UCC says no to evangelizing Jews
New report cautions against conversion
By ChristianWeek staff
The United Church of Canada has released a report asking its members not to engage in evangelizing the Jews. Bearing Faithful Witness: United Church-Jewish Relations Today suggests, instead, that Christians should maintain a friendly dialogue with Jewish people.
UCC moderator Bill Phipps, who was involved in preparing the document, is clear about not wanting Christians to think they have a superior faith. "Christianity does not supersede Judaism," Phipps told The Globe and Mail.
But as with many issues in the United Church, there is dissension within the denomination. The Community of Concern and other groups that adhere to an orthodox understanding of Scripture don’t want to be muzzled when it comes to sharing their faith. The document "is completely against the biblical mandate to go out into the world and baptize," says Community of Concern spokesman John Niles.
Baptist theologian James Beverley, who teaches at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, told a Winnipeg meeting of the Canadian Jewish Congress that evangelism is a core Christian belief. In an article in the Winnipeg Free Press, Beverley is quoted as saying that if Christians were to give up evangelizing Jews along with other non-Christians, "it would be changing the core of evangelical Christian faith."
For Beverley, the word dialogue means something different than it does to Phipps. "For our dialogue to be faithful, to be honest," he says, "I can’t…tell you that there’s a move in evangelicalism to say Jesus is not the messiah for all people. That would be a lie about evangelicalism."
Bearing Faithful Witness was written by the UCC’s Interchurch Interfaith Committee. Many of its points would be accepted by evangelical members of the United Church. It acknowledges, for example, a history of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism within Christianity, along with a "recognition of anti-Semitism as an affront to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Where the report parts company with evangelicals is in rejecting "all mission and proselytism seeking to convert Jews to Christianity."
On the subject of Jews who have converted to Christianity, Bearing Faithful Witness says the United Church accepts Messianic Jews "in their own right," but "would not consider such groups to be representative of the Jewish community."
