I have been listening
to the Phil Vischer podcast lately and doing as I do, I have to go back and
listen to ALL of them because that’s the sort of thing I do. Phil is the creator of Veggie Tales and
though the entire company was wrested away from him some time ago for many
reasons of which you will read in his book, “Me, Myself, and Bob” he has
started afresh with a new project called Jellyfish Labs and its internet
channel (?) Jelly Telly through which he has promulgated new characters, shows,
books, and games.
The podcast’s
description includes the following: “a
fast-paced and often funny conversation about pop culture, media, theology and
the fun, fun, fun of living a thoughtful Christian life in an increasingly
post-Christian culture.”
Now don’t
misunderstand my purposes here, I am all for this post-Christian proposition,
all for it, 100% on board. I totally
support the abandonment of the fundamentalist and especially unthinking cultural
Christianity which causes liberals, atheists, other religions, and basically the
rest of the world to look at America as backward. I would perhaps say that a fundamentalist
asks “what does the Bible say?” while the Christian life begs the question “What
does the Bible mean?” It’s the
difference between a literalistic legalistic litigious religious framework and
what Christianity really is. We absolutely
need fewer fundamentalist culture-warrior cultural Christians and more
Christians who take the meaning of the Gospel and the Christian life seriously
and follow Jesus in humility and contemplation.
And in large
part I say that Phil is doing this and doing a wonderful job. However, as with many a good thing, there are
some hiccups. One is that all three
hosts seem to be conservatives, or at least moderately conservative and one of
them is very much so, having worked in Washington D.C. during the Reagan
administration. I have found Phil
Vischer and Skye Jethani both to be a
breath of fresh air (myself having just lived for eight years in Arkansas)
though perhaps not going quite far enough in my non-Bible Belt personal view. Christian Taylor (the Mississippi born
Republican) however has been a regular source of frustration for me because she
seems to hold the traditional (and I mean American Bible Belt traditional)
views on things, the culture warrior, the government is too big and bad at
everything, politically Republican views that have nothing directly to do with
being a Christian yet are often preached as if they are one in the same. Sorry Christian, I am certain you are a
wonderful person but your political views make me want to weep and gnash my
teeth. On the other hand, the thought
occurs to me, if the reader is one of my very many politically conservative
friends, you’ll probably identify with her and hopefully be indoctrinated to
some of the more introspective and less overtly political views of Phil and
Skye. At any rate, please do subscribe
to the Phil Vischer Podcast, watch the podcast on YouTube, or find it at Phil’s
website at philvischer.com. I wholly
support Phil’s work whether or not I wholly agree with him or his co-hosts on
every point.
Okay, so I
got way off topic there, but I want to bring it back around with the number two
hiccup with the Phil Vischer Podcast which is related to number one and that is
the constant callbacks to that American Cultural Christianity, specifically the
idea of “Judeo-Christian” things. And
understand, I’m not criticizing Phil (and particularly Skye for constantly
using this term) and the podcast. This
is an issue that has been stewing in the considerable volume of my brain (I
have a very large head) for quite a number of years. Skye’s use of the term has caused me to
revisit the idea and hopefully to formulate a good case for my point of view.
As in my usual
poor form, I’m going to state the conclusion first and then make a case to back
it up. This has gotten me into trouble
in the past because people think “hey, you’re working from a preconceived
conclusion and just trying to make the facts fit your case.” No, that’s not what I’m doing. Usually what happens is that the conclusion
will be in the first paragraph because usually nobody reads very far in so I
put the conclusion at the top so you know what I think and if you are a
thinking person you’ll continue reading whether or not you agree, and if you
are not a thinking person, you’ll probably disagree and quit reading and I’m
okay with that. No need to make you read
into something to which your mind is not open.
I can’t open your mind. Anyway,
since we’re already in the middle of this already lengthy post, I guess it doesn’t
matter.
Okay, so
here it is. If you live in the USA and
have any sort of engagement with people or media or read books or anything, you
have probably come across the term “Judeo-Christian” in some sort of context
with values or laws or morality. It is
used extremely commonly especially in Christian and conservative (not the
necessarily same thing) circles. But my
case is this:
There is no
such thing as “Judeo-Christian.”
While I
cannot be sure at this point, I believe the term is birthed and rebirthed in
the Christian Zionist and Christian fundamentalist movements. If it did not originate with them, it is
certainly where it is most often repeated today. There’s this idea that Christians are the new
Jews or that Jews are incomplete Christians, and so if we lump them together,
we can gain rhetorical force for our arguments.
Or the case may be that we are Christians and parts of our scriptures
are the Jewish scriptures. In any case,
I want to say that there is no such thing as “Judeo-Christian” because Jews and
Christians are fundamentally different things.
