Only time will tell if all evangelical Christians will share the olive branch extended to the Jewish community this week by the Christian Coalition.
At a speech before the Anti-Defamation League’s National Washington Leadership Conference on Monday, Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, said, “Some religious conservatives have at times been insensitive to and have lacked a full understanding of the horrors experienced by you as a people.”
Reed also said it was wrong to call the United States a “Christian nation.”
And in marked shift in public policy, Reed said his organization, claiming a membership of 1.5 million Americans, would not support prayer in America’s classrooms.
Sounding the desire to end a feud that erupted last summer, Reed called on both Jews and evangelical Christians to “move beyond the pain of the past and the uneasy tolerance of the present towards a genuine friendship in the future.”
The feud centered around a scathing report of the religious right published by ADL. The report accused the Christian Coalition and its founder, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, of being the primary force behind what it called the religious right’s “assault on tolerance and pluralism” in America.
The Christian Coalition fired off an equally harsh report, accusing ADL of “defaming” religious conservatives.
Over the past five months, the two groups have met periodically and exchanged letters in an effort to tone down the rhetoric.
But the debate erupted again recently with new media attention focused on Robertson’s 1991 book, “The New World order.”
Robert, a religious broadcaster, is the president and founder of the Christian Coalition, which the founded after his unsuccessful bid for president in 1988.
Foxman and others have taken Robertson to task for Robertson’s reference to a conspiracy by “European bankers,” naming prominent Jewish financiers.
Robertson has denied that his references were anti-Semitic, and Foxman has challenged the conservative to remove those passages from his book.
In stark contrast to the past debates, Reed’s words this week drew praise from Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director.
Foxman praised Reed for making a “very courageous, meaningful and significant beginning,” which has “the potential to lead to major changes in the relationship between our two communities.”
At the same time, however, he called on Reed’s organization to go even further.
“I hope that in this new dialogue and this new spirit of sensitivities that you can convince Pat Robertson to take one more step to purge himself of conspiracy theories which, while not intended, are part of the landscape of anti-Semitism throughout history,” Foxman said.
During his speech to the ADL nd during a follow-up question period with three Jewish journalists, Reed said it is a “blatant wrong” for conservative evangelical Christians to call America a “Christian nation,” and pledged to work to end the practice.
“The Christian Coalition believes in a nation that is not officially Christian, Jewish or Muslim,” he said, “a nation where the separation of church and state as an institution is separate and inviolable.”
Referring to the debate over school prayer, Reed said that while he supported prayer at school functions, it did not have a place in the classroom.
It should not be “in compulsory settings like classrooms, but would be at non- compulsory settings like high school graduations or assemblies or things like high school football games,” he said.
At the same time, he said, any prayer in the school should be “voluntary, ecumenical and non-denominationAL.”
Reed also distanced himself from fellow conservative Christians who he said use their support for israel as a way of getting around other Jewish concerns, such as school prayer.
There is a “false belief that being pro-Israel somehow answers for all other insensitivity to legitimate Jewish concerns,” he said.
At the same time, Reed placed himself in the camp which supports the Jewish state for humanitarian reasons and “because Israel has come to symbolize the democratic values that we hold in America.”
At the end of the day, some were left wondering where Reed’s words would lead, and whether they would extend to his own grass roots.
“Beyond such welcomed words, concerns still remain how this new sensitivity will be implemented locally,” Foxman said. “Will we still witness conflict and insensitivity?”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
