Melanie Phillips on Christian Anti-Semitism

Melanie Phillips again takes up this dark topic, condemning a recent slimy Anglican attempt to paper over its functionally anti-semitic "disinvestment" resolution, and praising a recent statement by Clifford Longley, who attended the annual conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews in Chicago.

I describe the Anglicans' statement as "slimy" because it wraps Anglican contempt for Israel (and dare I say it, Jews) in what Melanie aptly describes as "stomach turning piety" on Christian / Jewish relations. The money quote:

So the ACC’s message to Jews is clear: we value you enormously, just as long as you don’t support Israel. If you do support it, we’ll treat you as a pariah. In other words, Jews are in one box, Israel is in another. This is to deny Jewish peoplehood. It is also to deny the anti-Jewish nature of its singling out of the Jewish state for pariah status.

Mr Longley's thoughtful statement is worthy of careful consideration by Christians tempted to get excited about that "shitty little country" in the Middle East:

‘Thirty years ago when I first started going to conferences like this there would have been many Jewish people there who had themselves survived the concentration camps, many Christians who had fought Hitler personally. It was a shared bond, not just psychologically but spiritually. That generation, united in seeing Israel as a Jewish refuge from persecution, has more or less passed. Christian responsibility for the pre-war rise in antisemitism no longer brings an automatic sense of shame, or colours how Christians see their duty towards the Jews. Good relations with Muslims, they would insist, are just as important as Christian relations with Jews.

‘Yes and No to that, I would say. It is too soon to forget what centuries of what is called the "teaching of contempt" towards Jews did to the Christian soul of Europe. It is a religious obligation - or to put it another way, it is what God wants - that Christians should try to undo the consequences of that dark tradition. That means denouncing anything that seems to call in question Israel's right to exist.’

Amen to that.

Melanie also worries that Benedict XVI is taking the Catholic Church backwards, in terms of its relations with the Jewish people, and cites the recent diplomatic spat between Israel and the Holy See as evidence for this.

Speaking for myself, I hope not, and shall remain vigilant.