Judeo-Christian tradition

[Volokh, Eugene]

	I'm puzzled by how categorical some of the statements in this
discussion have been:  "For Christians, the concept of a Judeo-Christian
tradition comfortably suggests that Judaism progresses into
Christianity--that Judaism is somehow completed in Christianity."  My sense
from some of the public uses of the term is that to many Christians, the
concept of a Judeo-Christian tradition is quite unrelated to this point.
Rather, it simply refers to the notion of a shared set of beliefs (cf.,
e.g., the Anglo-American legal tradition, which need not suggest that
English law is somehow completed in American law).  How do we know that the
typical Christian speaker or listener feels that the concept of a
Judeo-Christian tradition suggests "progress" and "completion" rather than
simple continuity?

	Likewise, another post on this thread said "Whether anyone using the
term 'Judeo-Christian' means to insult Jews or not, the term is considered
insulting."  Considered by what fraction of Jews?  Not by this Jew, and not
by some others who use the term themselves.  Where are we getting these
broad assertions about what "Christians" think or what Jews consider (I
assume "considered insulting" means "considered insulting" by Jews
generally, given the earlier statement that "''Judeo-Christian' is an
insulting (To Jews) term")?

	Mark Graber, to his credit, says that "most Jews who strongly
identify as Jews are troubled by the term" -- a statement that's qualified
to most Jews, to most Jews who strongly identify as Jews, and to their being
troubled by it (presumably because they don't endorse some underlying
ideology) rather than being insulted by it.  And I realize that we commonly
make such claims based on just our own personal experience, so I don't want
to fault Mark for taking the same view.  But how can we evaluate the
accuracy of this view?

	This is especially so since, as I mentioned in an earlier post,
polls have suggested that many similar claims about other terms and other
groups are inaccurate.  Blacks do not prefer "African-American" to "black";
not even "most blacks" do (or at least didn't as of 1995, though my vague
recollection is that the results remain the same today).  American Indians
do not prefer "Native American" to "American Indian."

	Now of course one could say that the term is somehow inherently
insulting, as a matter of its innate meaning; but that, I think, just isn't
so as to "Judeo-Christian."  Or one could say that it should be abandoned
even if a small minority of people find it insulting (not just, I take it,
"troubling" or religiously mistaken); but for reasons that I've mentioned
before, it should take considerably more than that for people to feel
obligated, even just as a matter of good manners, to change the way they
talk.

	Eugene

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen M. Feldman [mailto:SFeldman at uwyo.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 12:53 PM
To: conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu
Subject: Judeo-Christian tradition


For what it's worth, I discussed the "Judeo-Christian tradition" in several
brief passages in my 1997 book on the history of separation of church and
state. Here are those passages:
****
[F]or a brief period in mid-century (starting around the 1950s), Protestants
sought to help maintain their dominant position vis-à-vis the burgeoning
Catholic population by courting American Jews as political allies. Many
Protestants thus began to invoke the so-called "Judeo-Christian" tradition
in an effort to persuade American Jews that true Christians (that is,
Protestants) and Jews were natural allies. According to this argument, then,
American Jews should align politically with Protestants rather than with
Catholics. ... Nonetheless, from a Jewish standpoint, the Protestant
assertion of a shared Judeo-Christian tradition was self-evidently
problematic: in light of the persistent antisemitism running throughout
European and American history, the Judeo-Christian tradition appeared quite
clearly as an invention, a myth. The recent vintage of this supposed
tradition was underscored by the fact that the Supreme Court mentioned it
for the first time only in 1961. (at 220)
In addition, this relation between religion and value relativism helps
further explain the diminution of overt antisemitism as well as the
increasingly common references to the Judeo-Christian tradition during this
postwar period. Basically, the prevalence of ethical relativism rendered
Judaism somewhat more acceptable to many Americans. In the words of Daniel
Silver: "How could anyone claim title to The Truth in an age which had
learned the truth of relativity? Whatever Heaven was, if there was a Heaven,
entrance was not restricted to one ­set of believers." Thus, to many
Christian Americans (especially Protestants), Judaism came to be understood
as a type of quirky Christian sect: why quibble about the details of
sectarian differences when "we" all belong to the same Judeo-Christian
tradition anyway? To become legitimate in America, then, Judaism had to be
transformed (at least apparently) into a mere religion, a matter of
individual choice (in the American Protestant tradition)--Judaism could no
longer (appear to) be an ethnic identity or a way of life. ... Jews to a
great extent had moved from a period (in the early twentieth century) where
their differences from Christians were accentuated and objectified and where
overt antisemitism was respectable to a period (during the 1950s and later)
where their differences from Christians were largely denied or ignored and
where overt antisemitism became socially unacceptable. (at 227-28)
For Christians, the concept of a Judeo-Christian tradition comfortably
suggests that Judaism progresses into Christianity--that Judaism is somehow
completed in Christianity. The concept of a Judeo-Christian tradition flows
from the Christian theology of supersession, where the Christian covenant
(or Testament) with God supersedes the Jewish one. Christianity, according
to this myth, reforms and replaces Judaism. The myth therefore implies,
first, that Judaism needs reformation and replacement, and second, that
modern Judaism remains merely as a "relic." Any current vitality within
Judaism is encompassed in its supposedly improved version, Christianity. To
Christians, then, Jews stubbornly resist the natural progression of history:
after all, why not just accept the truth of Jesus Christ? (at 17-18)
****
The sources that I cite most often during these discussions are as follows:
Jacob Neusner, Jews and Christians: The Myth of a Common Tradition (1991).
Rosemary Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of
Anti-Semitism (1974).
Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, Judaism and Christianity: The Differences (1943).
Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion (1988).
Step Feldman
* * * * 
Stephen M. Feldman 
Jerry W. Housel/Carl F. Arnold Distinguished Professor of Law and Adjunct
Professor of Political Science 
University of Wyoming 
307-766-4250 
fax: 307-766-6417 
sfeldman at uwyo.edu