely more than a nuisance,” rarely and weakly applied, and had no foundation in American laws, institutions , or ideology.3 They argue that antisemitism in the United States stems directly from its Protestant heritage and “Christian sources” related to an anti-Jewish ideology inherent in Christian culture.4 When Christian culture and tradition are at their strongest, their argument goes, so is antisemitism. This was particularly true in the interwar period of American history when antisemitism “was more widespread and profound than ever before . . . aggravated by several catastrophes, including the aftermath of the Great War, the Depression, and the international political crises of the 1930s.”5 Whether primarily religious or socio-cultural in nature, however, antisemitism reached its height in the 1930s.6 Particularly after the crash of the stock market in 1929, the United States found itself in the grip of a most serious assault on its American exceptionalism . The horrors of the Great War had already convinced most Americans to return to a policy of isolationism from European affairs. Such ardent isolationism , coupled with economic unrest, provoked an atmosphere of extreme Protestants and Jewish Persecution | 3 nationalism in American society in the 1930s. The rise of fascist regimes in Europe in the following years, and the sense of purpose and unity...