Tag: Christianity

The true Christian teaching on immigration

Contra the current churchian and papal perspectives, the traditional Christian teaching on immigration is that the common good of the nation must be considered first, not whatever happens to most benefit the potential immigrant. This analysis of St. Thomas Aquinas’s work makes clear what was repeatedly demonstrated in Cuckservative, which is that what churchians are doing with regards to immigration is not Christian at all, but are the works of a false faith that is intrinsically anti-Christian.

Immigration is a modern problem and so some might think that the medieval Saint Thomas would have no opinion about the problem. And yet, he does. One has only to look in his masterpiece, the Summa Theologica, in the second part of the first part, question 105, article 3 (I-II, Q. 105, Art. 3). There one finds his analysis based on biblical insights that can add to the national debate. They are entirely applicable to the present.

Saint Thomas: “Man’s relations with foreigners are twofold: peaceful, and hostile: and in directing both kinds of relation the Law contained suitable precepts.”

Commentary: In making this affirmation, Saint Thomas affirms that not all immigrants are equal. Every nation has the right to decide which immigrants are beneficial, that is, “peaceful,” to the common good. As a matter of self-defense, the State can reject those criminal elements, traitors, enemies and others who it deems harmful or “hostile” to its citizens.

The second thing he affirms is that the manner of dealing with immigration is determined by law in the cases of both beneficial and “hostile” immigration. The State has the right and duty to apply its law.

Saint Thomas: “For the Jews were offered three opportunities of peaceful relations with foreigners. First, when foreigners passed through their land as travelers. Secondly, when they came to dwell in their land as newcomers. And in both these respects the Law made kind provision in its precepts: for it is written (Exodus 22:21): ’Thou shalt not molest a stranger [advenam]’; and again (Exodus 22:9): ’Thou shalt not molest a stranger [peregrino].’”

Commentary: Here Saint Thomas acknowledges the fact that others will want to come to visit or even stay in the land for some time. Such foreigners deserved to be treated with charity, respect and courtesy, which is due to any human of good will. In these cases, the law can and should protect foreigners from being badly treated or molested.

Saint Thomas: “Thirdly, when any foreigners wished to be admitted entirely to their fellowship and mode of worship. With regard to these a certain order was observed. For they were not at once admitted to citizenship: just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations, as the Philosopher says (Polit. iii, 1).”

Commentary: Saint Thomas recognizes that there will be those who will want to stay and become citizens of the lands they visit. However, he sets as the first condition for acceptance a desire to integrate fully into what would today be considered the culture and life of the nation.

A second condition is that the granting of citizenship would not be immediate. The integration process takes time. People need to adapt themselves to the nation. He quotes the philosopher Aristotle as saying this process was once deemed to take two or three generations. Saint Thomas himself does not give a timeframe for this integration, but he does admit that it can take a long time.

Saint Thomas: “The reason for this was that if foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of a nation as soon as they settled down in its midst, many dangers might occur, since the foreigners not yet having the common good firmly at heart might attempt something hurtful to the people.”

Commentary: The common sense of Saint Thomas is certainly not politically correct but it is logical. The theologian notes that living in a nation is a complex thing. It takes time to know the issues affecting the nation. Those familiar with the long history of their nation are in the best position to make the long-term decisions about its future. It is harmful and unjust to put the future of a place in the hands of those recently arrived, who, although through no fault of their own, have little idea of what is happening or has happened in the nation. Such a policy could lead to the destruction of the nation.

As an illustration of this point, Saint Thomas later notes that the Jewish people did not treat all nations equally since those nations closer to them were more quickly integrated into the population than those who were not as close. Some hostile peoples were not to be admitted at all into full fellowship due to their enmity toward the Jewish people.

These are some of the thoughts of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the matter of immigration based on biblical principles. It is clear that immigration must have two things in mind: the first is the nation’s unity; and the second is the common good.

