Some Theologians Call for ‘Liturgical Audit’ To Combat Antisemitism
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“You killed Jesus!”
This headline-making chant rang out at a 2016 high school basketball game between Catholic Memorial in Boston and Newton North, which is located in a suburb with a large Jewish population.
The Catholic students apologized and the news cycle moved on, but the episode exemplifies an antisemitic trope as old as Christianity itself — the false charge that Jews are responsible for the death by crucifixion of Jesus on the day commemorated as Good Friday, which falls this year on March 29.
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Acutely aware of the painful history of Christian participation and complicity in antisemitism, and a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents nationally and globally, Christian scholars and clergy are calling for a new level of reflection and accountability for churches, starting from the pulpit.
A ‘Liturgical Audit’
The Rev. Dan Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, said churches should undertake an “audit” for antisemitism, similarly to how they might audit their facilities for accessibility or their policies for racial bias.
In 2019, Joslyn-Siemiatkoski created a revised Good Friday liturgy that will be read this year in at least a dozen Episcopal dioceses across the United States where individual churches have been granted permission by bishops. The revised liturgy is scheduled to be considered for formal approval at the denomination’s General Convention, which will take place in June in Louisville, Kentucky.
Now, Joslyn-Siemiatkoski has begun working with clergy from two congregations in Lexington, Massachusetts to develop a comprehensive liturgical audit process that can be made available to churches with varying degrees of structured worship practices.
“It can’t be a one size fits all,” he said, “it needs to be able to meet the needs of different kinds of Christian communities.”
When it is complete — which he estimates in six to nine months — the audit will explore areas of church life including scriptures, sermons, educational materials, hymn lyrics, and art and decor like stained glass windows that might contain problematic references to Jewish people or the relationship between Jews and Christians.
Participating churches will work through the audit’s checklist over a period of months, either to review the entire church culture or to prepare for specific seasons like Advent before Christmas or Lent before Easter.
A high-stakes time in history
Joslyn-Siemiatkoski said it’s “it’s especially important for Christians to deal with this” at a time of rising antisemitism nationally and globally.
The Anti-Defamation League reported a significant spike in antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault even before in the Oct. 7 terror attack and the Israel-Hamas war led to hundred-fold increases in incidents nationwide.
Clergy who confront antisemitism from the pulpit are also challenging white supremacists, who mine Christian history to justify their racist and antisemitic beliefs, said the Rev. Laura E. Everett, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, which represents 18 Christian denominations.
“We need to be diligent in our opposition because they will be just as diligent in who they hate,” said Everett, who coined the term “liturgical audit” in 2020 with Joslyn-Siemiatkoski.
Pain from the pulpit, especially during Holy Week
Antisemitic ideas perpetuated from church pulpits also include that a “new covenant” between God and gentiles superseded the ancient relationship between God and the Jewish people, and that Jewish theology centers a wrathful, vengeful God in contrast to the Christian “God of love.”
Holy Week — the Christian week of solemnity that leads to the celebration of Easter in commemoration of the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus — has been a peak time for antisemitic language and violence since at least the Middle Ages, when stoning Jews as supposed revenge for the death of Jesus was a common practice.
Joslyn-Siemiatkoski said that even though the “protagonists” of the biblical account are almost all Jewish, including Jesus, Peter, and Mary Magdalene, and Jews lived under Roman occupation in the first century CE, the narratives in the four central texts of the New Testament known as the gospels cast “the Jews” and Jesus as antagonists.
One way to course-correct, Joslyn-Siemiatkoski said, is for churches say “the Judeans” rather than “the Jews” in translating a Greek term that appears more than 60 times in the Book of John, referring to a first-century socio-political group in a geographical area known as Judea, and not to the religious group known as Jews.
Progress and potential
Jewish-Christian relations have evolved in recent decades. In 1965, Pope Paul VI issued a declaration called Nostra Aetate (In Our Time) that said, “what happened in [Jesus’] passion cannot be charged against all the Jews.”
But nearly 60 years later, research suggests there’s still much work to do.
Philip Cunningham, co-director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, conducted a 2022 survey of 1,241 Catholic adults. Although a 54 percent majority reported a generally favorable view of Jews, 11 percent said they hold “the Jews” accountable for the death of Jesus.
Cunningham, who was part of a four-part video series for clergy and religious educators called “Presenting the Passion … Without Blaming ‘The Jews,’” said the survey illuminates the work ahead.
“We’ve inherited reflexes down through the centuries that put us and Jews in some kind of contest with one another, a zero-sum sort of relationship,” he said. “That, we have yet to fully address.”
Holly Lebowitz Rossi is a freelance writer based in Arlington, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a veteran religion reporter, she is also coauthor of The Yoga Effect: A Proven Program for Depression and Anxiety.