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Father, forgive usA Christian response to the Church's heritage of Jewish persecutionAnti-semitismFATHER, FORGIVE US There was a time when I misguidedly believed that no 'true Christian' could be an anti-semite. However, many of the Church Fathers preached and wrote against the Jewish people in the most vitriolic of terms, and Martin Luther urged measures against the Jews that inspired the attempted genocide of European Jewry four centuries later. Fred Wright's book is in many ways timely. He traces the history of anti-semitism from biblical times, through the Church Fathers, the Middle Ages and the Reformation to the German Church in the mid-20th century. When hatred of Jews is on the rise, Christians need to be aware of the sins of our fathers in order that we may not share their guilt. Having said that, Fred Wright's Response to the Church's Heritage of Jewish Persecution falls short of its avowed intent. The material which deals expressly with Christian anti-semitism would fit a much slimmer volume. In the first 66 pages Wright provides a helpful discussion of the motives behind anti-semitism, but he only begins to deal with Christian anti-semitism on page 68. That section takes up a little more than 90 pages, after which the rest of the book deals largely with Arab hatred of the Jews. Father, Forgive Us fails to make an adequate distinction between Christians and 'the Church', and therefore I cannot share Fred Wright's conviction that we must repent for the sins of the Church against the Jews. The Church of which he writes persecuted not only Jews but also evangelical Christians. Luther may have written against the Jews but neither he nor his disciples actively persecuted them. The Church's greatest sin against the Jewish people has been the withholding of the gospel from them, and the best expression of our repentance would be to start sharing with them the good news of their Messiah. Mike Moore,
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