Talk about coming to the right conclusion for all of the wrong reasons! This article about the World Evangelical Alliance, a European evangelical organization, renewing their push to “proselytize European Jewry”, typifies how foolish we can all be, even as we pursue the very best of goals. Once again arrogance and posturing pass themselves off as substitutes for respectful spiritual encounter and true interfaith relations. And that applies to both the Jews and the Christians who are party to this dust up.
Since critique should always be self-directed before it is directed at others, I will begin with those Jews who stand with Abe Foxman and the ADL, who are leading the charge against the World Evangelical Alliance. For starters, why is this issue even being taken up by the ADL? Is an effort to convert Jews an act of defamation? Is it anti-Semitic? I appreciate the need to monitor and confront all racial/ethnic/religious hatred, and appreciate the work that ADL does. But, their stepping in now, needlessly inflames the situation by framing it as a conflict as opposed to a lack of understanding.
Who is Foxman speaking for when he charges that the WEA needs to “understand the immense pain and anger they are causing with their ill-advised and theologically misguided position”? Not for me. I think the WEA is ill-advised, but they are not causing me pain or anger. And it is not my place, nor is it the ADL’s, to tell this Christian group what is “theologically ill-advised”, since we do not share their theology.
And the ADL’s attempt to link the WEA initiative to the Holocaust by highlighting that the initiative is part of The Berlin Declaration on the Uniqueness of Christ and Jewish Evangelism Today is actually shameful. However misguided we may think they are, and whatever the link between Christian anti-Semitism and the willingness of many Europeans to accept/embrace Hitler’s war against the Jewish people, this is precisely the kind of hate-mongering which the ADL is supposed to fight.

There are however two fundamental questions which the WEA must confront. First, is it possible that as much as they need to witness their understanding of the truth, they need to separate that public witness from the stated outcome of seeing me and my brothers and sisters join them in faith? In other words, I am calling upon the ADL, and all those who share their views, to reconsider the notion that Christian evangelism may be an act of love from their perspective. But I also ask if evangelical Christians are willing to consider that it may not be an act of love, if those on the receiving end do not experience it as such?
The second question is simple: can anyone out there point to a single time in human history which ended well, when the success of one group was defined by their ability to convert their neighbors? There isn’t one. You may not think I am right, but the damage done by those who wanted to “repair” the spiritual shortcomings of their neighbors, and judged that repair as necessary to attain blessing or salvation, is too vast to detail here.
So why not try something new for most of us? Genuine inter-faith dialogue in which each group tried to understand the logic and the love which motivates the other side. We are not likely to agree many things, I know. And it will be hard to give up the sense of moral superiority that we all love so much. But it strikes me as far healthier than Jews who intimate that Evangelicals are in cahoots with Nazis, and Christians who refuse to admit the damage done by well-intentioned people who just never got over seeing their neighbors as spiritually damaged goods.
Shall we give it a try?