Many mornings I go on a long, slow sunrise prayer walk — what the mystics call “goal-less walking” or “life lived at three miles an hour.”
These days, in the neighborhood where I walk, there are a number of delightful inflatable front-yard Christmas decorations: Santas, Rudolphs and Frostys, joined a few days ago by a new minority inflatable among the many Yuletide blow-ups: A massive 8-foot tall Hanukkah bear complete with a dreidel, a star of David and, of course, a Menorah with nine inflated flames, one each for the eight days of Hanukkah, with the taller Shamash candle in the center from which each of the eight others receive their light.
Chuck Poole
In other years, I might have walked past the whimsical inflatable with little more than a passing glance. But, needless to say, not this year. In the aftermath of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah Massacre, every time I have passed the huge happy bear holding her HAPPY HANUKKAH sign beneath her brightly burning blow-up candles, I have stood still in the dawn and offered to God a prayer of solidarity with the two Beth Israel synagogues in my life — one in Macon, Ga., the other in Jackson, Miss. — and with all Jews in all congregations throughout the world. I offer a sidewalk prayer of solidarity and lament.
Solidarity, lament and repentance. Whenever there is another act of antisemitic violence, I always think, with deep sadness and quiet repentance, of all the ways the church has sown the bitter seed of bigotry against the Jews.
Hitler did not create the ghetto; we did. It was the church which, as early as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, called for Jews to be segregated into confined quarters, the forerunner of the much later Nazi ghettos.
This, of course, came after the forced baptisms, synagogue burnings and massacres of Jews by Christians in the seventh through 11th centuries, and before Martin Luther’s dreadful sermon of 1543 in which he declared, “Next to the devil, Christians have no enemy more cruel and venomous than a true Jew.” And there’s Pope Paul IV’s declaration in 1555 that “God has condemned the Jews to eternal slavery.”
“All that antisemitic history was rooted in the tragic error of what I call ‘Christian onlyism.'”
All that antisemitic history was rooted in the tragic error of what I call “Christian onlyism,” the institutionalized arrogance of Christianity’s misguided assumption that we “replaced” Judaism and that we — conveniently enough for us — are the only religion God recognizes. Which has allowed us at our worst to dehumanize people of all other faith traditions including, especially, the Jews.
A Christian heresy that is all the more inexplicable when we remember that Jesus was, himself, a Jew — not only at his birth but also at his death.
In a few days, Jesus will be born again in a barn again, with parents who are Jews, parents who will take him to the temple to be dedicated and, when he is 12, back to the temple for Passover, the same Passover he will eat the night before he dies. And yet, somehow, with a Savior and Lord who never abandoned his lifelong Judaism (and who, as far as we know, never mentioned starting a new world religion called “Christianity”) Christianity helped create the antisemitism that has borne the bitter fruit of anti-Jewish bigotry and persecution.
All that came back to me while watching a row of inflatable pretend Hanukkah lights standing in the heartbreaking shadows of the devastating Hanukkah massacre of last Sunday — antisemitic violence not from Christians this time but, sadly, on so many other times.
So before the remaining waiting wicks of Hanukkah and Advent wear their last lights for another year, let us say one more time for the globe-circling, centuries-spanning church to the globe-circling, centuries-spanning synagogue, “We are sorry.”
Chuck Poole retired in 2022 after 45 years of pastoral life, during which he served churches in Georgia; North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; and Jackson, Miss. He has served as a visiting preacher and teacher on the campuses of multiple universities, seminaries and divinity schools. He was the founding teacher of the Wood Street Bible Class in Jackson, which he led for 21 years. The author of nine books, numerous published articles, one gospel song and the lyrics to three hymns, Chuck has served as a “minister on the street” and as an advocate for interfaith conversation and welcome. He and his wife, Marcia, now live in Birmingham, where he serves on the staff of Together for Hope.