US Christians Less Antisemitic Than In The UK, But Concern Rising
For Mitch Glaser, a Messianic Jewish New Yorker who leads Chosen People Ministries, 90 percent of the “jokes” are about money.
“I’ve had people say to me, after handing me the envelope with the offering, saying, ‘I know that you Jews will like this,’” Glaser told Baptist Press. “You hear the money thing all the time, because Jewish people have been stereotyped as being all rich, and obviously they never met my father.’”
Kirill Bumin, associate dean of Metropolitan College at Boston University, said the antisemitic financial trope is born of an interpretation of money being a filthy business that Jews were allowed to participate in as financiers and bankers.
Bumin co-authored new research gauging antisemitism among U.S. Christians and comparing perspectives among U.S. and U.K. Christians on Jews and Israel.
“When it comes to ethno-religious violence, the most important factor that will drive someone to persecute someone else, to kill them, to burn them at the stake, is a sense of resentment, which is based on status hierarchies,” Bumin said. “So the perception that this tiny little Jewish minority is above their own weight and above us, how dare they? They’ve got to be placed in their proper space.”
Chosen People’s newly released study, “A Survey of British Christian Attitudes Towards the Israel-Palestine Conflict: Faith, Politics and Perception,” was conducted in December 2024, and is compared to a similar study conducted six months earlier on a comparable population of U.S. Christians. Both were co-authored by Bumin and Motti Inbari, professor of Jewish studies at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
Overall, the studies reveal 58.5 percent of American Christians view Jews favorably compared to 50.6 percent of British Christians. But the study also revealed that the Church harbors antisemitic views, Glaser said, with 22 percent of American respondents believing that “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust,” and 33 percent of British Christians believing the same.
“My family is antisemitic, my Christian family,” Glaser said. “So for me, understanding the numbers and so on is so important, because then, I have to figure out what to do about it. Because I can’t just analyze it. I have to take it the next step further.”
Glaser and Bumin talked to Baptist Press just as fighting resumed in the Israel-Hamas War, with Israel launching air strikes March 18 after negotiations crumbled in a fragile cease-fire deal that had stopped the fighting temporarily.
American Christians are more supportive of Israel (42.3 percent) than are British Christians (23.6 percent), researchers said. But 27.6 percent of American and 37.3 percent of British Christians said they support neither.
What is troubling to Glaser is how antisemitism among Christians – although harbored by a minority – damages the spread of the Gospel among the Jewish population.
“Jewish people tend to have a negative view of Christianity and of Jesus. This only exacerbates this issue, because it’s not just Islamic antisemitism which has been around for a long time too,” Glaser said. “Now it’s Islamic antisemitism packaged and made acceptable through Christians. We (Chosen People Ministries) have no leverage with the Muslim antisemites.
“But we do have some leverage with Christians. And so we’re trying to do our best to educate Christians through our resources so that they might see through the tropes, look in the mirror, see if they see themselves through these surveys,” Glaser said. “And if so, then to ask God to help them not hate but to love the Jewish people and all people, of course.”
Particularly troubling is the higher level of antisemitism among younger British Christians, despite their higher engagement in religiosity, researchers said.
Although at least 42 percent of 18- 29-year-old British Christians attend church weekly, they still believe antisemitic Jewish tropes, researchers said, including that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the U.K. (44.3 percent); Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust (36.1 percent); Jews have too much power in the business world (35.1 percent); and Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind (30.8 percent).
One of the most widely held and most destructive tropes, Bumin said, is the dual loyalty trope, the belief that Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their home country.
“It’s a foundational or precursor trope to many other antisemitic attitudes,” he said. “The idea that Jews are inherently disloyal, or more loyal to a foreign entity – whether it’s Israel or the global Jewry or some other power – feeds into and reinforces other types of stereotypes, such as Jewish control over politics, finance or the media.”
If Jews are perceived as “other with conflicting loyalties,” he said, it’s easy to justify discrimination, rationalize exclusion, scapegoating, and other ills.
“The fact that this is the most prevalent attitude, and that in all three countries (U.S., U.K. and Ireland) this is the most prevalent attitude among our young people,” Bumin said, “that’s a really, really hard thing to absorb, because it doesn’t just suggest an existing problem, but it suggests a trajectory in which we’re moving … as a global society, and that’s troubling.”
Chosen People Ministries has founded with Christians and others the Coalition Against Antisemitism to educate and advocate for change, offering resources and sponsoring events.
Glaser, who has spoken at Southern Baptist seminaries and colleges, encourages Southern Baptist pastors to partner with the nondenominational Chosen People on short-term mission trips to Israel for students and to invite Chosen People speakers to chapels and classes.
“I think that’s a great area for dialogue between the Jewish Christian community and the Southern Baptist community,” Glaser said. “We have great programs in Israel. We work hand in hand with the Southern Baptist team at Baptist Village (in Israel).”
Findings for each study were drawn from surveys of more than 2,000 Christians respectively in the U.K. and the U.S., using statistical modeling to analyze data across all ages, ethnicities, genders, income levels and educational backgrounds, and including marital status.
This article has been republished with permission from Baptist Press.
Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.