With this book, Yaakov Ariel offers the first comprehensive history
of Protestant evangelization of Jews in America to the present day.
Based on unprecedented research in missionary archives as well as
Jewish writings, the book analyzes the theology and activities of
both the missions and the converts and describes the reactions of
the Jewish community, which in turn helped to shape the evangelical
activity directed toward it.
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.