Jesus Christ, our Lord, was born a Jew and never wanted to be anything else. His disciples and the apostles appointed by him, the women who followed him, the first people who believed in him were Jews. Only later were they called "Christians" in Antiochia (Acts 11:26). The movement initiated by him was a renewal movement related to the Jewish people. Already at the very beginning of the preaching of the Gospel also non-Jews, the so-called Gentiles, heard and believed it. The church of Jewish-Christians and Gentile-Christians emerged.

Unfortunately, the gradually developing church and the Jewish people and Jewish belief split. Jewish-Christians were pushed to the margin and eventually vanished from the church and the church consisted only of Gentile-Christians.

The separation was connected with prejudice and accusations against the Jewish people and the Jewish belief, which became more and more serious in the course of centuries. In many sermons and theological writings it was taught, erroneously, that to be a Christian first of all meant to be non-Jewish. Jews were ill spoken of and cursed.

After Christianity having gained power within the Roman Empire and the later emerging states, the Jews were also politically oppressed, often persecuted and killed.

At the end of this disastrous development in Europe, the National Socialist terror regime in Germany (1933-1945) attempted to eliminate the Jewish people as a whole. Beside other injustices more than six million Jewish people were murdered through this criminal madness.

The individual Christians and the churches as a whole never realised that the beginning of this horrific end was based on the theological hostility against Jews within Christian preaching and teaching. Even if nothing is said against Jews or the Jewish belief explicitly, this principle hostility against Jews within Christian doctrine exists. Due to this fact the Christians and the churches, with few exceptions, kept silent when the Nazi started to terrorise and to kill the Jewish population.

As a result the various churches of Europe were deeply appalled. Why did we keep silent? Why were we blind? We were blind because we did not see the hostility against Jews and Judaism, which was fused with Christian theology. We kept silent because we had marked Judaism as hostile, at least as strange and opposing to the Christian belief.

This unconscious hostility against Jews also infected the Christian mission that had come from Europe and North America to Africa and Asia. The spirit of this sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious hostility, or at least, differentiation is also to be found within the ecumenical movement. I realised this when at the last General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Canberra 1991, the representatives of Judaism were sitting in the same row as the representatives of the other religions.

We must begin to eliminate all forms of hostility against Judaism from our Christian belief, the Christian preaching and teaching. We have to learn that the Jewish belief is the root from which the Christian belief has started to grow. We have to understand that we Christians are the younger sisters and brothers in the house and at the table of our heavenly Father (Eph. 2:11-22).

The document serves as a very modest beginning and an attempt to turn back and to try to gain a new relationship with the Jewish belief, its traditions and substance.

Dr. Jürgen Regul,
Protestant Church of Rhineland, Germany
September 1997

Recommendation for the church board:
The Evangelical Church in Rhineland asks and instructs its representatives in the General Assembly, the Council, the committees and the German Regional Assembly of United in Mission to include into talks and cooperation with representatives of their member churches the process of renewal of the relationship between Church and Israel, Jews and Christians - a process which has been initiated by the Evangelical Church in Rhineland. Furthermore UEM is asked to implement the consequences resulting from this process. The following should be taken into consideration:

1. "Realising the Christian share of the responsibility and guilt for the Holocaust, ostracism, persecution and killing of Jews during the Third Reich";

• realising that teaching and acting of the Christian church was almost from the beginning mostly hostile towards Israel, or at least forgetting Israel;
• a new understanding and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, the Old and New Testament;
• realising that the basis of the traditional relationship between Church and Israel, Christians and Jews, has to be fundamentally reconsidered;
• and the "willingness of Jews to meet, to learn together and to cooperate in spite of the Holocaust"

2. The resolution of the synod of 1980 declares:

• "We gratefully acknowledge the scriptures' (Lk. 24:32 and 45; 1 Cor.15:3f.), our Old Testament, as a common basis of faith and acts of Jews and Christians.
• We profess Jesus Christ, the Jew who as the Messiah of Israel, is the saviour of the world and holds together the peoples of the world and the people of God.
• We believe that God has chosen the Jewish people as His people forever and recognise that the Church has been taken into God's covenant with His people by Jesus Christ.
• We believe together with the Jews that God's historical acts of salvation are characterised by the unity of justice and love. We believe together with the Jews that justice and love are the directives of God for our whole life. We, as Christians, see that both are founded on God's acting in Israel and in Jesus Christ.
• We believe that Jews and Christians, both according to their calling, are witnesses of God before the world and before each other..."