Immigration should have as its goal integration, not disintegration or segregation. The immigrant should not only desire to assume the benefits but the responsibilities of joining into the full fellowship of the nation. By becoming a citizen, a person becomes part of a broad family over the long term and not a shareholder in a joint stock company seeking only short-term self-interest.

Secondly, Saint Thomas teaches that immigration must have in mind the common good; it cannot destroy or overwhelm a nation.

This explains why so many Americans experience uneasiness caused by massive and disproportional immigration. Such policy artificially introduces a situation that destroys common points of unity and overwhelms the ability of a society to absorb new elements organically into a unified culture. The common good is no longer considered.

Mailvox: when your church converges

A reader in the Bay Area wonders what his options are:

I went to church today and I’ve been worried for a long time. There have been signs. The original church was extremely intellectual, led by a couple men I respect who learned Greek and Aramaic personally, research like none other and present the Bible in a way I’d never seen in regular church services. Two years ago one of those men was forced out, though I didn’t see it at the time because he “left for a new position in another church”. He was replaced by young, hipster types leading everything. The lead pastor, whom I also respect, has started backing off, only preaching once a month or so, doing other things while those younger “hipper” people take over.

A few months ago they started having a woman lead services. They brought in and merged with a chuch from a black area, brought in a lot more minority populations.

I noticed my wife, who’s heavily involved in those small groups, started getting really passionate about Good Samaritan type projects and we had a few fights about how I was saying they were scams, as it was a lot of raising money type of deals.

Today it culminated where they actually brought in one of the 49ers who is protesting with Kaepernick and did a sermon on how the “disciples were diverse”, and he gave a shpiel about how him and Kaepernick are going to “change the community, because cops can do better, we can do better.” Full SJW lie with zero biblical basis. They opened with a video about multi-racial couples and talking about race and probably mentioned diversity 50 times over the course of the sermon.

I walked out during the 49er bit.  Now my wife is very very heavily involved in the smaller groups of the church. I grew up with a number of people so the prospect of leaving is like cutting off an arm. What do I do? Is leaving the only thing I can do?

Yes. It’s time to leave. Do not discuss it with your wife. It’s not something to negotiate; either you are the spiritual leader of the family or she is. Leave and find a new church. She may follow your lead, or she may not, but that’s her responsibility, not yours.

Your responsibility is to lead the way. And the church you describe no longer serves the Lord, it serves the spirit of the world.

You were worried because your spirit was picking up on the false spirit that entered the church. Now your mind knows what your spirit already knew. The fact that the good pastor was forced out is a strong indicator that you are dealing with some knowingly evil people here, it’s not a series of unfortunate coincidences.

A portrait in Churchianity

I tweeted this to the #jewsforrefugees hashtag and promptly received this response from a “pastor”.

Pastor Richard ‏@thebiblestrue
And you call yourself a Christian?


Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Yes. Who said this?  “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”


Pastor Richard ‏@thebiblestrue
Jesus said it. But what did he mean?


Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
He meant that the nations exist, and the interests of the children of the nation come before the interests of other nations.


Pastor Richard ‏@thebiblestrue
@voxday Wrong. He meant the gospel came to the Jews first. But he still healed the gentile woman’s daughter. God loves all people equally.

This is all too typical. Pastor Richard is clearly a Churchian and one of the wolves in sheep’s clothing of whom the Apostle Paul warned. The Churchians preach a god who does not hate the wicked and they preach the Gospel of Babel, in which there are no nations and everyone is the same and all are loved equally by their god.

And their god is not our God. Their god is the prince of this world.

Notice how this dishonest “pastor” is playing the usual deceptive bait-and-switch. He switches the context with regards to the meaning of the phrase spoken by Jesus, and claims that the meaning of the phrase is somehow defined to the contrary of its clear meaning by substituting for it the meaning of a different part of the story that is not even referenced in that phrase!

