A group in Brussels recently asked me whether I thought a “civilizational rupture” was emerging between Europe and America. I suspect they wanted me to reassure them that, no, despite ominous pronouncement from Vice President Vance and others, the unity of the West would hold. But I offered the contrary view. A Europe unable to control its borders, overwhelmed with immigrants who are hostile to Western civilization, filled with empty churches, culturally demoralized, and prey to political extremists on all sides is in the midst of removing itself from the bonds of a common civilization with America. That leaves plenty of room for international trade and practical alliance, but the sense of common cause in pursuit of higher principles was withering away.
America rescued Europe from antisemitism in World War II. But Europe has now imported millions of antisemites from the Middle East and the greater Islamic world to fill the gap. And the portion of Europe grounded in a Christianity that recognizes Islam as the profound antithesis of both its faith and the civilization built on the premises of that faith has proven too feeble to guard itself. What we see in Europe is the looming prospect of capitulation to Muslim supremacy through the entrances of toleration and multi-culturalism.
What this means for the relations between Christians and Jews is, at one level, not complicated. They need to be allied against a common enemy. But the nature of that alliance is indeed complicated. Christianity has its own history of antisemitism as well as philosemitic traditions; Judaism likewise has a complicated history both of fear of Christian persecution and reluctance to rely on the good will of supposed friends who have proved time and again untrustworthy. Building a durable alliance has taken centuries of deep effort to develop the principles of religious freedom and toleration.
Both these concepts are weaker than they may seem. They are cheap currency for those who see little at stake. The thoroughly secular modern man or woman who considers religious belief to an illusion that entertains the unenlightened can mask indifference as “religious freedom.” It costs such a person next to nothing to see his neighbor attend a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple while he himself goes about his business. And “toleration” can consist of mild approbation of colorful customs that are not one’s own.
Such secularists, however, have little insight into the nature of the Islamic threat and no stamina to resist it. They assume that Islamists will set aside their fanatical and apocalyptic hatreds and settle down to enjoy the amenities of Western life like everyone else—if not today, then tomorrow. On this they are profoundly mistaken. Islam does have a relaxed, seemingly moderate side, mostly made up of Muslims-in-name-only, but they exercise faint influence on Islam as a whole.
Religious freedom and toleration are high achievements for the West but not matters about which we can be complacent. They are passive resource for the secularists who enjoy the benefits of being spared pogroms, persecutions, and religious wars, but they are hard-won achievements for the devout. A Christian believes, in principle, in the need to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to non-believers, and especially to the Jews. A Jew believes in living in accordance with Jewish traditions and practice. Christianity is essentially creedal. Judaism is essentially lived. They intersect and overlap in numerous ways but there is enough irreducible difference to challenge both sides.
A devout Jewish couple with whom my wife and I—we are Christians—have been good friends for many years recently asked about my wedding ring and were astonished by the inscription on the inside to Ruth 8-11. This is the passage in which Ruth, a childless Moabite woman, whose Israelite husband had died, presents herself to Boaz, distant kin to her late husband. Ruth and Boaz marry and so continue the bloodline that eventually leads to King David. My wife and I chose the passage as affirming how a later-in-life marriage can affirm God’s purposes. Our Jewish friends saw the story as focused on Ruth’s loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi. Ruth told Naomi, “Where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people will be my people, and your God my God.” So, it is a story of conversion and the capacity of the Jewish community, through compassion, to absorb outsiders.
My wife and I knew that to be the canonical interpretation of the Book of Ruth, but we had no compunction about appropriating Ruth’s story for avowing the goodness of marriage itself. It was a Christian appropriation of the text that our Jewish friends found jarring. The principle of toleration won out, but all the more importantly, it was not costless. Both sides had to recognize the legitimacy of the other on something that carried actual weight.
Since October 7, 2023, America has seen the seemingly sudden emergence of a wave of antisemitism. Initially college campuses were the point from which this wave emanated. Within hours of the savage attack by Hamas on Israel, students at Harvard mounted a pro-Hamas demonstration, and soon such expressions of joy at the mass murder spread throughout the Ivy League and to universities across the country.