3. As a result of this statement, how is mission to be seen today?

• Neither has Israel chosen itself, nor has the Church called itself. Subject of the election of Israel and the calling of the Church is God himself. HE has chosen Israel to be His witness among all peoples (Jes. 43:10). HE has called people of all nations and social classes to "declare His glory among all peoples" (Jes. 66:19) and to "bring about obedience to the faith among all nations" (Rom. 1:5). The order to witness and to preach comes from HIM. It is this missio dei we are called to participate in.
• If the church accepts the call into the service for the missio dei, it also acknowledges the lasting significance of Israel for the salvation-history.
• The Church believes that Israel has been called first to testify the glory of the one and only God to the world and still shares this calling with the Church.
• The Church believes to be also sent by the God of Israel and through Jesus Christ to the peoples of the world. With the name of Jesus Christ the Christian testimony brings the reality of His heavenly father, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to religious and non-religious people at the same time.
• The "gospel of God" (Rom. 1:1) or "the gospel of Jesus Christ" (Mk. 1:1) testifies "grace and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 1:7). It preaches that Jesus is the confirmation of the promises of God with which Israel had been entrusted. It is preached to save all men (1 Tim. 2:4) and it brings the decision between life and death (2 Cor. 2:14-16). It leads those who hear it and act accordingly onto the path of life (Ps. 16:11; John 14:6).
• Therefore in 1980 the synod also declared: "We profess Jesus Christ, the Jew who as the Messiah of Israel is the saviour of the world and who holds together the peoples of the world and the people of God" and "we believe that Jews and Christians, both according to their calling, are witnesses before the world and before each other; therefore we are convinced that the Church cannot bear its testimony before the Jewish people in the same way as it does in its mission before the nations of the world.

• The dialogue with Israel has theologically seen a different character than the dialogue with other religions. The dialogue with Israel could not be handled under the title: "Dialogue with other religions and philosophies of life".
• Christian mission could never replace God's covenant-history with Israel with the respective religious and cultural history of people (as a kind of Old Testament). Christians from all nations relate the preaching of the Gospel, baptism and teaching (the Torah as interpreted by Jesus) to history, which has been started by God by calling Abraham and Israel. A history which has been determined by the promise of a new heaven and a new earth.
• For mankind there is only one distinction - relevant to the salvation-history - between people: the people of God and the Gentile world. This biblical clarification could protect a part of the Gentile world (so-called Christian Occident or the so-called civilised world) from arrogance towards other nations and people. In the presence of God they have no privileges.
• There is no "chosen people" besides Israel.
• The realisation that the church respectively Christianity cannot do missionary work on its own, but always within a partnership of testimony with Israel, all kind of imperial behaviour is out of the question.
• By meeting the people of God and learning their history and their theological traditions until today, Christians can learn to appreciate the embedding of religious truths into cultural contexts.
• The theological dialogue with Jews makes it easier for Christians to realise that their own theological traditions are deeply related to context - even in central areas of their faith.
• Churches are learning from Israel to honour both the physical and social nature of man as well as the significance of Creation. This also has consequences for the interpretation of mission in the sense of sharing in justice, peace and protection of Creation.
• Christian mission can learn from Israel how as a minority to live in exile, without any ambition for power and still to become a blessing for many in preaching, social and welfare work, science and culture.

5. Fundamental change and renewal: The Evangelical Church in Rhineland as one of the churches belonging to the communion of UEM.

Based on its reassessment of the relationship between the Church and Israel, the Evangelical Church in Rhineland seeks a "fundamental change and renewal" of the ways of Christian mission, also in the context of the United Evangelical Mission.

Having its beginning in Europe and North America, the Protestant mission of the modern age has existed for approximately 200 years. Our gratitude and great respect is due to all those, men and women, of the past for following the call to bring the gospel to all people and nations. They followed the call to mission as they understood it and they took on themselves all kinds of deprivations. It cannot be denied that their dedication to preaching the Gospel and spreading the Christian faith were a blessing for many people and nations.

However, thinking about the task and way of Christian mission the Evangelical Church in Rhineland cannot deny or withhold that

• mission often approached people not belonging to Christian churches regardless of their own cultural and religious roots;
• in the past mission was often connected with a religious and cultural claim to superiority;
• in the past mission repeatedly followed national claims and prepared the ground for or followed colonialist practice.

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