Jews Who Write About Christianity
• Edifying
On aspect of the treatment of the discussion of American Christianity by non-Christian intellectuals.
What is most insidious about [Fr. Richard John] Neuhaus’s argument is his assumption that non-Christians position themselves to speak about religion while Christians do not. Such double standards are nearly always reprehensible, conveying, as they do, the suggestion that Jews — or members of any religious minority — do not quite qualify for full membership in a Christian society. That is especially troubling because Judaism, as Neuhaus uses the term, refers not to a religious identity (from which one can convert) but to an ethnic identity (which is forever fixed). Neuhaus correctly says that I do not have a religious bone in my body, yet he identifies me as a Jew. What is Jewish about me, at least in his eyes, has nothing to do with belief and everything to do with birth. Since I am not about to change my parents, my scholarship can always be condemned for my attempt to position myself, a fate I would never have had to endure had I been born Christian.