The Church and the Jewish People

It still turns up in sermons, Easter plays and jokes: "the Jews killed Jesus." For most of church history it was preached openly, and it shaped how Christians treated their Jewish neighbors for centuries. Many Christians today have never been told how much of that history there is, or that the churches have formally rejected it.

You're not imagining it. Contempt for Jewish people runs through Christian history, from early sermons to the century of the Holocaust, and it was taught as part of the faith. The major churches have since admitted it in writing. The plainest answer to it is the man at the center of the faith, who prayed Israel's prayer every day.

Measured against the center