The Fervent Embrace
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The Fervent Embrace

Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel

Caitlin Carenen

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The Fervent Embrace

Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel

Caitlin Carenen

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About This Book

When Israel declared its independence in 1948, Harry Truman issued a memo recognizing the Israeli government within eleven minutes. Today, the U.S. and Israel continue on as partners in an at times controversial alliance—an alliance, many argue, that is powerfully influenced by the Christian Right. In The Fervent Embrace, Caitlin Carenen chronicles the American Christian relationship with Israel, tracing first mainline Protestant and then evangelical support for Zionism.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, American liberal Protestants argued that America had a moral humanitarian duty to support Israel. Christian anti-Semitism had helped bring about the Holocaust, they declared, and so Christians must help make amends. Moreover, a stable and democratic Israel would no doubt make the Middle East a safer place for future American interests. Carenen argues that it was this mainline Protestant position that laid the foundation for the current evangelical Protestant support for Israel, which is based primarily on theological grounds.

Drawing on previously unexplored archival material from the Central Zionist Archives in Israel, this volume tells the full story of the American Christian-Israel relationship, bringing the various “players”—American liberal Protestants, American Evangelicals, American Jews, and Israelis—together into one historical narrative.

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Publisher
NYU Press
Year
2012
ISBN
9780814708095

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 implications 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 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 in the face of economic and political woe they encouraged in their supporters, found sympathetic admirers among some worried Americans.
The particularistic aspect of Judaism found itself under assault from this new nationalism. Protestants warned Jews not to set themselves apart in any way from other Americans, even in their religious practices. The message they sent was clear: patriotism equaled Protestantism. Yet, paradoxically, religion was central to American identity. This centrality forced Jews to identify themselves religiously while simultaneously compartmentalizing aspects of their Jewishness. In the 1930s the Jewish community in the United States was still reeling from the second wave of immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe who had arrived in the later part of the nineteenth century. These orthodox Eastern European Jews struggled with their fellow Jewish Americans over questions of assimilation and acculturation in mainline America.7
While many Jews feared Jewish immigrants to America abandoned religious loyalties too quickly and integrated themselves too easily into American society, many American Protestants complained that the so-called melting pot was cooking too slowly. Even before the Great Depression, immigration restrictions in the post–Great War era had slowed Eastern European Jewish immigration from a flood to a small trickle. Between 1931 and 1936 only around four thousand Jews entered the country.8 Antisemitism grew so quickly in the interwar period that, in 1936, Fortune magazine declared, “the apprehensiveness of American Jews has become one of the most important influences in the social life of our time.”9
American Jewish organizations, worried about the rising tide of antisemitism, organized to combat it. In 1927 they sued Henry Ford for publishing the antisemitic and slanderous Protocols of the Elders of Zion and threatened to boycott his cars.10 They also organized committees to address domestic antisemitism and the rise of fascist organizations. For example, in a letter to Roger Straus, the New York publisher and member of the American Council on Public Affairs and the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), regarding the necessity of careful attention to fascist and antisemitic attitudes in the United States, Rabbi George Fox of Texas noted that “many of us have been greatly worried by what appears to be the rising tide of antisemitism in our land.” Fox was concerned that, despite the proliferation of attacks on Jews, Jewish leaders and organizations remained ineffectual in addressing the attacks because the accusations of self-interest tended to negate Jewish efforts. For Fox, Christian activism offered the most effective means to combat antisemitism. He proposed that a non-exclusively Jewish organization, such as the National Association of Christians and Jews, address the problem and prepare a study on fascist and antisemitic organizations in the United States. “The matter is quite serious,” he explained, “and of course we do not want to make the mistake of not trying to scotch this business before it gets too powerful.”11
Straus acknowledged the grave situation but stopped short of offering more support, noting instead that NCCJ activism “is much more along the lines of positive, rather than negative action.”12 Eventually Fox proposed the formation of the National Foundation for the Preservation of Democracy whose sole purpose would be to combat, in an organized and systematic manner, the propaganda of antisemitic groups in the United States. Its first members included former president Herbert Hoover and other notables.13 In its founding statement, the Foundation noted that, “whether from sincere desire to protect the United States from what . . . befuddled minds think are dangers, or from a desire to make money off gullible followers, some 248 so-called organizations have been created . . . to protect the land against Jews, Catholics, other minorities and Bolshevism, and to extol the so-called 100% Americanism of the white Protestant gentile.”14 In 1939 the National Foundation and the American Council jointly sponsored a report on antisemitic organizations in America. In his 1941 report for the American Council on Public Affairs, Douglas Strong, of the Department of Government at the University of Texas, surveyed eleven antisemitic organizations in a report titled Organized Antisemitism in America: The Rise of Group Prejudice during the Decade 1930–1940. Strong noted that the atmosphere of the 1930s proved to be fertile ground for antisemitic organizations.
Strong insisted that the growing power of these groups during the 1930s could not be ignored. Among the eleven groups he analyzed, fundamentalist Protestant Gerald Winrod’s organization, The Defenders of the Christian Faith, served as the most potent example of the antisemitism among the extreme right-wing fundamentalist Protestants in America. Founded in 1925 by Winrod, the group targeted “modernity” as the great enemy of Christian America. Behind the push for modernity, Winrod argued, were “Jewish Bolsheviks.” His organization’s monthly magazine, the Defender, and its monthly newsletter, the Revealer, offered sensational “proofs” of the Jews’ attempts to control the world. Winrod had endorsed the authenticity of the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion as the ultimate proof of international Jewry’s attempts to gain global control through international business and finance. Strong estimated that between 1932 and 1936 Winrod distributed more than ninety-five thousand antisemitic tracts. The subscription rate of the Defender also increased dramatically during those years, from twenty-five thousand in 1930 to more than one hundred thousand by 1936. In 1938 Winrod, counting on widespread populist support, announced what would ultimately be an unsuccessful presidential run as a third-party candidate (after the Republicans refused to endorse his platform). Strong posited that the majority of Winrod’s supporters came from those with “limited educational opportunities” who believed in a prophetic “interpretation of current world happenings in terms that the Bible has foretold.”15 This prophetic interest in the Jews grew increasingly as the decade progressed and would prove to be an important variable in Americans’ changing views toward Jews. German persecution of the Jews was met with a divided response among American fundamentalists.
Some, like Winrod, endorsed antisemitic propaganda such as Protocols, including Arno Clemens Gaebelein, a leading fundamentalist theologian and editor of the fundamentalist journal Our Hope. In his book, Conflict of the Ages, Gaebelein offered a similar critique of world Jewry as communist agents who were intent on world control.16 Gaebelein’s assessment of the Jews as international conspirators found similar support among American fundamentalists like William Bell Riley of Minneapolis, Minnesota, editor of The Pilot, a fundamentalist journal. Riley also publicly endorsed the authenticity of Protocols and identified the Old Testament patriarch Joseph as the founder of “modern bolshevism.” Not all fundamentalists agreed, however. J. Frank Norris, minister of the Temple Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, and First Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas, and editor of the Fundamentalist, challenged Riley and Gaebelein’s assertion of the authenticity of Protocols and the idea of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy in the pulpit and in the pages of his journal. Transcripts of a public debate between Riley and Norris sold more than one hundred thousand copies and revealed a deep interest on the part of American fundamentalists over the place of the Jews in end-time eschatology. This growing interest in applying biblical interpretation to Jews was about to be ignited by events in Germany.
Fundamentalists’ eschatological teachings about the end of the ages and Christ’s return kept many from wholly endorsing such antisemitic platforms and served, in a modest way, as a moderating agent in the antisemitism of the 1930s. Even Gaebelein himself, as the decades progressed and the German persecution of the Jews became a campaign of annihilation, began to emphasize the necessity of kindness to the Jews as a prerequisite of any nation’s blessings by God. As persecutions increased, these fundamentalists and their journals encouraged the modification of immigration laws to allow Jews to come to the United States and supported Jewish immigration to Palestine—an idea endorsed by fundamentalists since the late nineteenth century.17 Humanitarian and theological concerns collided in this reaction with Jewish persecution. Fundamentalist interpretations of Scripture insisted that a final “in-gathering” of Jews to Palestine would predate the return of Christ, and the then growing persecutions in Germany provided a humanitarian reason to support the increasing immigration to Palestine and resulted in a de-emphasis of the role of world Jewry in communist conspiracy theories. Moreover, the advocacy for increased U.S. immigration quotas reflected a reminder of the importance of Christian kindness toward God’s chosen people as interpreted by fundamentalist Protestants.
This literal interpretation of biblical verses promising blessings to those who honored the Jews and destruction to those who did not distinguished fundamentalist Protestants from their mainline counterparts. Mainline Protestants, in their embrace of biblical higher criticism and modernity, had long since abandoned literal interpretation of scripture and, along with it, their belief in the relevance of the Jews to Christianity. Jews, with the crucifixion of Jesus, had negated their theological relevancy and their claims to particularism.