Faculty members on many campuses joined in declaring that the Hamas atrocities were a rightful response to Israel’s “settler colonialism.” And the story transformed from one of unprovoked murder, rape, and kidnapping to how best to defeat “Zionism.”
In my largely Jewish neighborhood of Upper West Side Manhattan, posters of the kidnapped victims proliferated. But no sooner where they posted that vandals either scrawled obscenities and Zionist slogans on them, or they ripped the posters down. The current of antisemitism began to feel like a torrent.
The intensity of that wave of antisemitism may have begun to recede but only because its advocates have succeeded in normalizing it.
In New York City, the election of Zohan Mamdani has crystalized a new “respectable” form of antisemitism that combines appeal to a class of underemployed young people who resent the diminished value of their expensive college degrees with a summons to Third World immigrants who have no cultural affinity to America as a place where they had advance via hard work and self-reliance. Antisemitism might not be the inevitable resort for such a coalition of the alienated and the uprooted, but Mamdani has supplied it as the axis of the emergent movement. It turns of hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews in general and roots itself in the Islamist antipathy for Judaism. Mamdani has made it both legitimate and increasingly popular and fused it with anti-capitalism and disdain for America.
Jews ought rightly to be terrified of this phenomenon, and some are. But it is plain that many are not, whether because they believe it will burn itself out or because they think in the longer-term other matters will take precedence. That brings me back to the question about the possible “civilizational rupture” between Europe and America. Those who doubt that such a rupture will happen, do not take cultural forces very seriously. They assume that settled institutions, the pressures of assimilation, and appeals of consumerism will domesticate the wild forces that have been released. They project onto those forces their own complacency. The truth is that the only real bulwark against antisemitism and its close cousin, hatred of civilization itself, is the alliance of Christians and Jews.
Fortunately, a substantial number of Christians and Jews plainly understand this. Unfortunately, neither have cultural sway they once did. The leadership of the Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant denominations are not to be relied on. We have also seen the rise of what some call “the New Christian Right,” supposedly a permutation of Christian evangelism both pro-Israel and opposed to antisemitism.
The American left seems to wish it were otherwise. NPR’s All Things Considered recently aired a report by Geoff Brumfiel headlined “Support for Israel among U.S. conservatives is starting to crack. Here’s why.” Brumfiel quoted Jackson Lahmeyer, “an evangelical pastor in Oklahoma and founder of Pastors for Trump,” citing Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Again, I don’t doubt the accuracy of Brumfiel’s report, but it strikes me as very wide of the mark as account of the prevailing views of Christian evangelicals.
Some, let’s say, see a win if they accentuate the most bigoted voices in evangelical Christianity, and there are surely members of the Jewish community who are ready to credit this characterization of Christians in general.
We should not let this sowing of division prevail. Christians and Jews have a lot in common, starting with a Holy God but continuing to a civilization that grew from the premises that we live in a moral universe ordained by God. While we can and do disagree on important details, we are joined by commitment to justice, to the Book, to our God-given capacity to seek the truth, and our humility in the face of the ineffable.
And in the face of great danger and manifest evil, we are joined by the need to stand up for one another. I don’t expect every Christian and every Jew to rise to the occasion, but I know many will. Much depends on mutual recognition of the peril. What’s happening in Europe can happen here too and has already begun.
This monthly series is presented by George Violin
Peter Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars, a network of scholars and citizens with a commitment to academic freedom, disinterested scholarship, and excellence in American higher education. He previously served as provost of The Kings's College College and a tenured member of the Anthropology Department at Boston University, where he also held a variety of administrative positions, including associate provost and president's chief of staff. He is the author of Wrath: America Enraged (Encounter Books, 2021), 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project (Encounter Books, 2020); Diversity Rules (Encounter Books, 2019); A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now (Encounter Books, 2007) and Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (Encounter Books, 2003), which won the Caldwell Award for Leadership in Higher Education from the John Locke Foundation. These books extend his anthropological interest in examining emergent themes in modern American culture. In addition to his scholarly work, Wood has published several hundred articles in print and online journals, such as the Wall Street Journal, Claremont Review of Books, Spectator USA, American Greatness, Partisan Review, National Review Online, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He lives and works in New York City.