Of faith and fairy tales

John C. Wright considers the charge that Christianity is nothing more than a fairy tale:

There are those who call Christian faith a fairy tale. I assume such scoffers are not old and wise enough to believe in fairies.

To them, I give the answer of that most excellent marshwiggle and insightful theologian, Puddleglum: Suppose my account is a fairy tale. Your account is not even that.

Let us contrast and compare the Christian fairy tale with the tale told by witches both white and green, both modern and ancient.

One modern account of the world consists of little more than saying “Life is a bitch, and then you die, and in the end nobody lives happily ever after. Entropy triumphs over all, a nightfall of endless darkness and infinite cold.”

Well, says I, if you actually believed your account, the wise thing to do is to swallow cold poison and jump into the sea: so the fact that you are still here hints that at some level you know your account is unsatisfactory: a poorly constructed story, pointless, plotless, and with a weak ending. It is not a tale at all, but a complaint.

Another account, this one with considerably more pedigree, says, “We are all just naked apes or meat machines: our souls are made of atoms blown together by the twelve winds with no more purpose and meaning than the shape of the sand dune: we are helpless and without free will, victims of blind evolutionary forces and blind historical forces. Atop the Holy Mountain no gods dance, and no burning bushes speak. Death is dreamless sleep and soft oblivion. Therefore let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Entropy triumphs over all, a nightfall of endless darkness and infinite cold.”

This is a poor story: a tale of despair, a myth to justify hedonism.

A nobler version of this same account says, “Man is a rational animal, capable of moral reasoning, creativity, productiveness, love. Man is heroic. Therefore let us live rationally working with mind and heart and soul to produce such works of art and science as befits so dignified a creature: let each man to live for himself alone, a paragon of self-reliance  each man in the solitary but invulnerable tower of his self-made soul, never demanding nor making any selfess sacrifice. Nor hopes nor fears of after-lives or nether-worlds need detain us: Therefore let us think, and work, and triumph, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Entropy triumphs over all, a nightfall of endless darkness and infinite cold.”

This is a poor story: vanity, vainglory, and blindness to the pain and misery of life. The pretense that bad things never happen for no reason to good people is a very thin pretense: since the days of Job, we have all known better. This is a tale of vainglory.

He is correct, though, to conclude that there is no better answer than the marshwiggle’s. We choose the fairy tale regardless. And there is nothing in your moralities, nothing in your philosophies, nothing in your sciences that can provide one single legitimate reason to criticize that choice.

“Judeo-Christian” is antisemitic

“Judeo-Christian is not merely anti-Christian propaganda, but as one rabbi points out, it is also antisemitic:

The Constitution entitles you to your opinions and religious beliefs and even affords you the right to express those convictions in your pursuit of public office. But as a Jew and a rabbi, I am writing to ask you to please leave me, Judaism and my people out of your rhetoric. Don’t use “Judeo-Christian” to try to appropriate my religion and my people’s history to advance your agenda.

I can appreciate that Jews and Christians share many similar values and beliefs, just as I recognize that many of the values I learn from my tradition are also shared by many other religions. But while our respective religions have many things in common, we also diverge in significant ways. You and I read the same Bible very differently and draw sometimes contradictory conclusions from it. I honor those differences and I affirm that Jews and Christians (as well as Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists and many others) can come together to exchange ideas and live at peace with one another. But your particular brand of Christianity bears little resemblance to the Judaism I practice, and when you use the term “Judeo-Christian” to really mean “Christian,” you erase the distinctions between our faiths — and you essentially erase Jews….

When you use the term “Judeo-Christian,” you give your particular brand of Christian ideology a veneer of universalism it does not merit. It is misleading to suggest that your ideas are part of a “Judeo-Christian tradition.” The term “Judeo-Christian” was originally coined in the 1930s by liberal Christians and Jews who sought to encourage ecumenical relations between those two faiths for the purpose of fighting the growing racism, xenophobia and nativism of that time. But in the 1950s the term was adopted by political conservatives who used the phrase “Judeo-Christian values” as a cudgel in the fight against fellow Americans they accused of being “Godless communists.” And since the 1970s the call for a return to so-called “Judeo-Christian values” has been used by the Christian right as code language to their base for a particular brand of conservative policies that are anything but inclusive.

