Strangers,Neighbors,and Strangers Again: The History of Southern Baptist Approaches to Jews and Judaism

Abstract

This article examines the formal history of Southern Baptist-Jewish relations according to three broad time periods: 1920–1950, 1950–1980, and 1980-the present. In the first period, Jacob Gartenhaus, himself a converted Jew, directed the Southern Baptist approach to Jews and Judaism. Gartenhaus understood his mission as twofold: “winning the Jews to Christ and winning cooperation of Christians for this task.” But in a time when Southern Baptists generally regarded Jews as accursed and beyond the reach of the gospel, Gartenhaus found his work exceedingly difficult on both fronts. The second period, 1950–1980, is the only time in which Southern Baptists may properly be said to have affirmed a dialogue approach to Jews and Judaism. Baptist-Jewish relations during this period were enlivened by an irreducible tension between the enduring validity of Judaism, on the one hand, and the unflinching commitment to the evangelization of Jews, on the other. The final period, 1980-present, dissolved that tension when Southern Baptist leadership disavowed dialogue as a legitimate model for relating to Jews. Today, there is no Southern Baptist-Jewish dialogue, and it falls to more moderate Baptists to repair a relationship that has been deteriorating steadily for the past twenty-five years.