Prewar Interest in the Holy Land

Although political Zionism did not officially begin until Theodore Herzl’s establishment of the World Zionist Organization in 1897, Jews, particularly from Eastern Europe, had already begun to migrate to Palestine in the 1880s. The second wave of Jewish migration to Palestine, again mainly from Eastern Europe, lasted from 1904 until the start of the Great War in 1914. During the Great War, the British seized pieces of the crumbling Turkish Empire, including Palestine. Zionist Jews viewed British control of Palestine as a possible boon to their hopes to reestablish a Jewish homeland there, and in the person of Lord Arthur Balfour, the then British foreign secretary, they found a sympathetic audience. The Balfour Declaration, issued in November 1917, stated that “His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”18 Viewed by Zionists as a huge victory in the struggle to establish a Jewish homeland, the Balfour Declaration galvanized the growing worldwide Zionist movement.
Although the earliest interest in Zionism can be traced to puritan minister Increase Mather, for most American Protestants active interest in Palestine as a home for the Jews had begun in the nineteenth century. Irish evangelical John Nelson Darby sparked the earliest Christian Zionist movement in the United States after several visits to the states after the Civil War during which he promoted his belief in premillennial dispensationalism—the idea that all human history is divided into distinct eras, or dispensations. The people and nation of Israel occupy a central role in this theology. According to dispensational premillennialism, the Jewish return to Palestine and the reestablishment of the nation of Israel would mark...

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