Perhaps those Christians who are not even remotely concerned about endorsing an anti-Christian term will think twice about it now that they understand it is also antisemitic and deplored by Jews.

This is not an isolated example. The Jewish Press is even more straightforward in correctly rejecting the legitimacy of the term:

Let’s be clear: Far from “sharing” one tradition, Orthodox Jews are prohibited from marrying Christians, setting foot inside a Christian church—and we can’t even drink from an open bottle of kosher wine that has been used by a Christian. We reject the Christian idea of salvation, we abhor Christian divine teachings on every subject, and we are repulsed and outraged by incessant attempts by Christian missionaries to bring us into their fold.

It is particularly disturbing when Klinghoffer makes statements which reveal his complete assumption of elements of New Testament Pauline ideology, for instance, the requirement that wives submit to their husband’s authority. There is no mandate on precisely how a woman should behave with her husband—Jews expect the happy couple to work it out for themselves. Also, while divorce may be a tragedy, and God cries, it is in no way banned—in Judaism, that is. The story in Christianity, and Klinghoffer’s “Judeo-Christian Biblical America,” is different.

Incidentally, we have more in common with Muslims than we do with Christians; Jewish law permits Jews to enter a mosque… but not a church….

Jews and Christians differ on every single fundamental principle—even on the meaning of core Scriptural texts. More crucially, Christians rely on the Old Testament for legal delineation; whereas Jews rely solely upon our rabbinic tradition. We never, ever turn to our Bible for legal guidance, only to our rabbinic literature. To suggest that our Sages had anything at all in common with the likes of Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Carter or Pat Robertson is a slap in the face of 2500 years of scholarship.

“Judeo-Christian” is as valid a concept as happy-joylessness, or tall dwarves. Klinghoffer’s yearnings for this repugnant “ideal” is a deviant phenomenon without a trace of commonality in traditional Jewish thought, ancient or modern.

Considering that it is almost solely Christian Zionists in the US who proudly utilize the term, I tend to doubt there are many rhetorical ploys more powerful than accusing anyone who uses the term “Judeo-Christian values” of antisemitism.

I also think the term “Judeo-Christian values” is obviously racist, as if we are to apply the idiotic logic used to defend it, the more accurate term to describe the values upon which the United States was founded is “African-Christian values”, since everyone who is a United States citizen was, until very recently, believed to have been descended from an African ancestor and it is terribly racist to suggest otherwise, regardless of what the latest science might say.

Correcting the Churchians

One of Jerry Pournelle’s readers points out that there are considerably more lessons from the Bible that can be applied to the question of immigration than are generally applied by Churchians who carefully cherry-pick a single element from a verse they otherwise ignore:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

“St. Paul may have been an optimist.” – Jerry Pournelle

Or Galatians 3:28 is being grotesquely and disingenuously wrenched out of context to attempt to justify secular social and political goals and ideas it never had the slightest connection with.  Coincidentally enough this verse and a few others before and after were the Epistle reading a few Sundays ago at our church.  Since you appear to be using the Berean Literal Bible I’ll continue with it:

Galatians 3:26 teaches, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Galatians 3:27 continues, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

And Galatians 3:29 followed up with, “Now if you are of Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.”

Taken together this very clearly refers to a fellowship of all Christian believers.   It certainly can never be used under any circumstances to justify an unlimited influx of non-Christians into any Christian land.  And it can’t even be used at all unless a theocracy is set up.

