For my fellows here:
I just completed a required gen ed course for my degree at the college i am attending. I took a course on the Bible, since i have previous studies there already and figured i'd have a relatively easy time. One of the requirements of the course was to write a paper on any of the places where the Bible has 'influenced modern cultures'.
AS i was writing my recent diatribe (my last blog entry), i realized i was rehashing much of what i wrote there. So, i'm just going to post the paper here for anyone who may be interested:
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pangaean 1
radar pangaean
Judith L. Janicki
REL 204
Winter 2011
The Bible’s Influence on Tolerance vs Its Influence on Intolerance
The ‘little books’ which comprise the Christian Bible provide both explicit and implicit guidance to its followers regarding the proper treatment of people who do not belong to one’s own group. The Torah accords basic rights to the stranger and places an obligation on the observant Jew
to provide hospitality and to have honest dealings with gentiles, but it also draws a clear line
between one’s obligations to another Jew vs one’s obligation to a gentile. The New Testament
message does not draw the same sharp distinctions regarding one’s obligation to one’s fellow beings
based on group membership, but it also contains passages which differentiate between the
expectations for behaviors and responsibilities between observant Jews, members of the early
Christian communities, and gentiles.
Throughout history the Torah, and the teachings of the New Testament, have been interpreted both narrowly and loosely, and with different degrees of compassion for those who belong to groups
other than that of the reader. The rules, and the stories of how the characters in the Biblical
stories lived by them - or not - have for the largest part positively influenced our understanding
of social justice in mainstream Western Civilization, but they have also simultaneously served to
justify bigotry on the part of some members of society against others within the society.
Leviticus states the criteria for the treatment of and interactions with gentiles, slaves, and other Jews. This passage is typical of its tone and intent:
If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves
among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue
to live among you. (Leviticus 25:35)
Note that in this passage the author admonishes the observant Jew to treat an impoverished fellow Israelite with the same compassion he/she would treat a foreigner, using the treatment of the
foreigner as the standard.
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Throughout history some people have used the criteria listed in the Bible as their minimum
obligation to others, and gone beyond what was explicitly required of them. These individuals take
a much simpler and more generic message from the Bible than the specific rules it contains, similar
to the summary provided by Jesus to his disciples in the Gospels of Matthew & Luke, where he said:
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” and the very similar summary phrased in the negative provided a few decades later by Rabbi Hillel, “That
which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow”. They express their commitment to these
principles by giving their time, money, and other resources to charitable organizations, or by
performing personal acts of charity for those who have fallen on hard times.
My wife, Melissa, is the volunteer manager at our local homeless shelters (The St. Vincent Hotel and the St. Vincent Gateway Shelter). Her willingness to work this job in spite of being
significantly over-qualified is itself inspired by her interpretation of the Bible, and is thus
an example of how the Bible has influenced modern life that is as close to home for me as any
example can be. In this role, she sees members of almost every faith community whose beliefs, most
of which are based in the Old or New Testaments of the Bible, exhort them to serve those who are
less fortunate than themselves, knowing full well that the recipients of their charity are usually
not members of their own faith communities. She enjoys discussing their beliefs with them as time
permits, and sharing stories with me of the times that a volunteer will go above and beyond
expectations without regard for reward or recognition.
However, while some people find inspiration to serve the needs of the stranger in their study of the Bible, others find justification for their own personal prejudices and dislike for
“the other” in that same text. Much of the history of the Jewish people as recorded in Tanakh
consists of stories of the priests and prophets admonishing the people to keep themselves
separate from the peoples who lived in their vicinity. It is not surprising that a modern person
with xenophobic tendencies could believe that he/she has found support for her/his ethnocentric
viewpoint in those passages and use Biblical quotes to justify their desire for separation from,
as well as feelings of superiority to, “the other”.
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It is ironic that the Jews were one of the first targets of Biblically-justified intolerance. As Christianity was becoming distinct from Judaism, the growing schism led to clashes
both among the Christian communities and between those communities and the Jewish communities from
which they had originally drawn their membership. This struggle is reflected in Acts, as well as
in multiple of the Epistles, and shows itself in comments that are unambiguously negative toward
Jews and/or one of their dominant sects, the Pharisees.
