Time for a Time-out

A few months ago, I wrote on Beliefnet that Jews should disengage from conversations with Southern Baptist leaders who were behind efforts to convert them. Not from interfaith activities with local Baptist churches; just from work with Baptist leaders who were dedicated to converting Jews. It's easy to make too much of such evangelical activities, and I doubt that they convert many Jews, if any. But they are taken by Jews as a kind of disrespect for Judaism, and the targeting in particular is painful.

And then, during the primary season, came the controversy about the Christian right's support for Gov. George W. Bush, its assaults on Sen. John McCain, and McCain's denunciation of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Of course, those fights didn't really involve Jews, but they made Jews nervous, because they seemed to make religion a political issue.

If Robertson was arguing that McCain was unfit for high office because of his beliefs (or lack of them), what would he say about Jews? An overreaction perhaps, but just at that moment, Bush adviser Marvin Olasky weighed in with a newspaper column confirming Jews' fears. Olasky argued that Bush represented those who wanted faith to inform our politics, while others were the "Party of Zeus"--people who had "holes in their souls" and worshiped the state. And just by coincidence, all three people Olasky named as being in the "Party of Zeus" happened to be Jews.

Now, Olasky claims that he didn't know they were Jews, but that's not very persuasive. One of the three is Bill Kristol, the well-known publisher of The Weekly Standard, frequent TV commentator, son of the neoconservative guru Irving Kristol, and someone Olasky must surely have known was Jewish. For Jews watching all this, Olasky's column was a nightmare come to life: Jews being attacked in the public square for having no faith, or the wrong faith--an attack made, no less, by a former Jew who had converted to evangelical Christianity. And this attack came at just the moment when Robertson, one of America's leading evangelicals, was assaulting a candidate many Jews found attractive--John McCain--and was supporting the candidate who said his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ. What a mix!

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