By: Amy Downey, PhD | July 10, 2019
Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed by guest writers belong to the author and may not represent those of BellatorChristi.com, The Bellator Christi Podcast, Bellator Christi Ministries, or its affiliates.
The adage is often used that Israel has no better friend than Evangelical Christians. While it is true that we wave Israeli flags at special events, donate to organizations that purport to support Israel, and seemingly block vote for political candidates who pray at the Western Wall, are we truly the best friends to Israel at their most fundamental need – Messiah Jesus? And where we as Southern Baptists there as a best friend when the Jewish people needed us most during World War II?
I realize it may appear that I am asking two separate questions; however, they are intertwined at the most fundamental of levels. How can we proclaim today that we are Israel’s friend when we were not there when six million of their family members were being slaughtered in the ovens of Auschwitz and death pits of Babi Yar? How can we purport to love Israel when we resist the call to share the Gospel with the Jewish people who live in our neighborhoods and cities?
I realize I am asking some uncomfortable questions with this “First-Person Article” but it is time. It is time, especially given the fact that for the second year in a row the resolution submitted by myself and my church (Needham Baptist Church, Conroe, TX) regarding the need for reconciliation related to the Holocaust and a recommitment to Jewish evangelism stayed on the conference table of the Resolutions Committee.
I realize I am asking Southern Baptists to once again look back on our past mistakes. However, I would argue that it is necessary for the Jewish people to recognize that we are not only looking at them as merely “targets for conversion” but also looking at ourselves for our past sins towards the people from whom our Messiah came. For how can the Jewish people believe we care about them when our past history includes such defenders of the Third Reich as M.E. Dodd (Baptist Reflector, ‘My Impressions of the Baptist World Congress [in Berlin],” September 13, 1934) and Ben Bridges (Arkansas Baptist, “Baptist, Hitler and the Jews,” March 29, 1934)? Another sad source, if one is interested, of our SBC history is Baptists, Jews, and the Holocaust by Lee Spitzer (2017) who analyzes in painstaking, first-person reality how we could not have been unaware of what was occurring during those years because of the reports of Home Mission Board Jewish missionary, Jacob Gartenhaus.
I realize that many will argue after reading this article that Southern Baptists were not in Poland (but we were in Romania and Italy) or that we cannot undo the past (but we did confront our slavery past). However, I would contend that if we proclaim to be the best friend of Israel today, we need to be true friends and face how we failed in our friendship in times past so that we can share the love of Messiah with them today. Do you not agree?
Let me end my article with a recent encounter with a Holocaust survivor. I was in Eastern Tennessee and was able to meet “Gloria” who survived the war by crossing into Switzerland from France as an eight-year-old child along with her six-year-old sister. She was separated from her family for the duration of the war and is still traumatized by her experience. Her husband lost his parents who were transported to Auschwitz while he was hidden during the war. I visited with her for almost two hours and shared with her that while I had five great-uncles who fought in World War II (one of whom was a POW of the Japanese and one who was a part of the Normandy Invasion and was Patton’s cook during the Battle of the Bulge), I still wanted to share with her that I was sorry that Christians both in Europe and America did not do enough to come to the aid of European Jews during the war. We were apathetic and silent when the Jewish people need us most. We were by and large bystanders when they needed us to stand up. She began to weep because I was the first Christian to express remorse to her and then she began truly to listen as I shared the Gospel with her. Her friend emailed me later to thank me for my approach because it was what Gloria needed to hear. It was Gloria had to hear from Christians.
In other words, it was what a true friend of Israel would do. Isn’t it time that Southern Baptists do the same?
About the Author
Amy Downey is the first female graduate of the PhD in Theology and Apologetics program at Liberty University. She is the President of Tzedakah Ministries, a missionary agency that seeks to share the love of the Messiah with Jewish individuals. Amy is the author of “Maimonides’s Yahweh: Rabbinic Judaism’s Attempt to Answer the Incarnational Question.” For more about Tzedakah Ministries, go to https://tzedakahministries.org/