The Gospel of Matthew leaves no doubt to whom its author assigns responsibility for the death of Jesus, by the inclusion of this dialog between Pilate and a crowd of Jews:
“What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” Pilate asked. They all answered, “Crucify him!” “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”
All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!” (Matthew 27:22-25). This passage alone inspired much anti-Jewish sentiment, but the passage is not alone in its tone. Similar harsh judgments are pronounced against ‘Jews’ in John 8, Matthew 23, Mark 11:18,
Luke 20, Matthew 23:37, to name but a few. The philosopher, Dagobert Runes concluded: The New Testament contains 102 references to the Jews of [the] most degrading and malevolent kind, thereby creating in the minds and hearts of the Christian children and adults ineradicable hatred toward the Jewish people. Early church leaders, such as Justin Martyr, Origen of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, St.
Augustine, and Peter the Venerable, appear to have shared and augmented the philosophy expressed
in the above Biblical quotes and referenced passages, expressing more anti-Jewish sentiment and
sometimes bitterly denouncing the very existence of Judaism.
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From the beginning of the Christian movement, some new and other recurring ‘heresies’ would surface among subsets of Christendom. After the Catholic Church rose to political power, it was
better positioned to enforce its view of the orthodox upon the heretics. One well known example of
this exertion of power is the Inquisition.
The Inquisition originated in Rome under Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). Though it did not originally target Jews, statements such as the following from its founder ensured that it would not
be long before they were included among its targets:
...the Jews, by their own guilt, are consigned to perpetual servitude because they crucified the Lord...As slaves rejected by God, in whose death they wickedly conspire, they shall by the effect of this very action, recognize themselves as the slaves of those whom Christ's death set free...
In 1492 anti-Jewish sentiments had grown to such strength in areas that had been the sponsors of additional Inquisitions that the government of Spain finally expelled all Jews from
the country. Those who left, referred to as the Sephardim (from the Hebrew word for Spain) vowed
that they would never again return to that country because of the harsh treatment they received
there. Those who fled to Portugal suffered yet another expulsion a mere four years later when a
political marriage between the ruling families of Spain and Portugal was made contingent on the
expulsion of Jews from the latter country.
As we move to more modern eras, readers of the New Testament continued to find it a source of anti-Jewish sentiments. Martin Luther, known for many things and not the least of which is his
devotion to a strict reading of the Bible, believed early in his life that the Jews had correctly
not converted to Christianity because the Catholic Church had strayed too far from the true message
of salvation. But after his movement was established he was greatly angered that they did not
embrace his theology and in 1543 he penned a treatise, The Jews and Their Lies, to express his ill
will toward them. The intolerance expressed in this document is so offensive to modern readers that
on the the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a commemoration of a night of open hostility toward
Jews in pre-WWII Germany, the Lutheran Church of Bavaria issued a statement repudiating this aspect
of Luther’s teachings, even while still recognizing him as the founder of their denomination.
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No discussion of anti-Jewish sentiment would be complete without a mention of the
Holocaust. Adolf Hitler’s program to exterminate Jews from the European continent can be traced to
a combination of his social, political, and religious views. Hitler believed that the all Jews were
Marxists, and that if allowed to continue unchecked they would destroy all of the world’s
civilizations. In Mein Kampf he states:
Should the Jew, with the aid of his Marxist creed, triumph over the people of this world, his Crown will be the funeral wreath of mankind, and this planet will once again follow its orbit through ether, without any human life on its surface, as it did millions of years ago. And so I believe to-day that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord. (34)
Though he was raised Catholic, the anti-Jewish views of Martin Luther would be known to anyone raised in the culture of ‘greater Germany’. Coupled with the long established anti-Jewish
teachings of the Catholic Church, to which he would have been directly exposed, it is not difficult
to believe that he thought he was doing the ‘work of the Lord’ when the rest of the civilized world
was sure that he was doing the work of a less lofty agent.
While Jews have been the primary recipient throughout the last few millennia of Biblically
inspired intolerance, they are not alone in that regard. The Bible was also used to justify the
institution of slavery, and racial prejudice against the Africans who were enslaved during the
first few centuries of the settlement of the North American continent, and their descendants.
There’s no effort involved in finding passages in the Bible which support the institution
of slavery. The Old Testament, the Gospels, and the Epistles all contains references to the proper
treatment of slaves and the responsibility of a slave to serve her/his master faithfully, and no
passages which condemn the institution itself. It’s unambiguous that a person who draws their
moral/ethical code solely from the Bible would feel no reason to stand against that institution.
Slave owners in the southern US encouraged conversion to Christianity among their slaves in hopes
it would make them accept their fate.
