The House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church declared here yesterday that the charge of deicide against Jews was wrong, and that anti-Semitism was a “direct contradiction of Christian doctrine.” The statement by the 150 bishops was considered the strongest on the subject ever issued by a major Protestant body in this country.
The statement said the deicide charge involved a “tragic misunderstanding of the inner significance of the crucifixion.” While it is a fact that “Jesus was crucified by some Roman soldiers at the instigation of some Jews,” the statement asserted, this “cannot be construed as imputing corporate guilt to every Jew in Jesus’ day, much less the Jewish people in subsequent generations. Simple justice alone proclaims the charge of a corporate and inherited curse on the Jewish people to be false.”
In denouncing anti-Semitism as un-Christian, the bishops declared that Jesus was a Jew “and, since the Christian church is rooted in Israel, spiritually we are Semites.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
