Republicans' Elephant in the Room

In yesterday's Jerusalem Post, columnist and Columbia University professor Samuel Freedman writes that American Jews remain deeply concerned by the role of the Christian Right in the Republican Party.  He writes:

[T]he prominence of the Christian Right in the Republican Party is, for American Jews, the elephant in the room, the inconvenient, unacknowledged, yet incontestable reality. 

Freedman also declares that the RJC's recent million dollar ad campaign will "fail," noting:

The differences between the mainstreams of the two major parties on Israel policy are marginal at best... but the differences between them on the influence of evangelical Christians are vast.

Freedman continues:

[F]inding room for the social-justice teachings of Abraham Joshua Heschel or Dorothy Day is a long way from relying on religious activists as the backbone of the party and advocating the erosion, if not the eradication, of the separation of church and state...

Research by a variety of scholars and pollsters - Ken Wald of the University of Florida, Eric Uslaner and Mark Lichbach of the University of Maryland, the survey released just last week by the American Jewish Committee - shows a chasm between American Jews and evangelical Christians on issues ranging from the Iraq war to legal abortion to gay rights.

More than identifying the schism on any specific topic, the research describes a visceral distrust, bordering on antipathy, for Evangelical Christians on the part of American Jews.

'The crucial idea here,' says Prof. Wald, an expert in American Jewish political behavior, 'is that Jews have prospered in the US precisely because of the liberal state. The liberal state, a state that doesn't take religion into account in granting citizenship or political rights. Although they don't know it, many American Jews actually worship at the altar of Article IV, Section 3' [of the Constitution] - the provision that strikes down religious tests for public office.

'Anything that increases the public role of religion,' he continues, 'is going to advance a religion that is not Judaism and thus threatens in a fundamental way Jewish membership in the American community.'

Just another reason why American Jews identify with and vote for Democratic candidates by near 4 to 1 margins.

Comments

[Bill Levinson]

Re: "More than identifying the schism on any specific topic, the research describes a visceral distrust, bordering on antipathy, for Evangelical Christians on the part of American Jews."

Please speak for yourselves. I do not share evangelical Christians' theology but I agree with and respect their basic value system. Furthermore, just as Danish Christians put on yellow Stars of David when the Nazis came for the Jews, Jews must hold high the Cross when militant "Muslims" come for the Christians.

Now that MoveOn.org has gotten a pass from NJDC for its proven tolerance of anti-Semitic hate speech, is John Kerry also going to get a pass for effectively calling the men and women of our Armed Forces the scum of the earth, who have to enlist because they can't make it in the educational system?

That's strange because a lot of Reservists and National Guardsmen who are "enjoying" Iraq's 120-degree summer days left comfortable civilian jobs to serve our country. Kerry is not fit to lick the sand from their boots.

[Bill Levinson]

I did some more research regarding "More than identifying the schism on any specific topic, the research describes a visceral distrust, bordering on antipathy, for Evangelical Christians on the part of American Jews."

Are you aware that this is repackaged and relabeled "Jews as Christian-haters" propaganda that was once used to incite pograms as well as the Holocaust? There's an article about that at Nizkor.

Saying that Jews have "a visceral distrust, bordering on antipathy, for Evangelical Christians" obviously stimulates reciprocal feelings among Christians who read this statement and believe it. Even worse is the fact that it comes from someone with a Jewish name, or one that sounds Jewish, like Samuel Freedman.

If I was a militant "Islamic" propagandist who wanted to cause dissension in the infidel camp, this is exactly the sort of thing I would publish.