Baptists' evangelism concerns Jews

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Baptists' Evangelism Concerns Jews

By Gustav Niebuhr, The New York Times, September 25, 1999

In a polite but pointed exchange of letters over the last two days, a Jewish organization in New York has protested the decision by the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, to help convene a conference in Manhattan on evangelizing Jews.

The letters, between the convention president, the Rev. Paige Patterson, and Philip D. Abramowitz, director of the Task Force on Missionaries and Cults, of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York Inc., were exchanged as Mr. Patterson arrived to take part in the conference, titled, ''To the Jew First in the New Millennium.''

The gathering has disturbed Jewish groups like the task force because the event brings together prominent evangelical Protestant academic figures and leaders of ''messianic Jewish'' organizations, who say one can be Jewish and accept Jesus as the Messiah.

At the heart of the controversy is concern by the task force and other groups about the use of Jewish religious symbols and a Christian message by messianic synagogues and other organizations, a small but increasingly visible movement of Jews and non-Jews who proclaim a belief in Jesus.

On Thursday, Mr. Abramowitz wrote Mr. Patterson to say that the conference on evangelism was disturbing to Jews, primarily because it ''promotes the misuse of our most sacred themes and symbols to the cause of conversion.''

He said the task force understood that Southern Baptists felt a biblical imperative to convert all people, but he asked the denomination ''to repent of its embrace of deceptive tactics.''

In reply, Mr. Patterson said it was ''false and reckless'' for the task force to charge that deception was used as a conversion tool.

He said the 15.8 million-member Southern Baptist denomination did not support ''deceptive tactics'' to convert Jews, and that Southern Baptists and other evangelicals were ''about the only groups on earth who fight for and pray for absolute religious liberty and freedom from coercion in religious matters,'' a stand that he said benefited Jews.

The title of the conference comes from a New Testament verse, Romans 1:16, in which the apostle Paul says, ''For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.''

In discussing his participation, Mr. Patterson said, ''We can hardly be faulted for citing the Bible, which we take very seriously.''

The same verse was printed in a booklet instructing Southern Baptists on ways to pray for conversion of Jews, which was distributed by Southern Baptists' International Mission Board before the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur.

The messianic Jewish movement has its own spiritual leaders, houses of worship and national associations. David L. Chernoff, the rabbi of a messianic synagogue in Philadelphia, said there were 250 to 300 messianic synagogues in the United States and Canada.

The task force has compiled a list of more than 230 such groups in 37 states. ''If you go into one of these places, you think you're in a synagogue,'' Mr. Abramowitz said. ''They use prayer shawls.''

Michael S. Miller, the council's executive vice president, said: ''Part of the deception is their interpretation of messianism is the Christian interpretation. The object is to fog the difference so that people think they are part of authentic Judaism, but Jesus is their Lord and Savior.''

But Mitch Glaser, a prominent figure in the movement, said its members believed they had a right to wear skullcaps and use other religious items in worship.

''The reason we use Jewish symbols is we identify as Jews,'' said Mr. Glaser, president of Chosen People Ministries Inc. ''I have as much a right to the symbols as any other Jewish person.''

Mr. Glaser convened the New York conference with Mr. Patterson. The event, which concludes tonight, is at Calvary Baptist Church, 123 West 57th Street.

That it is taking place in New York, home to the nation's largest Jewish population, and overlaps the Jewish festival of Sukkot has irritated Jewish organizations.

''It's a spiritual salvo that's aimed at the Jewish people,'' said Rabbi A. James Rudin, interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.

Mr. Patterson said that the Southern Baptist Convention did not want to offend Jews or anyone else, and that its evangelism was directed to people worldwide. But, he added, ''if you have real religious liberty, you have real open marketplace of ideas.''

''The fact is that I love the Jewish people and I have long been a defender for the right of the Jewish people, for example, to have a land of their own in Israel,'' he said. ''They may accept or reject that love; that's their prerogative.''

To Mr. Abramowitz, he wrote: ''One group of Jews insists that I must desist from praying that my Jewish friends will understand that Jesus loves them, died for them and is the fulfillment of all messianic prophecy.''

''Another Jew,'' he added, referring to Jesus, ''has told me that I must do these very things out of the love and gratitude of my heart.''

Mr. Abramowitz said yesterday that the task force should ''educate our community better,'' adding, ''we have to really make our community aware around the world that they are targets'' of missionaries.

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