But What Is "Judeo-Christian"?

A fun story involving one my favorite students. As background, this student is (a) a somewhat recent immigrant to the United States and (b) Muslim.

Anyway, after class one day this student wanted to ask my opinion about some conservative radio shock jock he had read an article about. The radio guy had been defending some regressive gender ideologies on the grounds that they were mandated by his "Judeo-Christian" beliefs. My student asked me "what's 'Judeo-Christian'?"

At first I thought he was being arch, so I played along -- "LOL, I know right? What is 'Judeo-Christian'? I'm pretty sure it just means 'Christian'!"

But after a few moments, it became clear the question was meant in earnest. He thought "Judeo-Christian" must be a particular sect of Christianity -- like "Orthodox Christian" or "Lutheran Christian" -- and wanted to know more about it, because he hadn't really heard of it before except in contexts like "right-wing shock jocks justifying being misogynist" (in his home country, which was predominantly Muslim and had virtually no Jews, the term was not I imagine in regular circulation). What was this branch of Christianity that was always being deployed by right-wing reactionary public figures?

So I told him that the "Judeo-" was meant to refer to "Judaism", and the term was meant to connote a shared tradition supposedly common to Jews and Christians alike -- though, I hastened to add, 99% of the time it's really just "Christian". The shock jock in question, unsurprisingly, was Christian and not Jewish, and was just adding "Judeo-" to rope us into his own, 100% Christian, gender ideology.

My student was abashed that he hadn't put the obvious two-and-two together. To be clear, it wasn't that he had thought "Jewish" was a subsect of Christianity -- he knew Judaism was its own religion -- it just genuinely never occurred to him to link "Judeo-" and "Jewish" (it seems obvious, I know, but I can absolutely imagine it being one of those things you just never put together until it's stated and then it slaps you in the face). There were, he had thought, Jews and Christians, and then among Christians there were Catholic Christians and Orthodox Christian and Assyrian Christians and Judeo Christians.

But, in his defense, he found the "real" explanation -- that it was a sort of merging of "Jewish" and "Christian" together, by people who inevitably identified with one religion or the other, but not both -- even odder than his initial misapprehension.

"But those are two separate religions!"

"Yes."

"It'd be like me saying 'Islamo-Christian'!"

"Yes!"

"That's stupid! I'd be really annoyed if someone of another religion tried to rope in my religion to justify his misogynistic beliefs."

"Yes!" 

Anyway, mystery solved, we had a good laugh about the uselessness of the term "Judeo-Christian" and how terrible the shock jock was. The end.

The Reasonable Christian

While I had to put my two cents into the comments regarding the problematic use of "Judeo-Christian", Caroline Mala Corbin's post on Texas' recent (2007) addition of "under God" to its own state pledge is well worth reading.

The Fifth Circuit recently rejected an Establishment Clause challenge, relying on a "reasonable person" test to conclude that the Pledge remains primarily patriotic, rather than religious, in connotation. Professor Corbin adopts from feminist theory to argue that the court is implicitly adopting a "Judeo-Christian" [sic] standpoint in making this assessment of reasonability.

Jewish Groups Urge Repeal of DADT

Once again Jewish institutions demonstrate that they just don't understand what it means to hold "Judeo-Christian" values.

Yer Doing it Wrong

Mike Huckabee tells Israelis that Evangelical Christians are "so much more supportive of Israel than the American Jewish community." This, of course, is part of a long line of Christians telling Jews they're better at being Jewish than we are. I wonder if it even occurred to Huckabee that if most Jews had a different conception of what "pro-Israel" means than he does, maybe he should, you know, reevaluate his own opinions on the meaning of the term, rather than just assume we suck at life.

Matt Yglesias points out the form Evangelical Christian "support" of Israel takes (I refuse to buy into the frame that they are actually "more" supportive than I am) is simply based off a affinity for violence as a tool for solving problems -- which goes into hyperdrive here since it isn't their people who will be counting the body bags if their apocalyptic vision is enacted. Being Jewish, I consider a bad thing to support policies which have a near-certainty of seeing more Jews killed. Non-Jews may not care quite as much on that score as I do, which is their business, but I think it is perverse that this lack of empathy gets translated to mean "support".

