The Mother Religion

Column by Rev. Lauren Van Ham on 8 July 2021 5 Comments

In Her 4.5 billion years of being a planet, Earth has known great drama illustrated in superfluous gestures of creativity and supreme acts of destruction.  If we used only this as our backdrop for religion what would our religion consist of? 

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Question

Is the Church ever going to address the antisemitism in our liturgy? The Jew hating is both blatant and subtle in the scriptures we read from Mark, Matthew, Luke, John and early Paul. You’d think 2,000 years of accusing the Jews of killing Jesus, being money grubbers, etc. was enough of this ugly stereotype. It is time the Church confronted its role in perpetuating all the antisemitism the first century Church created and the Church has perpetuated since.

Answer

Dear Terry,

Thank you for your question. It is a deeply pastoral one coming from a true place of awareness and concern. Indeed, many of the liturgies utilized in the regular worship services in quite a few denominations contain language that’s offensive to our Jewish friends. This is particularly noticed in certain Calls to Worship; Words of Institution and the Great Thanksgiving that are part of the sacrament of Holy Communion; and especially evident in many of the readings shared as part of special services during Holy Week prior to Easter Sunday. Good Friday most notably.

One piece of this is the readings from the Bible assigned on given days from the Lectionary. When the Gospel of John is featured, this is even more evident still.

The way John puts it, Pontius Pilate and Rome didn't really want to kill Jesus, it was the Jews who wanted Jesus dead. As Dr. Elaine Pagels has indicated, as each of the Gospels were written chronologically they became increasingly more anti-Semitic in that they started shifting the blame away from Rome for the death of Jesus and onto the Jews. The Gospel of John is the zenith of this - with Pilate seemingly not really wanting to kill him – he’s portrayed as reluctantly allowing the execution due to the alleged pressure from “the Jews.” This is what led to Luther being so anti-Semitic. Which is in part what led Hitler to do what he did. This is demonstrated in several books and articles. For the record: Pontius Pilate was a ruthless killer and he wouldn't've bothered to meet in person with anyone slated to be executed, let alone be concerned about any public pressures or preferences.

I know of quite a few progressive Christian congregations that are modifying the language used in liturgies – taking care to not blame “the Jews” for Jesus’ death. If they work with the texts from John for Good Friday, they’ll modify the wording to instead say “the public”, “the citizens”, “the mob”, “the masses”, etc. Some churches avoid using the texts from John re: Jesus death all together. In the same way that some churches modify the lyrics of old hymns to avoid condoning the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement, pastors and lay leaders should feel empowered to modify the texts for the Words of Institution and the Great Thanksgiving, as well as all denominational liturgies. Moreover, we’d do well to have a revision denominational liturgies all together, as well as calling for another revision of the Revised Common Lectionary.

~ Rev. Roger Wolsey

 

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