What Pittsburgh and Nostra Aetate Teach Us About Christian Antisemitism Today
What does the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history have to do with one of the most important documents ever produced by the Catholic Church?
Perhaps more than we would like to admit.
This week marked the eighth anniversary of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, in which eleven Jews were murdered by a white supremacist whose social media profile included a reference to John 8:44, a biblical passage historically used to portray Jews as children of the devil.
The following day, October 28, marked the 61st anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the landmark declaration through which the Catholic Church rejected the collective accusation that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus and took a historic step toward confronting centuries of Christian antisemitism.
Just days earlier, Pope Leo XIV had received a delegation from the American Jewish Committee at the Vatican, reaffirming the Church’s commitment to fighting antisemitism and strengthening Jewish-Christian relations.
The coincidence of these anniversaries could hardly be more relevant.
More than sixty years after Nostra Aetate, some of the very religious prejudices that Christians spent decades trying to overcome are resurfacing in the United States. And they are doing so at a particularly troubling moment: as support for Israel declines among younger evangelicals, antisemitic conspiracy theories are finding increasingly influential voices within segments of the American right.
For much of Christian history, Jews were portrayed as enemies of the faith, rejected by God and collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. Against this historical background, the emergence of Christian Zionism represented something extraordinary. Despite its theological controversies and political shortcomings, millions of Christians came to see the Jewish people not as enemies, but as a people deserving solidarity and support for their national self-determination.
Now, however, a different form of Christian political identity is gaining visibility: one that invokes Christianity while reviving conspiracy theories about Jewish power, employing biblical language to demonize Jews, and presenting them as enemies of Western civilization.
The danger is not simply that Christians are becoming less supportive of Israel. Christians can criticize Israel, reject Christian Zionism, and defend Palestinian rights without being antisemitic.
The danger is that some Christians are abandoning Zionism without abandoning the ancient anti-Jewish prejudices that made centuries of persecution possible.
And this problem is not confined to the American right. In some progressive Christian theological circles, opposition to Zionism has also led to challenges against the post-Holocaust theological developments that helped transform Christian attitudes toward Judaism.
These are different movements, with different motivations. But both raise an uncomfortable question: are Christians so determined to distance themselves from Zionism that they are beginning to forget the lessons of their own history of antisemitism?
The anniversaries of Pittsburgh and Nostra Aetate remind us why we cannot afford to do so.
