Anti-Semitism: Christianity's Dirty Secret.

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A disclaimer is in order here. All Christians are not anti-Semitic and should not be viewed as such. The problem is that and anti-Semitism is institutionalized with in the Christian religion. It seems rather odd that a religion based on the teachings of a Jewish rabbi would have the rot of anti-Semitism at its core but sadly this is the case. The New Testament of the Bible begins with the four Canonical Gospels. A chronological examination of them shows the development of anti-Semitism over the time frame of their writing. In the first we see Pilate painted as a villain and the Jewish priests as being relatively benign. As time passes the Gospel of John has done a complete reversal and Pilate becomes almost a victim acting at the whim of the Jewish priests. If this were the only problem than Christian anti-Semitism would be a historical curiosity and not worthy of note. This sadly is not the case. Christianity took on its significance in the modern world when the Emperor Constantine decided to make it the official religion of his empire. Constantine needed to define Christianity because in his time there were a multitude of Gospels and in reality many different forms of Christianity. To have a religion that would serve to unify and strengthen his empire Christianity needed to be simplified and made understandable. To this end in 325 he called the Council of Nicaea which made the critical decision as to what books would make up the Bible and what were the basic tenets and beliefs of his form of Christianity. One of the things coming out of the Council of Nicaea was a decision to separate Easter from the Jewish Passover. The statements that emerge from this decision are representative of some of the worst forms of anti-Semitism. A small sampling of them: "For it is unbecoming beyond nature of that on this holiest of festivals that we should follow the custom of the Jew's, henceforth let us have nothing in common with this odious people.", "we desired therefor brother into separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews". If this were an isolated instance it could it could be forgiven as a product of its time but sadly it is not. The history of the Christian Church is a history of anti-Semitism from the time of the Emperor Constantine to the time of Adolf Hitler. Some of the most anti-Semitic statements in history have been attributed to Christian saints. The revered St. Augustine wrote "The true image of the Hebrews is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the Scripture and forever will bear the guilt of the death of Jesus." Another saint who made his mark on history was St. Jerome who wrote the Vulgate translation of the Bible. His statement of note referred to synagogues. "If you call it a brothel, a den of vice, the Devils refuge, Satan's fortress, a place to deprave the soul, an abyss of every conceivable disaster or what ever you will, you are still saying less than it deserves." In 1066 CE one of the first Crusades first acts was to kill 12,000 Jews in the Rhine Valley on their way to Jerusalem. In 1099 after reaching Jerusalem they forced all the Jews of the city into the central synagogue and set it on fire. Anyone who tried to escape was forced back into the burning building. The point of fact here is that anti-Semitism and Anti-Semitic acts were not aberrations and were not a few isolated incidents; they were part of an institutionalized attitude of the church. Anti-Semitism cannot be isolated and limited to the Catholic Church. Martin Luther, when he split from the Catholic Church pronounced his own tirades against the Jews and made and anti-Semitism one of the center points of his new Protestant denomination. The church, both Catholic and Protestant has always and still does view Jews as the killers of God. The worst expression of this, of course, is the Holocaust decreed by the self-professed Christian, Adolf Hitler. The lesson of the Holocaust is a lesson that must be heeded or history will surely repeat itself. The dirty secret of anti-Semitism must be brought out into the open and the church which bears much of the guilt must lead the way in stomping it out in society and change the attitudes of people once and for all.