Alternately we could go ahead and add numerical references to each word in the Bible, or even each letter.  This will make it still easier for people to indulge that favorite pass time of using the Bible to justify their personal positions.  As the late Sam Francis observed on the occasion of the Southern Baptist Convention’s apology for slavery, the Bible endorses human slavery and does not prohibit it.  Even John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul advised slaves to be content in their situations.

But this being Sunday, I’ll quote one another applicable Bible teaching, this one on the question of the extremely wealthy welcoming strangers while imposing all the costs of their hospitality involuntarily on their poor neighbors:

2 Samuel 12:1-6

The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. 


“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”


David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

This seems appropriate for the many persons who enjoy the large profits of low cost immigrant labor – frequently illegals – while involuntarily imposing all the social costs onto the broader community.  Mark Zuckerberg and his H1B programmers come to mind here.

As is ALWAYS the case every time the Churchian case is examined, it turns out to not only have destructive and diabolical consequences, but it is obviously theologically incorrect, and all too often, directly anti-Biblical. In fact, as far as immigration goes, this is merely scratching the surface of the total historical falsity of the Churchian pro-immigration case.

Churchianity is a series of lies stacked upon other lies. I will not go so far as to say it is the religion of the Antichrist, although it carries a distinctly deceitful odor that is in line with various prophecies of that abomination. But there is no doubt whatsoever that it is anti-Biblical and anti-Christian.

UPDATE: I forgot to answer a question posed by Jerry:

We’ll assume it is possible for the sake of discussion, but can we all agree that it will be very difficult and expensive to deport them all, and the benefits of deporting all 11 million are likely to be lower than the costs?

No. It may be difficult and expensive, but it will definitely be worth the cost. And then we can start on however many are necessary to restore the promised pre-1965 demographic levels.

Churchianity and the feminized church

It’s really rather remarkable, that as Christians lament declining attendance in their churches, and particularly, the growing absence of men of any age in them, they continue to double-down on the Churchian doctrine of the Holy Lady Parts. Rollo Tomassi observes that there is a material price to the structural and spiritual violations of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, to say nothing of 1 Timothy 2:11–12 and 1 Timothy 3:11.

After almost six years of following the religious aspects of the Red Pill, I think it’s high time men acknowledge that modern Christian culture simply does not have men’s best interests as part of its doctrine anymore. Christianity, in particular, is by women, for women – if not directly executed by women, though even that is changing.

Church culture is now openly hostile towards any expression of conventional masculinity that doesn’t directly benefit women and actively conditions men to be serviceable, gender-loathing Betas. The feminist narrative of “toxic masculinity” has entirely replaced any semblance of what traditional masculinity or manhood once was to the church. Any hint of a masculinity not entirely beholden to a now feminine-primary purpose is not only feared, but shamed with feminine-interpreted aspersions of faith.

I recently read a study that our current generation is the least religious in history and I think as far as men are concerned much of that disdain for religion is attributable to a church culture that constantly and openly ridicules and debases any male-specific endeavors or anything characteristic of conventional masculinity. It’s no secret in today’s church franchisement that reaching out to, and retaining the interests of, men is at its most difficult.

Again, this is attributable to a generation of feminized men being raised into a church culture, and eventual church leadership, that has been taught to prioritize and identify with the feminine and reinforced with articles of faith now defined by the Feminine Imperative. The modern church has trouble reaching men because the church no longer has a grasp of what it means to be ‘men’.

To be clear, that’s not an indictment of the genuine faith itself, but rather a fairly measured observation of the way a feminine-primary church culture has shaped that faith. In the future, any man with a marginal capacity for critical thought will avoid the contemporary Christian church and religion for the obvious misandry it espouses; the only religious men you will find will be those raised into a life of religiously motivated Beta servitude – or those dragged to the feminine-directed church by wives who hold authoritative ‘headship’ in their relationships.

And even in what some consider to be pro-masculine or “macho” churches, we still find the Paper Alpha leaders preach from a mindset that defers wholesale to the feminine’s “Godly perfection” as they attempt to AMOG other male member to greater devotion to qualifying for, and identifying with, the feminine influence that pervades their church.

