On Renouncing Antisemitism.

Frank E. Eakin, Jr., What Price Prejudice? Christian Antisemitism in America. New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press/Stimulus Books, 1998. 210pp. $9.95 (paper).

Despite the subtitle, most of this book is not about prejudice against Jews in the United States. The first three chapters survey the origins of "antisemitism," with particular attention to the Christian Testament and medieval church. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the United States experience from the colonial period to the twentieth century. Chapter 6 profiles recent Christian denominational statements on Jews and Judaism; most of these originated in the United States, but Vatican and World Council of Churches documents are also mentioned. Chapter 7 provides suggestions for improving Jewish-Christian relations on the local, congregational level. Three appendices make available for the first time admirable documents on Jewish-Christian Relations from The Presbyterian Church USA, the Episcopal Church USA, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Eakin argues that "antisemitism" has been a danger in Christianity from its origins, has negatively influenced social relations even in the relatively benign environment of the United States, and must be consciously renounced and combated if Christian denominations are not to continue perpetuating it.

Although the book is a competent introduction, it has some problematic features. For example, while recognizing that " ...antisemitism refers to any ideology that attempts minimally to impose disabilities or maximally to annihilate the Jews, based upon misconstrued racial grounds" (12, italics added), Eakin uses the word in a generic manner throughout the book. This is puzzling. Readers who think of racist ideologies when they read "antisemitism" will be taken aback by the anachronism of such phrases as "manifestations of antisemitism in the early church" (51); or "with the emergence of Christianity a new genre of antisemitism arose" (18). This murkiness is particularly untimely given the recent debates over the 1998 Vatican statement, We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, which followed the convention of some scholars of distinguishing between "anti-Judaism" as religiously based Christian preaching or action against Jews and racist "antisemitism." One surely contributes to the other, but it would seem wor thwhile to maintain at least an analytical distinction when dealing with such complex phenomena.

The book's early chapters provide an overview of the anti-Jewish potentials of Christian Testament books. Eakin correctly distinguishes between the inner-Jewish polemics of the scriptural authors and the subsequent anti-Jewish construals of their words by later Gentile Christians, although he stresses the latter. In the difficult process of surveying the exegetical terrain, he must weave his way through contending scholarly viewpoints and is not always clear why a certain interpretative path is preferred. For instance, in a treatment of the synoptic parable of the wicked tenants, Eakin declares that "in the Gospel of Matthew it is clearly the whole of Israel that stands under condemnation" (37). The recent work of such scholars as Daniel Harrington, J. Andrew Overman, and Anthony Saldarini, who see Matthew aiming his critiques only at Jewish competitors for leadership in post-Second Temple Judaism, is not discussed.

Eakin concludes that "antisemitism cannot and will not disappear so long as Christians think that the Christian scripture abrogates, supersedes, and fulfills Jewish scripture and that Jewish scripture is incomplete and ineffectual apart for Christian scripture -- in short, that Judaism is an inferior religion incapable of bringing the Jew into a meaningful relationship with God" (45). This is a defensible claim. One wonders if a more thorough presentation of the dynamics of apostolic-era polemic would have helped to dispel these incorrect views. Similarly, more extensive treatment of the social forces and theological arguments of the formative patristic period could shed more light on whether supersessionism is inherent to Christianity. On the other hand, since it seems that the book's early chapters are really only meant as a prologue to the main subject of antisemitism in the United States, there is a limit as to how many historical details can be considered.

The two chapters devoted to United States history note that the American political and social experience discouraged vigorous displays of antisemitism. So Eakin simply offers a number of interesting examples of antisemitic incidents that are seen as atypical outbreaks of a usually latent antipathy. For the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the subject is complicated by the fact that "the antisemitism that emerged was essentially attributable to the two intertwined factors of xenophobia and massive immigration" (90). This makes it difficult to discern whether the incidents of hostility to Jews that Eakin relates are more due to religious or racial hatred, to a fear of foreigners, or to polemics among newly arrived rivals for opportunity on American shores.

Despite these reservations, this book will serve as an adequate introduction to the questions that the Shoah poses for Christians. The helpful bibliography will point readers toward further resources in attempting to answer them.