Two years have now elapsed since Mel Gibson released his movie “The Passion” and various Jewish organizations launched their attacks on religious conservatives. Since then, Gibson has moved on to film a new movie, also in an unusual and unspoken foreign language. “Apocalypto” follows the adventures of a long-ago Mayan hero.
The Jewish organizations, however, have not moved on. When their bizarre predictions of pogroms in Pittsburgh and massacres in Mississippi failed to materialize, they just continued with more of the same attacks.
These organizations, whose prime purpose often seems to be the undermining of biblical faith and the promotion of secular liberalism in America, have a dream. Their dream is to overwhelm what they see as the big bad giant of American Christianity. There is only one thing wrong with this image. The giant has not been brought to his knees at all. But he has awoken.
Here are three reasons why liberal Jewish attacks on the sleeping giant of American religious conservatism are ill-advised.
Reason one is that according to Judaism’s ethical Torah-based guidance, ingratitude is immoral. Christianity’s cultural influence in America is precisely the reason that we Jews have lived so much better lives here than in any other country.
No other country has a higher proportion of Bible-owning households. No other industrialized country has as high a proportion of its population proclaiming a belief in God or attending worship services more regularly. Needless to say, support for most Jewish concerns has been steadfast and wholehearted on the part of nearly 100 million Christians.
Most serious Christians do, however, stop short of embracing another Jewish concern – secular liberalism. This is because many rightfully challenge the popular but false idea that Judaism equals liberalism. Furthermore, many religious conservatives attribute society’s decline to liberalism, and I think they are largely correct.
It is entirely because religious conservatives oppose liberalism that they have fallen victim to Jewish organizational anger. Self-appointed Jewish leaders are being dishonest when they attribute their aversion to Christian conservatism to First Amendment concerns. I think all Americans are entitled to their opinions and if Jewish liberals wish to oppose religious conservatives such as myself or my Christian friends, good luck to them. It is when as Jews attack Christians as Jews rather than as liberals that I take issue.
The second reason I consider Jewish broadsides against Christian conservatives to be a bad idea is that the arguments have little integrity. For instance, one constantly hears that Christian conservatives pose a threat to religious freedom for Jews. Let us be honest: do they really mean they want religious freedom? Or is it freedom from religion they seek?
To Jews, religious freedom is not merely a pretty phrase. For two thousand years we have fled, frightened and penniless, from one temporary haven to the next. For the most part we have not done so for financial reasons but for reasons of religious freedom.
Religious freedom really does mean something specific to us. It means not being killed for being Jewish. It means being allowed to pray three times a day. It means being able to secure meat slaughtered according to Jewish dietary rules. It means being able to circumcise our infant sons eight days after their birth.
Blessedly, here in the United States none of these religious freedoms seems to be in jeopardy. Let us, however, honestly examine whether they are closer to being threatened by modern liberalism or by contemporary conservatism. Where has an American Jew been killed for nothing other than being a Jew, and a visibly religious Jew at that? Was it in some Bible-belt town? No, Yankel Rosenbaum was murdered by Lemrick Nelson Jr. in the one city that more than any other has traveled farthest down the road advocated by Jewish liberalism – New York.