c. 1996 Religion News Service

STAMFORD, Conn. _ Kitty Cohen is a Holocaust survivor from Israel; Philip P. Roberts is a Southern Baptist official who directs his denomination’s interfaith witness activities. Put them in the same room to discuss a controversial Southern Baptist missionary program to Jews and they personify the inherent difficulties of interfaith dialogue.

She ended up yelling at him.”Just leave us alone,”Cohen shouted at Roberts in a heavily accented voice thick with emotion.”Is it not enough that (Southern Baptists) go after Jews, Catholics and other people? They go after the refugees (in Israel)!”Get out! Get out of Israel! You do it surreptitiously. Just leave us alone!” Roberts, who had come to Stamford to defend the resolution, endured the verbal assault in silence.

Cohen’s anger underscored the deep theological differences existing between Christians and Jews that cannot be ignored. The debate that raged over the resolution exposed another divide: the chasm that separates Christians attuned to interfaith dialogue _ mostly Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and mainline Protestants _ from those evangelical Protestants focused on gaining converts.

That’s what happened this week at the 15th meeting of the National Workshop on Jewish-Christian Relations, a four-day gathering that ended Wednesday (Oct. 30) and was sponsored by more than a dozen national Christian, Jewish and interfaith organizations.

Organizers had planned a late-night panel on Tuesday to discuss the Southern Baptist Convention’s controversial resolution of last June calling for stepped-up efforts to convince Jews that Jesus is the Messiah.

The organizers’ hoped the lateness of the meeting, which drew 500 people and ran well past midnight, would keep the expected fireworks from overshadowing the remainder of the workshop’s positive emphasis on interfaith understanding.

They were wrong.

Cohen was one of some two-dozen Jews _ and a number of Christians _ who berated Roberts during the question-and-answer period that followed the panel presentation.

One Orthodox priest said he was offended by Southern Baptist missionary efforts in the former Soviet Union aimed at Russian Orthodox Church members, who evangelicals tend to view as more cultural Christians than true believers.

The Southern Baptist missionary effort continues to stir anger and resentment among Jews who believe that accepting Jesus as the Messiah is incompatible with Judaism and constitutes conversion to Christianity.

Southern Baptists insist that a person can remain a Jew both ethnically and culturally even while believing in Jesus. And regardless of the protests their evangelization efforts stir in the Jewish world, they say their evangelical faith compels them to share the Gospel.

In a recent letter sent to Jews in response to thousands of postcards mailed to Southern Baptist offices in protest, Morris Chapman, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee, said,”We are indebted to the Jewish people, through whom we have received the Scriptures and our Savior, the Messiah of Israel.” Chapman said the resolution”implies no coercion and no rejection, religious or social.”Rather, he said, it”only affirms the communication of New Testament theology that grows out of Old Testament history and prophecy, in which Baptists have been involved for centuries.” Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said Thursday (Oct. 31) that Chapman’s letter had also been sent to Reform Jewish leaders.

In a return letter, Yoffie, who was not in Stamford, told Chapman that his letter was”causing anger and resentment, not understanding and tolerance for differences of belief.” In his letter, Chapman pointed to so-called Messianic Jews as examples of Jews who believe in Jesus while retaining their”Jewish culture and historic religious rituals.” But the mainstream Jewish leaders in Stamford dismissed the concept of Messianic Jews as an oxymoron.”They are Christians,”said Rabbi A. James Rudin, interfaith director for the American Jewish Committee and a columnist for Religion News Service.

That prompted David Zauber of Atlanta, who identified himself as a Messianic Jew who lost 22 family members in the Holocaust, from insisting:”I am Jewish! … I am not a liar or a manipulator. The Messiah has come! I would like to talk and reason together.” In another angry outburst, Rabbi Barry R. Baron of Youngstown, Ohio, then said:”I lost more than 100 relatives. I have two (Jewish) cemeteries and you could not be buried in either one because you would defile the ground.” In his presentation, Roberts defended his denomination’s resolution by referring to John 3:16, the New Testament passage traditionally understood as saying that Jesus is the son of God and the only path to salvation.”It is the most vital message the world has ever heard,”said Roberts.

With few evangelical Christians on hand _ a show of hands revealed the crowd was about evenly divided between Jews and Christians _ that defense was rejected out of hand by the unsympathetic audience.

Roberts’ only defender on the five-person panel was the Rev. Gerald Anderson, a United Methodist minister who directs the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven, Conn.”Christianity is a missionary faith,”Anderson said.”The New Testament is a missionary document from the first page to the last page.” Eugene Fisher, a lay theologian who heads Catholic-Jewish relations for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, countered that Roberts and Anderson were ignoring 2,000 years of history.”The past is brutal. The past has to do with forced conversions and other things,”he said.

Fisher agreed that”all Christians are evangelists, all people are called to conversion. The call of the church is universal. There is no sense in which anyone is excluded.” But, he said, it is one thing for churches to accept Jews who chose the Christian faith on their own and another to target them specifically.”We acknowledge God’s relationship with the Jewish people is irrevocable as God said it was and as Paul affirmed it was,”Fisher said.

The National Workshop was Roberts’ first appearance before an audience made up of a substantial number of Jews since his 15.6 million-member denomination adopted its resolution at its annual meeting in New Orleans.

Roberts said he agreed to attend because he was impelled to do so by his faith. The verbal assault he weathered, he said, was”part of the cost of our evangelism.” Next Thursday (Nov. 7) in New York, Roberts is scheduled to face what promises to be another hostile audience when he speaks at a meeting of the Anti-Defamation League. His topic:”Exploring the Meaning of the Southern Baptist Resolution on Converting Jews.”

MJP END RNS