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However, the passages used to explicitly justify the enslavement of Africans, and the assignment to them of second-class status after slavery was abolished, are not as clearly
interpreted to serve those ends. This does not prevent many people from doing so. The ‘Curse of Cain’
and the ‘Mark of Ham’ references in Genesis were interpreted by the early Syriac Christian
communities to refer to dark skin. Many apologists for slavery and/or racial segregation in 19th
century America echoed that reference. This was also taught by the early Mormon Church, though
later dropped from their official doctrine.
Another irony that appears lost on many of its current members, who are themselves African-American, is the reason for the split of the Southern Baptists from their parent
denomination, the Baptists. The split was based on a disagreement over slavery and the education
of slaves, with those who became the ‘Southern’ offshoot of the denomination being pro-slavery and
against their education. The denomination’s preachers promoted a belief in second-class status for
‘the negro’, including a doctrine that there was a separate (but equal?) heaven for blacks. The
Biblical-focused support for this degree of prejudice eventually led to the foundation of another
‘Christian’ organization, the Ku Klux Klan, by members of the Southern Baptist community.
In the middle of the 20th century people who also drew their inspiration from the Bible, such as Baptist minister Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil rights movement. Joined by other
Christian and Jewish spiritual leaders with every possible skin tone, their movement eventually
ended the promotion of bigotry by the mainstream Christian denominations. Some members of those
denominations changed their views, others learned to be less open about their remaining racial
prejudice. Still others appear to have simply mined the Bible for another group towards which they
could express their intolerance while maintaining the appearance of Biblical adherence. The new
target: homosexuals. Leviticus is unambiguous that homosexual behavior is unacceptable to Yahweh. Paul’s
epistles carry a similar injunction against the practice, so both Old and New Testaments support
the view that homosexuality is inherently sinful in nature.
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Modern Christian churches vary widely in their acceptance of this doctrine. Some congregations have completely repudiated any suggestion that homosexuality is inherently sinful,
while others seem to be on a personal crusade to demean and vilify homosexuals. The most famous of
the latter group is the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka Kansas. They’ve managed to make their
very small congregation one of the better known churches in the country by showing up at the
funerals of soldiers (as well as at other funerals of people whose deaths are in the news) and
using that as a venue to promote their doctrine that the deaths of our troops are proof that God
is punishing the US because we are tolerant of homosexuals. While possibly the most vocal and outspoken critics of homosexuals, they are not alone in their firm stance that it is a ‘sinful lifestyle’. Some of the mainstream Christian denominations,
and most of the non-denominational Christian churches also preach against the ‘homosexual agenda’,
though they are not always clear on what that agenda is. Some of these churches believe that
homosexuality is a choice, and a sinful one at that. They promote ‘conversion camps’ where
homosexuals can go to “rid themselves of their sinful desires”. The movie, “But I’m a Cheerleader”
satirized this movement, but the humor of that satire may well be lost on the homosexuals who are
the target of the ‘well-meaning’ Christian who wants to save them from themselves. You indicated that it would be acceptable to express a personal opinion in the closing, as long as the rest of the paper was substantive. In my lifetime, the Christian denominations that i
have known have not expressed anti-Jewish sentiments. However, i did live through the 50’s and 60’s,
and i remember well that pastor at the church attended by my closest childhood friend preached
sermons about the evils of “mixing the races”. Blatant racism is no longer socially acceptable in
mainstream society, but intolerance of gays is still being defended openly by those who claim they
are inspired by the Bible to fight this purported menace to society. They often use the passage in
Leviticus to support this stance, noting that it refers to homosexuality as an abomination. Their
position would seem less to me one of personal bias and more easily defensible as being strictly
an attempt to honor their holy scripture if the English translations of Leviticus didn’t use the
same word, abomination, to prohibit the eating of shellfish or wearing clothing made of multiple
cloths. Until the day i see these same people picketing Red Lobster or a clothing mall, i will
conclude that they are operating from personal prejudice, not from any specific need to enforce
the words of the Bible.
pangaean 8
Hay, Malcolm. Europe And The Jews. Academy Chicago Publishers, 2005.
Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf, 2nd ed. Elite Minds Inc, 2010.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, Annotated 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.
Wikipedia, multiple articles.
Religious Tolerance.
The Jewish Virtual Library.
Westboro Baptist Church.
Miller, Randall M. & Smith, John David. Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, Updated ed. Praeger; 1997