In this, as in so many things, observe that the consequence of following the lie is eventual destruction. This is what Paul means by knowing things by their fruits. If a church can throw out such clear Biblical direction in the interest of remaining in harmony with the current social or political consensus, it is only a matter of time before it will throw out any other instruction that makes anyone feel uncomfortable, and eventually, the Cross and the very concept of sin as well.

One need not be a theologian, or even a Christian, to see how this process has played out over the last 50 years.

Mailvox: what is Churchianity

Yesterday we had a few requests for a definition of “Churchianity”:

 Is there anywhere on this blog where you define “Churchian”? 
– MS

I too would like a definition of Churchian. Could you cover that in a future post?
– Jaypo

While I have frequently alluded to it, I have not addressed Churchianity directly on this blog before. In part, that is because I am loath to play Christian Police, a role for which I am ill-suited spiritually and temperamentally. I wish to stress that I cannot, and will not, be the judge of whether anyone is a genuine Christian or is a mere Churchian instead; that determination is well above my pay grade. It does not fall to me to even be the judge of my own Christianity, as we are all fallen and none of us know whether we will be saved or we will be one of those from whom Jesus will turn and say “I never knew you.”

In this, as in all things spiritual, we see as though through a glass, darkly. And yet, we are also given eyes and wit and perhaps even a modicum of spiritual discernment, so if we cannot judge another man’s soul, we can certainly judge institutions by their actions and intellectual concepts by their consequences.

I gave the matter a fair amount of thought when writing Chapter 9 of Cuckservative, “Christianity and Cuckservativism”. As my co-author, John Red Eagle, is agnostic, the task of addressing that particular topic naturally fell to me. I go into considerably more detail in the book, particularly concerning how Churchianity relates to various trends that have swept the American churches, but a few excerpts from it should help provide a better understanding of what Churchianity observably is before we attempt to define it.

Many churches have reduced Christianity to the parable of the Good Samaritan, to such an extent that their religion could be more reasonably described as Good Samaritanism than Christianity. And while they subscribe chiefly to salvation through works and societally-approved attitudes rather than faith, they nevertheless possess complete and utter faith in the intrinsic goodness of foreigners.

Churchians (for it would not be strictly accurate to describe them as Christians) are liars and deceivers. They worship the god of Babel, not the Christian God. They serve the world, not Jesus Christ.

But where does this religious obsession with improving the world through works come from, when it has been absent from Christian theology for the greater part of two thousand years? Indeed, the entire conceptual core of Christianity is fundamentally based on the nature of the world not only being fallen and imperfect and ruled by an immortal spirit of evil, but remaining that way until the Son returns, the Prince of the World is cast down, and the Kingdom of Heaven is established.

Justice, in both Greek philosophy and proper Christian theology, is “rectitude of the will”, as can be seen in Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, specifically Secunda Secundæ Partis, Question 58, Article 1. And in the Christian sense, rectitude of the will is defined by conformity with God’s will, which can be debated, but being immutable, is assuredly not defined by the ever-mutating social justice narrative.

So social justice Christianity, or Good Samaritanism, or Churchianity, all amount to the same thing: a false form of Christianity that cloaks itself in Christian rhetoric while denying both the conceptual core of Christianity and the fundamental nature of the justice to which it nominally dedicates itself. And these false forms all flow from a concept that is considerably newer than Christianity, although it is related to an older religion.

The term tikkun olam is from the rabbinic literature known as the Mishnah, which dates back to 1492 and is believed to come from an oral tradition that may be as much as a thousand years older. It appears in the phrase mip’nei tikkun ha-olam “to indicate that a practice should be followed not because it is required by Biblical law, but because it helps avoid social disharmony.”

