On Judeo-Christian Values Jacob Hougie

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘Judeo-Christian values’ thrown about in academic texts, the media and elsewhere, including in Jewish circles, but have you ever thought about it? What are Judeo-Christian values? If the term refers to the Abrahamic faiths, why is Islam left out? Given the violent history of Jewish-Christian relations, what could the origin of the term be?

These questions get to the core of a complex history, mixed up in all sorts of prejudice, and reveal that the descriptor is both illogical and inappropriate. To show why, I’ll explore this history and the associations of the phrase with both antisemitism and Islamophobia, and then explain why it doesn’t make sense in the first place

The term first gained currency in the lead up to WWII and was used by Jews to convey to the US government that fascism opposed the values the US was founded on in an attempt to bring the US into the war. As the war ended, it was used by President Truman, but this time it took on a new meaning: US values of democracy, in opposition to Soviet communism. And it was at this point that the term began to take on a new meaning: so-called ‘Western’ values, principally in the sense of Christian values.

This begins to make clear where the first problem lies: the term no longer refers to shared values and is today used principally by right-wing Christians to refer to their own values. These are often framed in terms of opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, abortion rights, and more.

Unfortunately, the history of the term only gets worse. After 9/11, there was a further twist. Conveniently, for the type of politicians who had grown used to using the term ‘Judeo-Christian’, Islam had already been implicitly excluded from the term. Now, as they began to justify their ‘War on Terror’, they frequently did so in terms of an ideological opposition between Islam and ‘the West’. Luckily (for these politicians), there was already a term hanging around that furthered this narrative: ‘Judeo-Christian’. So today, it is still used by the right-wing to imply a perceived threat from Islam against the West. The term has generally been used to mean Christian values and as a coded reference to Islamophobia. But, as you’d expect, the term also has some pretty strong antisemitic notes. An important and traditional part of Christian theology is supersessionism: the idea that Judaism is imperfect in various ways and that it needs Jesus in order to fix it. This idea is offensive: it declares that we are not just wrong, but broken and idiotic. Unsurprisingly, then, it has a long and painful history in justifying 2000 years of Christian persecution. While antisemitism has morphed and changed over time from the primarily religious to the primarily secular, supersessionism remains dangerous. The term ‘Judeo-Christian’ is wrapped up in this idea – by combining the two religions together, it implies that the two go together, the latter replacing the former. The term itself is also complicit in concealing the pain that this has caused: two thousand years of persecution, starting with Emperor Constantine and continuing to the Holocaust and today. By implying ‘Judeo’ and ‘Christian’ go together, the term glosses over the history of violence and ignores that which cannot be forgotten. So it’s pretty clear that the term itself carries a multitude of problems. But, in my view, what really matters is that the term is just plain wrong – it makes no sense, simply because Judaism and Christianity are so divergent. A prime example of this aris- es from our different ideas of ‘sin’ and ‘repentance’. Christian conceptions of sin typically have their basis in the idea of ‘original sin’, an idea derived from Paul that only Jesus could save humans from their sinful nature. In contrast, Judaism says that while we may be inclined towards doing some bad, we also do good; what matters is that we seek to do better. In the Jewish sense, ‘repentance’ is a process of reconciliation between yourself and those you have transgressed against, repairing the damage you did and the relationship you harmed. On a deeper level, we have very different ideas about why one shouldn’t sin in the first place. In Judaism, the most important reason to follow the mitzvot is because it is the right thing to do: God gave us the mitzvot, in the form of the covenant, as a blessing to make both the world and our lives better. Whereas, in Christianity, the focus is on faith as a means to divine ‘grace’ and acceptance into heaven. Judaism doesn’t pay much attention to eschatology (theology about the end of the world and the afterlife) because it is much more grounded in the here-and-now, with greater concern paid to how we behave today.

There are many more differences, including Christian universalism, emphasis on converting others, and focus on removing rather than valuing internal dissent, and, most obviously, our vastly different beliefs about the messiah.

So, it’s pretty clear that not only is the term ‘Judeo-Christian values’ associated with the political beliefs largely of right-wing American Christians, and consequently with Islamophobia and antisemitism, but it also makes no sense. For me, somehow, this last part is the worst bit. The claimed shared values simply don’t really exist. Asserting the existence ‘Judeo-Christian values’ is not only dangerous, but wrong. I urge you, please, to stop using it.