Jesus was crucified, not by the Jews, but by traits which still dominate in Christian society, said the Rev. Franklin J. Kennedy of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, one of New Haven’s leading clergymen, in a recent sermon on “Jesus the Jew.” Among other things Dr. Kennedy said:
“The enmity of the Gentile world is the bitter price which the Hebrew race had to pay for presenting to the world a leader so great that He could not be comprehended by His own generation. The unforgiveable disservice of Christian centuries lies in a long and tragic forgetfulness that the traits of humanity which crucified Jesus are universal. Prophets have been mobbed in the streets of New England as they were stoned in Jerusalem. They have been imprisoned in America for upholding in these days principles to which they adhered with sacrificial conviction as they were imprisoned in the Jerusalem of Jeremiah’s day. Religious conservatism strikes with venom in our midst as it struck in the day of Jesus, excepting that crucifixion has gone out of style. Of all the world’s great heroes who have suffered at the hands of their own generation, we make this exception in the case of Jesus, that we are wont to condemn his race and not the human perversity which is common to us all.”
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.
