Beyond the ethical question of remembering or forgetting the past, I think there’s a functional and practical element as well: While many Christians may not know or remember the long history of Christian persecution against Jewish peoples, many Jews have not. We need to be thoroughly informed on this matter as we seek to be symbols of positive engagement with the Jewish community; as we seek to develop friendship between our two faiths. We cannot foster that environment if we aren’t able to properly acknowledge the failures of Christian peoples in the past, it is more difficult to separate the intent of Christ as the ultimate figure of love and redemption from our collective’s failure to uphold that missions and that ethos. While we do not possess the power to diminish the ultimate message of Christ, we can fail to live up to it’s standard in view of, and our dealings with others. Acknowledgment of those failures both demonstrates the proper intent of Jesus from our mistakes while at the same time demonstrating our faith’s propensity for forgiveness and redemption-in line with the Hebraic worldview as explained earlier.
