c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) It’s too bad Andrew Marvell, the 17th-century English poet, wasn’t in New Orleans recently when the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution calling for an active conversion campaign aimed at the Jewish people.

Had the poet been present, he could have taught America’s largest Protestant denomination a profound spiritual lesson. In the poem,”To His Coy Mistress,”Marvell compared the impossibility of winning a woman’s love to the futility of making Jews into Christians:”… I would love you ten years before the Flood, and you should, if you please, refuse until the conversion of the Jews.” Marvell failed to achieve his romantic goal. So, too, the Southern Baptist missionary campaign is bound to fail.

Let me be clear. Baptists have every right to proclaim their religious truth and invite others to join them. And the rest of us have the same right to reject their invitation and pursue our own religious paths.

The Southern Baptist resolution and their appointment of a special missionary for”Jewish evangelism”gives the impression they are targeting Jews as if they were some sort of trophy to be won.

Oddly, these biblical literalists seem to give no credence to the covenant that was established, through Abraham, between God and the Jewish people. Though Southern Baptists may believe otherwise, for Jews, it is a covenant that still stands.

And the Southern Baptist leaders’ attempts to tamper with the integrity of that covenant are offensive and infuriating to Jews. To us, Southern Baptists are putting yet another spin on a tragic historical pattern _ singling out Jews for”special treatment.” Sometimes this”special treatment”meant physical segregation and denial of civil and religious rights. Sometimes it meant forced conversions, hateful discrimination, and cruel expulsions from a Christian society or nation. The Holocaust took the notion of”special treatment”to its most evil extreme _ the mass murder of Jews.

To Southern Baptist leaders, the idea of converting Jews to Christianity may seem like a laudable mission. But for those of us who are the targets of such efforts, it sounds like an attempt at spiritual annihilation.

The only difference is that this attempt at spiritual annihilation is clothed in pious language that disguises its inevitable outcome. If the Southern Baptists were to succeed in their conversion efforts, it would mean the elimination of the Jewish religion from the planet.

Following the vote to renew efforts to convert Jews, Larry Lewis, the Southern Baptist Convention’s missionary director, explained to Debra Nussbaum Cohen of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency why Jewish conversion has become a more pressing goal for Southern Baptists in 1996 than it was in the decades following World War II.”We probably overreacted to the Holocaust and the great sense of concern and gravity over all the atrocities that resulted from the Nazi regime,”Lewis said.”… perhaps we just for one reason or another felt it might be offensive to make a special effort”to convert Jews.

In other words, now that 51 years have passed since the end of the Holocaust, the statute of limitations on compassion and memory has apparently run out for Lewis and his denomination. No more”overreacting”… no more”concern.”Folks, it’s time to get back to basics: converting Jews.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s action is out of step with constructive efforts of Roman Catholics, Lutherans and other Christians throughout the world who have sought in recent years to reverse centuries of hostility toward Jews and Judaism.

Fortunately, there are Southern Baptists who differ with the missionary resolution. Chief among them is Billy Graham. In 1973, America’s most respected evangelist publicly criticized the excesses of some Christian missionaries. Citing New Testament verses from the book of Romans, Graham declared:”I believe God has always had a special relationship with the Jewish people. … In my evangelistic efforts, I have never felt called to single out Jews as Jews. … Just as Judaism frowns on proselytizing that is coercive, or that seeks to commit men against their will, so do I.” And this year, just five days after the Southern Baptist Convention adopted its resolution, Graham re-affirmed his position, saying,”I have never taken part in organizations or projects that especially targeted Jews.” In 1995, the moderate Alliance of Baptists issued a statement criticizing Southern Baptist Convention leaders, who they said had”valued conversion over dialogue, invective over understanding, and prejudice over knowledge.”Such a theology”does not acknowledge the vibrancy, vitality and efficacy of the Jewish faith.”The Alliance seeks”genuine dialogue with the Jewish community,”rather than the one-way conversion effort endorsed in New Orleans.

One good thing about the conversion controversy is that it has led other Christians to examine their beliefs about their elder brothers and sisters in faith. I can only hope the Southern Baptists’ ill-advised campaign will prompt people of faith and goodwill to speak out against all campaigns that seek to lure Jews away from their irrevocable covenant with God.

MJP END RUDIN