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This is a religious country. Many Americans pray daily, many more
are in church weekly—a far higher percentage for gentiles
than for Jews—and few of my college students, in marked contrast
to the students of years ago, will hesitate to affirm that they
believe in God, even if they have trouble with formal religious
institutions.
The cute and scandalous cartoons involving priests and nuns which
one finds in the French press, for example, would never be passed
by a sober mainstream editor over here. When the Pope comes to America,
whole cities revolve around his schedule. No concert, no gaggle
of rock idols, no president can command such adoring crowds.
This is a religious country. And in this country, few people have
had so deep, so pervasive, and so long-lasting an influence as the
Reverend Doctor Billy Graham.
Heavens! one can remember him meeting with Nixon and even with Eisenhower
before him for breakfast at the White House, and how long ago was
that?! And everyone understood about those prayer breakfasts: Billy
Graham did not need the presidents; rather, they needed him.
And he is still writing, still preaching, still teaching his version
of religion. He has a Web site these days, of course (www.billygraham.org),
and he also has a regular syndicated newspaper column, “My
Answer, by Billy Graham”, which runs throughout the country.
He is a force, not only for the spiritual power which he commands,
but for the sustained and profound and enormously widespread influence
of his writings and teachings.
It is true that, in his long and distinguished career, he has blundered
badly on certain occasions. His comments about Jews, which were
made to and in the private presence of President Nixon, became to
his great embarrassment public knowledge long after they were made.
How was he to know he was being taped?
Well, one can understand how it happened: one finds oneself in the
presence of the most powerful politician in the world, who happens
to drop a comment of an antisemitic kind, and one wishes to be an
agreeable guest, so…. In any case, when the matter came to
light, Graham lost no time in confessing—not a mea culpa but
just as good, one may assume—and apologizing most sincerely
to the Jewish community.
It was a private comment, after all, from a man whose public leadership
has been nothing but what he would call Christian in the best sense.
Even Truman, that hero of Jewish history, was more than once driven
to exasperation by incessant Jewish pestering and gave voice to
some undiplomatic private comments about them Jews. Some scholars
have made overmuch of such intemperate remarks, but one should not
begrudge them their exaggerated dissertations and journal papers
written in pursuit of academic reputation and tenure. Let us face
it: dealing with the Jews can be, let us gently say, irritating.
Ask your local rabbi.
What is more disturbing than private explosions or offhand comments
is public religious philosophy. Dr. Graham recently published a
“My Answer” to the question, Did God forgive Judas for
betraying Jesus?
His answer: a flat “No.”
His thinking: Judas may have felt sorry, may have been remorseful,
but he could not bring himself to repent. [One will admit that the
distinction is not blindingly clear. But to go on:] Having met Jesus,
Judas nevertheless did not commit his life to Jesus. God’s
infinite grace and mercy has no room in it for Judas the betrayer.
This is the teaching of Mr. Graham.
Of course, this very argument—you have been exposed to Jesus,
the Christ has been made known to you, and yet you still refuse
to commit your life to him—has been applied to Jews in general
throughout the centuries by antisemites. So has the name Judas.
Jew-das. The name has become a trigger-word.
Is there a misunderstanding of basic Christianity here, on the part
of one of its most honored teachers?
Let us consider: If Jesus Christ—that is, God the Son—came
to earth exactly in order to redeem sinful mankind by his atoning
death, then he was in fact born to die. If Christ does not die,
there is no atonement, and there is no redemption as Christianity
teaches it. His death, then, was in manner and substance written
in a book, so to speak, before he was born. The whole purpose of
his life was to die, a redeeming death.
In this scenario, Judas as a character has a pre-written part to
play. No Judas, no redeeming death. No redeeming death, no purpose
in God coming to earth in order to die. Judas, in other words, is
an actor, part of God’s plan, and plays out his part as it
was written. He has no choice in the matter.
If, on the other hand, Jesus died only because he was betrayed by
a friend and disciple, then Jesus’ death did not have to happen
in the way it did. It was, alas, an avoidable accident of history,
and we are left not with God Almighty coming to earth to die for
humankind, but only with a poor Jewish would-be revolutionary who
happened to get caught in a Roman net.
You cannot have it both ways, Dr. Graham. Either Jesus was God,
come to earth in order to die, in which case poor Judas was nothing
but the hammer in the hands of God, or else Jesus was really betrayed,
by a betrayer who had free will and made a free choice, in which
case Jesus was a poor Jewish teacher accidentally—and falsely—executed
for treason.
What makes this teaching of Billy Graham’s about Judas of
special concern is that throughout history some Christian antisemites
have, indeed, presented the betrayer Judas Iscariot [Ish-Keriot,
the man from Cyprus] as a prototype of the tricky, betraying Jew.
The name itself, Judas [Greek form for Judah], has been used to
mean the Jew—any Jew, every Jew—in many songs and stories.
The story of Judas Iscariot, the Jew who betrayed the Lord, has
been time and again the excuse for depravity and murder throughout
Christian Europe.
When, therefore, a man of Graham’s sensitivity and influence,
a man of genuine goodwill, accidentally and unthinkingly adds ammunition
to the arsenal of bigots and murderers, it is a cause for concern.
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Updated
6/19/03
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