And I want to do it partially by comparing Islam to Christianity as
Christians compare Christianity to Judaism.
Okay, so let’s
look at it like this: Islam teaches that
Jesus and all the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets were Muslims and
prophets of Islam. In a way, just as Baha’ism
claims to be some sort of continuation of Islam and Christianity and Judaism,
Islam claims to be the true and undistorted extension of Christianity and
Judaism. And I say that the term “Judeo-Christian”
is the Christian’s attempt to be the continuation and perfection of
Judaism. Now I am not going to explore
whether or not that point is true, because as a Christian, I do believe that
Christianity is the fulfillment of what was the original Judaism. But that doesn’t make me a Jew, and that
doesn’t mean I believe the same things Jews do and therefore the term
Judeo-Christian is entirely inappropriate when describing any part of my
Christian belief, just as a Muslim would be totally wrong in describing Jesus
as a prophet of Islam and a Muslim.
Trying to rope
Jews into the belief-net of Christianity is something many Jews are very
uncomfortable with. They are
fundamentally different things. A Muslim
believes he is correctly worshipping the Christian and Jewish God. A Christian believes he is correctly
worshipping the Jewish God. But the Jew
says “Hey, that’s not the God I worship.
My God is not Jesus and never spoke to Muhammad.” The Christian says “Jesus is God, and God
didn’t speak to Muhammad, and Jesus’ death on the cross means Christians are
not under the Jewish law.”
A Christian
doesn’t think a Muslim’s claims about Christianity are legitimate, what makes a
Christian think they can claim their views about Judaism are legitimate?
We know
those claims exist, but please join me in understanding that the term “Judeo-Christian”
is an imposition and an interpretation.
From my research on the topic, I know for a fact that there are Jews who
do not like it. So let’s have the
humility to understand and communicate that a Christian is a Christian, a Jew
is a Jew, and a Muslim is a Muslim, and the claims of each are mutually
exclusive. Do you think in a majority Jewish country that the Jews use the term
“Judeo-Christian” or perhaps “Christo-Jewish?”
No. The term is one of power,
position, and culture. It only works
when the majority is Christian.
We are
entering the post-Christian era in the United States. And conservatism being what it is by simple
nature is clawing tooth and nail to try to maintain its privilege and influence
and if we are to be the cultural influencers that Christ and the Apostle Paul called
us to be, we must learn to live in the same sort of milieu that they did, being
the minority with no political or coercive power and yet all the ultimate
power. The more we grasp for the
political and coercive power, the more we lose the ultimate power. Part of living in a post-Christian society correctly
is embracing post-Christianese. In doing
so, we must abandon the term “Judeo-Christian.”
In closing,
let me relate an old Jewish joke:
A gentile professor of Judaic Studies in Iowa finds out that to
really learn the Talmud he must go to the Boro Park section of Brooklyn and
find himself a teacher. The professor flies over and knocks on a basement door
and this little Jew comes out. Upon seeing him, the professor asks to be taught
the Talmud, but the little Jews says, “I can’t teach you Tal-mud, you got a
goyeshe kop (literally “non-Jewish head”),
you just don’t think Jewish.”
The professor insists. The little Jew says, “OK, solve this
problem, and I’ll teach you:
“Two people go down a chimney. One stays clean, the other gets
completely schmutzig, filthy. Which one washes up?”
The professor eagerly answers, “The dirty one, naturally.”
The little Jew wails: “Goyeshe kop, goyeshe kop! I told you I
can’t teach you anything. Listen, the schmutzig guy sees the clean guy.
Schmutzig doesn’t see any problem. But the clean guy sees the schmutzig guy and
figures he must be just as dirty, so he goes and washes. I told you, you got a
goyeshe kop. I can’t help you.”
The professor begs for another chance, and the little Jew gives
in, suggesting a new problem to solve:
“Two people go down a chimney. One stays clean, the other gets
completely schmutzig. Which one of them would wash up?”
The professor says, “Sure, I know this one, it’s the clean
fellow.”
At this, the little Jew wails, “Goyeshe kop, the clean one takes a
look at the dirty one and says, Moishe, you’re all schmutzig, go wash already!
Enough. I really can’t help you, mister, you got a goyeshe kop.”
The professor begs for one last chance, and the little Jew says,
“Fine, one last chance, I’ll give you a completely new problem, then you’ll
leave me alone:
“Two people go down a chimney. One stays clean, the other gets
completely schmutzig. Which one of them washes up?”
At this point, the poor professor from Iowa freezes, unable to
decide which of the two conflicting solutions to choose. The little Jew can’t
stand it anymore and interjects, “Goyeshe kop, who ever heard of two people
going down a chimney and only one of them gets schmutzig?”