Stay in Place

The comments to the post I flagged earlier this week are one of the clearest examples of what happens when Jews refuse to take a subservient position before their Christian fellows. For noting that the Catholic Church hardly has clean hands with regards to the Holocaust (particularly from its source as a wellspring of European anti-Semitism for literally millennia), I'm told that the Jews should apologize for communism and (obviously) for killing Christ. It's amazing just how shallow the old views lie buried.

Christians today respect Jews precisely as far as they have in the past: namely, they respect Jews who don't assert any Jewishness. In the past, we had to convert. Today, we simply have to shut up and not assert any theological or social autonomy. The minute Jews try and resist bogus "Judeo-Christian" claims made in our name, or imply that Christian practice might not actually be religion perfected (particularly in how it treats Jews), or note our own experiences being oppressed and persecuted by Christians, all that talk of fellowship flies out the window. There is never -- never -- any acknowledgment that there might a problem on their end. It's always Jewish something -- neurosis, obstinacy, stubbornness, bloodlust, avarice, whatever the slur d'jour -- that is to blame. Jews have no active role in this worldview.

As far as I can see it, the relationship the Christian community (left and right) wants with the Jews is completely hierarchical. They are the enlightened, and we are the damned; they are the teachers, and we are the pupils; they are master, and we are the servant. I'd say it has to change if there is to be any improvement in Jewish-Christian relations. But honestly, I don't see any impetus for Christians to change the ways -- they've shown no inclination that they think the current state of affairs is remotely problematic, and when Jews try to raise their voices to speak out, we're ignored, shunned, or labeled the problem.

It's moments like this when I get full-on separatist. There is simply no indication that Christians feel like listening, learning, or stepping back from the unbelievable arrogance which has characterized their relationship with Jews for centuries. There are individuals who have broken from the mold, and I salute them, but they're few and far between, and might as well be completely absent against the broader backdrop of the Christian community, which continues to organize itself in a fundamentally anti-Semitic, imperialistic fashion. Well forget that. If they feel like having a conversation as equals, they know where to find me. In the meantime, they can know that as far as I'm concerned, they're implicated in an anti-Semitic agenda top to bottom.

Under Their Skin

I'm somewhat of a zealot when it comes to attacking the use of the term "Judeo-Christian", which I think inaccurately lumps together two very different religious traditions. Sometimes my critique is thus on the general usage, and other times it's about particularly inane applications.

John McCain, apparently, likes to use "Judeo-Christian" a lot. And if the Boston Globe's coverage is at all reliable, his usage would seem to fall definitively in the latter category -- warning a New Hampshire crowd that Iranians "sure don't share our Judeo-Christian values."

Yes, let's undercut eight years of trying to persuade Muslims that this isn't a Holy War. As the Globe reports, McCain continually uses "Judeo-Christian" as a synonym for "freedom" or the American way, a conflation which is (a) wrong, (b) excluding of millions of Americans, and (c) obviously won't play well in the Muslim world. If Muslims believe that our quest to "stand up for freedom" is literally a desire to impose our own religious tenets on them, well, let's just say it makes our job a wee bit tougher.

Meanwhile, returning to my general critical stance, the Globe hedges a little bit in the middle of its piece when it says that "The term Judeo-Christian has a benign history," continuing to claim that "It was popularized by liberal groups in the 1920s and 1930s to forestall anti-Semitism."

Now, I'm not sure that's accurate (I seem to recall that the term was actually originated by mocking anti-Semites, but I could be wrong and/or it could have been appropriated later by liberal groups), but that's besides the point. The point is that "Judeo-Christian" is not benign. It represents, if anything, the bad sort of liberalism which conditions equality on uniformity -- in this case, replacing a unique Jewish heritage with insinuations that Judaism is just a sub-species of Christianity. I'm willing to grant that the non-Jewish speakers who promoted "Judeo-Christian" may have had their hearts in the right place, and I'm willing to grant that Jewish speakers who did the same may have seen that strategy is the best available in the face of anti-Semitic oppression. But it remains true that it is a term adopted under duress, and ultimately is not an accurate expression of the history, experience, or interests of the Jewish community. In that way, it is the furthest thing from benign.