c. 1998 Religion News Service

HARTFORD, Conn. _ Last July, the Episcopal Church adopted a formal apology to the Jewish people for the anti-Semitism perpetrated by Christians throughout the centuries.

As Easter draws near _ a time that rekindles Jewish historical memories of pogroms committed in the name of Jesus _ an Episcopal lawyer from New Haven is trying to embody the apology by personally taking it to Connecticut.

“I feel there is a collective responsibility for members of any group to ‘fess up and say we have done some bad things,”said the lawyer, Timothy Bingham.”The Christian church has done some bad things to the Jews and people like me are sick about it.” Bingham, whose father descended from a Mayflower Pilgrim and whose mother is a non-practicing Jew, wrote the resolution the Episcopal Church adopted at its General Convention _ the church’s top decision-making body _ in Philadelphia last summer.

Ever since, Bingham has made it his mission to take the apology to synagogues and has already visited several throughout the state.

“He has made it his duty, his passion, to make this apology loud and clear and in public. And as we all know, an apology unheard is unmade,”said Rabbi Jeffrey Bennett of Temple Sinai in Newington, where Bingham made a recent appearance.

The apology states: “We acknowledge, with regret, our acts of moral blindness and outright prejudice that have contributed to the abuse and mistreatment of Jews, throughout history and today.”

The Rev. E. Bevan Stanley, rector of Grace and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Hamden, presented Bingham’s draft to the convention but it almost did not pass. Stanley said a committee mangled the language and cut out the apology.

“It got so tangled up in committee they forgot what the object was,”

Stanley said. When it came to the floor for a vote Stanley offered an amendment, restoring the original language, and it passed overwhelmingly.

“It is important for us to be clear about what the gospel says and what the gospel does not say,” Stanley said. “In no way is anti-Semitism the message.”

Stanley, who sometimes accompanies Bingham to synagogues, said, “I was particularly struck at how deeply, deeply moved some people were. You see tears in their eyes when they come up to say thank you.”

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Recognition of the religious roots of anti-Semitism induced New England Lutherans five years ago to repudiate the anti-Jewish writings of Martin Luther, a position subsequently adopted nationally by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Bingham said the Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s “was more upfront earlier than the other churches” in recognizing the harm that has been caused to Jews by Christian misinterpretation of the Gospels.

He referred to the official Catholic Church condemnation of the “deicide charge,”_ that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. That, however, did not take the form of an apology.

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Bingham speaks emotionally of how all his life he has been among many people who have slurred Jews and made anti-Semitic remarks. When he was 13, he was appalled to hear an Episcopal priest say in Sunday School that people who did not accept Jesus would go to hell, including Jews.

“I said, `You don’t mean my grandfather,’ whom I adored, `and my mother are going to fall into the fiery pit forever, do you?’ He said, `They had their chance.’

“I remember just lying in bed shaking and hoping and then deciding it couldn’t be true. I became very angry at churches in general and my church in particular.”

Bingham said he “spent years fighting my way back to a point where I could go back to church. I finally decided he was wrong. What he said was idiotic.”

Bingham said he thought of drafting the Episcopal apology when he read a story about a Japanese soldier who regretted having bayoneted women and children in World War II and wondered why his government had not apologized.

“I thought, why don’t we apologize and say we are sorry and we don’t want it to happen again,” Bingham said.

“If I can do anything in my lifetime to lessen the possibility of anti-Semitism I would like to do that,” Bingham said. “My mother is so thrilled by the whole thing. She’s saying, `My son, the lawyer, has finally done something good with his life.”’

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