Becca MahoneyThe biblical concept of repentance is that when we sin, we acknowledge the sin, and we embrace godly sorrow to make sure we don’t return to the same mistake again. Growing up in Christian churches and consuming Christian media, I was largely uninformed about the history of Christian antisemitism. It’s only within the past couple of years since October 7, 2023, and the subsequent explosion of antisemitism on both the right on the left, that I was exposed to the church’s history of antisemitism in a somewhat roundabout way.
Immediately following October 7, a conservative commentator (whom I was a fan of) began a series of posts on X that implied she was departing from the traditional conservative view of Israel. “No nation has a right to commit a genocide”–but everyone knew which nation she meant. She claimed to be “just asking questions.” I pretty much immediately unfollowed her, although I would still randomly check her feed just to see if she was continuing down the same path. In one of the last full episodes I ever watched of her show, hosted a conservative Rabbi who tried to explain the matter to her. She rebuffed him, fought him, and refused to take responsibility. The refusal to take correction completely turned me off.
In no time at all (less than 6 months, I believe) “just asking questions” became statements of purported truth. The Jews killed JFK. The Holocaust was exaggerated–there’s “no way” the Mengele experiments happened, because they were too bizarre. “Like bizarre propaganda.” On social media, she liked a post in which someone asked a rabbi if he was “drunk on Christian blood again?” The Jews were kidnapping Christian children and using them for human sacrifices prior to the Holocaust, which is why the holocaust happened.
She still gets millions of views. She is a huge influence to girls my age. She has been a driving force behind the push to make antisemitic conspiracy theories into a mainstream conservative value. Just the opposite of what I always believed we stood for: that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“Hell yeah, Satan knew you in the womb and crafted you as a special creation in his eyes.”
“109 countries can’t be wrong.”
“What does the Talmud say about Jesus?”
“Synagogue of Satan.”
“The Jews killed Jesus.” (That one is the most common, in various forms, including “the Jews rejected Jesus.”
These are just a few of the comments on social media that I have seen on Christian and conservative accounts.
1 Corinthians 8:13 says “Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.”
The people following this “woke right” who claim to be Christians are missing God’s heart. If, by the words we use and the hills we choose to die on (chanting “Christ is King, for example) we continue to drive a pointless wedge between the Jews and Jesus, we miss that God’s heart’s desire for the Jewish people is that they would be saved. (Romans 10:1). If, as Christians, we stubbornly continue in the same vein of antisemitic blood libels, what kind of Jesus are we portraying to Jews? To the world? Paul said he would rather go to hell forever if it would save his Jewish brothers and sisters. We can assume that Jesus feels the same way–in fact, Jesus DID go through hell for them, just like he went through for all of us.
All of our sins killed Jesus, including our racism against Jews.
In short, if what you get out of the gospel is “the Jews killed Jesus,” you have missed the gospel entirely.
