Evangelizing the Chosen People
Missions to the Jews in America, 1880 - 2000
Yaakov Ariel
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 06/2003
Pages: 384
Subject: Religion, History
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9780807860533
DESCRIPTION
Ariel delineates three successive waves of evangelism, the first directed toward poor Jewish immigrants, the second toward American-born Jews trying to assimilate, and the third toward Jewish baby boomers influenced by the counterculture of the Vietnam War era. After World War II, the missionary impulse became almost exclusively the realm of conservative evangelicals, as the more liberal segments of American Christianity took the path of interfaith dialogue.
As Ariel shows, these missionary efforts have profoundly influenced Christian-Jewish relations. Jews have seen the missionary movement as a continuation of attempts to delegitimize Judaism and to do away with Jews through assimilation or annihilation. But to conservative evangelical Christians, who support the State of Israel, evangelizing Jews is a manifestation of goodwill toward them.