Don’t Be Angry At Missionaries

by Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor
Special To The Jewish Week

The World Evangelical Alliance placed a full-page ad in The New York Times recently. Titled “The Gospel and the Jewish People – An Evangelical Statement,” it begins with an apologia for the anti-Semitic words and deeds that have marred the history of Evangelical Christianity. The ad accepts that when the Jewish people were in peril, Evangelicals did far less then they should have done. These two opening points are welcome admissions that lay the groundwork for what might prove to be a fruitful discussion.
However, what follow as bullet points, I am sure will rile the majority of Jewish readers and it is to my Jewish co-religionists that I direct my response. In sum, our Evangelical friends state with clarity that they believe in the

Messiah-ship of Jesus and that they believe it is incumbent upon them to share this “good news” with their Jewish friends. They acknowledge that deception or coercion in evangelism is wrong, but they think that using missionaries who were born Jewish and who continue to insist that they are Jewish is legitimate. They believe that their faith and commitment to Scripture compels them to carry forth this mission.
They have every right to believe this and they have every right to make this a priority. I, for one, am glad that they choose do so openly and without deception or coercion. The question is not what they do — but what do we do and how do we react. Traditionally, this sort of call would instill anger, indignation and fear on the part of many Jewish leaders. None of this is necessary. We Jews have survived two millennia of attempts to convert us. We bear on our backs the blood of far too many who died affirming their faith and the faith of our Jewish ancestors. Yet, we survive as a people and as a faith. Today, in America, we have grown and flourished as a community, creating the most diverse and powerful Jewish community in our people’s history.
It is time to have confidence in ourselves. If we are concerned about the impact of missionaries, it should only be because we have not done a good enough job to educate our people. We certainly have not invested enough time and resources in the education of our young people about different religious traditions so that they understand what similarities we have with those of other faiths and what honestly divides us from them. This knowledge would make it far easier for young people to respond to a zealous attempt at conversion. Fortunately, there already are some people who are teaching Jewish youth about different faiths, and there are “counter-missionary” organizations who do fine work.
But based on where our community invests its money, teaching about other faiths is not important to us. And by making this education such a low priority, we leave ourselves open to the fear of the attempts of trained missionaries.
Of late, there has been a great debate as to whether we should accept the largess of Evangelical Christians who support Israel. Some in our community say that with the world against Israel, we should accept help from any corner. Others say that we should look at the other things Evangelicals say and do, and that what we see should cause us to reject the assistance of people with whom we disagree.
Both of these positions are wrong — as both grant the Evangelicals too much power. Why can we not say, “Your support of Israel is welcome, but some of your reasons are not in concert with our beliefs.” When they say awful things about other religious groups we should say, “We believe you are wrong.” Too often we act viscerally, as though we are still victims. We are only victims when we fail to stand up for ourselves and we fail to educate our people to respond appropriately.
I am sure that some might counter my point of view by reminding me that our people felt secure in Germany in the 1920s and ’30s and that we could end up in a similar situation if the “Bible-thumpers” and the religious fundamentalists take over. But we must feel secure enough to say to the fundamentalists that we are glad for their faith, but it is not a faith we share.
A couple of years ago, while I was giving a lecture in South Carolina about Judaism and Christianity, an elderly gentleman began a question to me with “Rabbi, the Bible says...”
I stopped him and asked him to place the Bible he was holding near his ear and tell me if he heard anything.
I then suggested that the Bible doesn’t “say” anything — it needs human beings to give voice to the words on the page. And, I continued, we could read the same line several times, and with differing vocal inflections, and the line would be understood differently each time.
Our Evangelical friends believe that the Bible tells them that they should spread the “good news” and that we should be the target of their efforts. We Jews should be secure in our faith and our history — we have survived and flourished. And when a well-meaning missionary rings our doorbell, or stops us in the street, or takes out a full-page ad in The Times, we should simply say, “No, thank you.” n
Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor specializes in interfaith relations and is the rabbi at the Temple of Universal Judaism in Manhattan.

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