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This is the final installment in a five-part series.

Part 1 [November/December 2000], "Living by Law, Looking for Intimacy," explored what Christians can learn from the debates that divide American Jews, taking as a point of departure Samuel G. Freedman's book, Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry.

Part 2 [January/February 2001], "God of Abraham—and Saint Paul," focused on the pathbreaking "Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity" published last fall in the New York Times and the book of essays it occasioned, Christianity in Jewish Terms, edited by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, David Novak, Peter Ochs, David Fox Sandmel, and Michael A. Signer.

Part 3 considered medieval anti-Semitism and the Eucharist (via Miri Rubin's Gentile Tales).

Part 4 discussed German Jews, Edith Stein in particular.

The evangelization of Jews was back in the headlines last May, when moderate Baptist pastor Steve Jones and the congregation of Southside Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, opened their sanctuary to the Jews of Temple Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue whose building will be unusable during a 14-month renovation. In an article in the Birmingham News, Jones commented on Baptist-Jewish relations. "My approach to mission is not to save people," he said. "I don't like this 'win-them-at-all-costs' attitude. … The whole mindset—that Jews are lost and we need to convert them—it's a very condescending relationship." More conservative Baptists were shocked and outraged. Was Jones a universalist? If his mission wasn't to save people, what exactly was it?

Every few years, reporters turn their attention to Christian efforts to spread the gospel to Jews. Usually, though, we don't find Baptists sparring with Baptists; we find Jews sparring with evangelicals or fundamentalists over some denominational pronouncement about Jewish mission. It's fair to say that evangelism is the great bugaboo of interfaith conversations; it's the topic most likely to bring Jewish-Christian dialogue to a screeching halt (or to transform it into a screaming match). When Southern Baptists announced an effort to evangelize Jews several years ago, Conrad Giles, president-elect of the Council of Jewish Federations, said, "It is very disturbing to be targeted by any group for what is basically elimination. While the elimination is not quite in the same manner as during the Holocaust, the end point is the same."

Evangelicals respond that the imperative to share the gospel is a tenet of their faith; Christians are eager to sit at the dialogue table, but not if it means checking their Christianity at the door. We mean no harm, they say, occasionally bewildered by the vehemence with which Jews react to evangelistic efforts; we're spreading the gospel because we care about our neighbor. As the SBC's Phil Roberts put it in 1996, "All we're talking about here is. … sharing of our faith in a loving way with those around us. … Let's say you've found a cure for cancer or discovered the fountain of youth. The right thing to do would be to share it with others."

Whether Christians should evangelize Jews is a theological question. But like so many theological questions, it can be illuminated by history. This spring, just in time for the Alabama Baptists' squabble, the University of North Carolina Press published Yaakov Ariel's Evangelizing the Chosen People, a ground-breaking account of American Christians' missions to the Jews from the late nineteenth century to the present. Anyone who has read Ariel's 1991 book, On Behalf of Israel: American Fundamentalist Attitudes Towards Jews, Judaism, and Zionism 1865-1945, will know that he is a scholar with a rare understanding of both Judaism and Christianity, a deep knowledge of American religious history, and a judicious respect for the people about whom he writes. Jews and Christians alike will find Ariel's new offering informative and challenging.

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