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Jews Target Christians
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The recent hulla- them or offering courses in Ju-
baloo in Jewish daism "for those interested in
circles regarding conversion." To paraphrase the
the actions of the words from Mr. Powers, "It's
Southern Bap- open season on Christians."
tists to continue Imagine the reaction in the Jew-
their theological ish community if churches of-
stance of conver- fered courses on Christianity for
sion has raised those seeking to convert.
questions far
Three, I imagine your emo- 1.0
more serious than the rather in- tional reaction is "Yes, but" and
effective program they propose. that is precisely the problem. For
I have been disturbed by the Christians in general, conversion
anti-Christian rhetoric based on is a theological act, not a social
the decision by one group of
Baptists who have not been
well represented in dialogue
of any kind. Mr. Mark Powers,
executive director of Jews for
Judaism, totally misreads the
theology, the history and the
background of this decision.
He, like so many others in the

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Jewish community, move from
Southern Baptists, a very dis-
tinctive group, to all Baptists;
and while he avoids turning
all Baptists into Christians,
others have done that, express-
ing "disappointment" in the fact
that work in ecumenical areas
has been so ineffective. I think
a number of points are impor-
tant.
In the first place, what was
said by the Southern Baptists is
not that unusual for them. Re-
member, it was a former presi-
dent of this group that declared
"God does not hear the prayers
of a Jew." That same individual
also admitted he had never met
a Jew. It should also be recog-
nized that many members of
that particular group pay no
more attention to resolutions
passed at national conventions
than do politicians, religious
leaders or lay people of any
group. Two, I find it significant
that in the same edition of The
Jewish News in which this let-
ter appeared, there are at least
two references by synagogues to
the role that converts play in

1 URI

I %AMU

James Lyons is the director of the
Ecumenical Institute.

one. One is not
born a Christian,
though one is born
into a Christian
family, society,
neighborhood and even church.
Though it varies in terms of im-
pact and how one formally be-
comes a Christian, there is a
form of conversion required.
Christians have to make a
choice. The vast amount of mis-
sionary activity defining God in
a particular way is directed to-
ward fellow Christians, a fact
which is often overlooked in
these discussions.
Fourth, I have often been
asked whether or not ecumeni-
cal work is moving forward and
the answer is clear-cut "no." We
smile at each other; we talk nice-
ly to each other; we base our dis-
cussions about many social
causes on that mutuality, but we
still continue to avoid the diffi-
cult questions. Hackles go up if
one talks about intermarriage,
conversion, understandings of
God and life, etc. We want to talk
about the safe issues because we
don't trust dialogues on the dif-
ficult ones. Thus, the high-pro-
file newspaper reports on the
Southern Baptists are valuable
in that they show just how un-
committed in general we have
been.
One of the tragedies is that all
of the major denominations that

tio