The phrase is often translated as “for the sake of the healing of the world”, which is why the expression appears in English as a directive to “heal the world” or “fix the world”, but a better translation is “for the sake of the perfection of the world”.

In other words, the cuckservatives and other Churchians have elevated a literally extra-Biblical post-Christian concept that flies directly in the face of genuine Christian theology to a super-Scriptural level, then used it as the basis to judge both members of the Church and the Bible itself!

So, we can summarize all of this with the following definition:


Churchianity is social justice-converged pseudo-Christianity that cloaks itself in Christian rhetoric and trappings, follows the world rather than Jesus Christ, and seeks salvation through works instead of faith.


And if I can say this without sounding too eschatological, I expect it, or something very like it, will be the seed of the religion that worships Antichrist in the place of Jesus Christ.

“Judeo-Christian” is anti-Christian

“Judeo-Christian” is another false construct, not even as old as “the melting pot” or “a nation of immigrants”. From Wikipedia:

History of the term
The term is used, as “Judeo Christian”, at least as far back as in a letter from Alexander M’Caul dated October 17, 1821. The term in this case referred to Jewish converts to Christianity. The term is used similarly by Joseph Wolff in 1829, referring to a style of church that would keep with some Jewish traditions in order to convert Jews.

Use of the German term judenchristlich (“Jewish-Christian”), in a decidedly negative sense, can be found in the late writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, who emphasized what he saw as neglected aspects of continuity between the Jewish world view and that of Christianity. The expression appears in The Antichrist, published in 1895 and written several years earlier; a fuller development of Nietzsche’s argument can be found in a prior work, On the Genealogy of Morality.

Promoting the concept of United States as a Judeo-Christian nation first became a political program in the 1940s, in response to the growth of anti-Semitism in America. The rise of Nazi anti-semitism in the 1930s led concerned Protestants, Catholics, and Jews to take steps to increase understanding and tolerance.

In this effort, precursors of the National Conference of Christians and Jews created teams consisting of a priest, a rabbi, and a minister, to run programs across the country, and fashion a more pluralistic America, no longer defined as a Christian land, but “one nurtured by three ennobling traditions: Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism….The phrase ‘Judeo-Christian’ entered the contemporary lexicon as the standard liberal term for the idea that Western values rest on a religious consensus that included Jews.”

Anyone who is using the term “Judeo-Christian” is referencing, consciously or not, left-wing anti-Christian agitprop. There are no historical “Judeo-Christian” values; to the extent there is overlap they are Christian values.

Note that “Judeo-Christian” in its post-1940s revisionist usage is a part of the same program as the 1965 Hart-Celler Act. It was adopted specifically to redefine America and destroy the historical fact of America having been founded as a de facto Christian nation.

It is also worth noting that despite Islam being related to both Christianity and Judaism in precisely the same manner, we do not hear much talk of “Judeo-Islam” or “Islamo-Christianity”, much less take seriously the idea that Americans must defer to Muslims or grant them any special status on those grounds.

To claim “Judeo-Christian” is nothing more than recognizing Christianity’s roots in the Old Testament is akin to claiming that “Communism” just means people sharing with other members of their community. Moreover, to claim that Christianity is “Judaic” in that sense is to erase the other tribes of Israel; it would be 12 times more accurate to say “Hebreo-Christian”, “Israeli-Christian” or “Jacobite-Christian”.

Churchian theology

Erick Erickson ‏@EWErickson
Oh no, alt-Reich! It turns out the creator of heaven and earth is a Jew! Literally!! You are not His chosen people, they are!

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Who are the “Jews who are not Jews”? And what is “the Synagogue of Satan?”

Since you’re a theologian and all now.

I’m actually genuinely curious how people explain those two concepts from Revelation 3:9, whether they are preterists or more conventional eschatologists.


Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.

Moreover, my understanding is that Jesus was a Galilean, not a Judean. However, I don’t see how it matters much, considering that we’re in virgin birth territory anyhow.