Christianity and antisemitism ZT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_anti-Semitism



The relationship between Christianity and antisemitism has a long history. Anti-Jewish sentiments have been expressed by many Christians over the last 2,000 years, but many other Christians, increasingly in recent years, have condemned these sentiments.

Competition for converts and other factors led to an intensification of Jewish-Christian conflict towards the end of the first century even though there is evidence of continued Jewish-Christian interaction, including Christian participation in Sabbath worship, in some areas well beyond that. These conflicts had a negative impact on the writers of certain parts of the New Testament especially the author of the gospel of John which was compiled about this time. In several places John\' s gospel associates the Jews with darkness and with the devil. This laid the groundwork for centuries of Christian characterization of Jews as agents of the devil, a characterization which found its way into medieval popular religion and eventually into passion plays.

In the second century and beyond, many of the principal Church Fathers began to write of Jews as a rejected people who were doomed to a life of marginality and misery. Jews were to wander the world as a despised people. This image persisted in Christian preaching, art and popular teaching for centuries to come. In certain countries it often led to civil and political discrimination against Jews and in some instances to physical attacks on Jews which resulted in death. However, many Popes, bishops and some Christian princes stepped up to protect Jews, although it was only in the mid-twentieth century that the Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations issued major statements repudiating this anti-Judaic theology and began a process of constructive Christian-Jewish interaction.

Hans Küng, a leading Catholic theologian, has written that Nazi anti-Judaism was the work of godless, anti-Christian criminals. But it would not have been possible without the almost two thousand years\' pre-history of \'Christian\' anti-Judaism...[1]