ADL Survey on Missionary Groups Shows Their Efforts Have Failed

A two-month survey by the B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League of evangelical efforts and religious cults seeking converts among American Jewish youth found that they have failed “dismally” in their mission, it was disclosed here today.

Nat Kameny, chairman of the ADL’s national program committee which is concerned with religious and educational matters in the U.S. and abroad, said the findings show that “while conversion attempts among Jewish youth are obviously a matter of considerable concern, Christian evangelicals constitute no real threat to Jewish survival.”

The findings were disclosed by Theodore H. Freedman, director of the ADL’s program division at a program committee meeting at which prominent members of the Christian clergy were present. He said that “To assess the pervasiveness and impact of the ‘evangelicals’ the Program Division undertook an exploratory survey to try to get an understanding as to what in fact was happening in communities across the country” and “developed a questionnaire, enlisted the cooperation of our regional office staff and directed our inquiry to the professional religious practitioner in the community, the rabbi.”

EFFORTS HAVE BEEN BLOWN UP

Freedman said that the press has blown up missionary efforts among young Jews out of proportion and cited a series of headlines in newspapers in the New York area and other cities. He said that some of those reports suggested a major problem facing the Jewish community. But others “state that evangelical efforts are annoying at best but are not of any consequence and do not represent a threat to the Jewish community.”

Freedman noted. “If in fact, the reality is that evangelicals are annoying, irritating, even offensive, but not a clear and present danger, then perhaps ADL’s responsibility is to place the matter in perspective for the Jewish community rather than to be a party to increasing the anxiety level of the Jewish community.”

He said that approximately 400 questionnaires were mailed out in January to rabbis in various communities and to date, 188 responses have been received. The data received so far, he said, showed that “the evangelicals have failed.”

Freedman observed that “Horror stories of kidnappings into and away from the cults such as the Children of God and the Rev. Moon’s Unification Church make the headlines more than they either inform young people or their parents as to the nature of these movements. Personal testimonies from some few who have left Judaism are perceived by some people to be the harbinger of things to come… I have more confidence in our institutions than that and those who point to the ‘evangelicals and cults’ as a Jewish disaster are just plain wrong. They do a disservice to the Jewish community.”