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Paul Weyrich accused of being a "demented anti-Semite"
First, a look at a conflict directly about a claim that the Jews killed Jesus. Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation and a founding father of the Religious Right, wrote an Easter column last week which said, in part, "Christ was crucified by the Jews who had wanted a temporal ruler to rescue them from the oppressive Roman authorities. … He was not what the Jews had expected so they considered Him a threat. Thus He was put to death." That comment got fellow conservative Evan Gahr livid. "Weyrich specifically said the Jews crucified Christ?" he wrote in a commentary for The American Spectator Online. "Which Jew put the nail through him? 'I don't have the names,' [Weyrich's spokesman] replied."

Weyrich's spokesman, Free Congress Foundation director of development Nicholas Sanchez, did have a response, which Gahr quotes: "That is not an anti-Semitic remark. Paul is well-versed in scriptures. He is a Melkite Greek Catholic deacon and the statement from his commentary does say that Christ was crucified by the Jews. This has been taken up by people in recent times as a politically correct cause to say anyone who says Christ was crucified by the Jews is anti-Semitic. It was the Jews who brought him up on trial. They said 'crucify him.' That is a fact and that's what Paul was saying."

But to Gahr, and others, that's not what Paul was saying. "It's a theological [statement] that has been repudiated by all Christian groups," Marc Stern, assistant executive director of the American Jewish Congress, tells Gahr. "The fact that Weyrich has resurrected that primitive theology is profoundly disturbing. It's profoundly disturbing in particular because many reports put Weyrich at the center of the contemporary conservative political movement."

Gahr went even further, calling Weyrich "a demented anti-Semite" in a Washington Post interview. For this slam, Gahr was dropped from David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine, where his columns had regularly appeared.

Salon.com columnist Joe Conason took the comment and universalized it to conservatives, saying "this flare-up should concern decent conservatives, because their movement's double standard on religious bigotry remains disgraceful. … Political expedience has often dictated silence in the face of outrageous comments and conduct."

New York Knicks point guard Charlie Ward apologizes
Paul Weyrich isn't the most famous case of such comments this week, however. A New York Times Magazine article about the New York Knicks has raised much more ruckus. As part of the story, reporter Eric Konigsberg attended one of point guard Charlie Ward's Bible studies:

In the first class I attended, on the road in Washington in December, everyone asked me about my religious background. They talked about the Old Testament and cultural identity, and they had a lot of questions about dietary laws. Now, participating in the study-book exercises in Milwaukee, I thought I was doing fine; the players seemed interested in Judaism. They started calling me "E." I fancied that the seeds of an interfaith fellowship were being planted.

Then Ward said, "Jews are stubborn, E. But tell me, why did they persecute Jesus unless he knew something they didn't want to accept?"

"What?"

"They had his blood on their hands."

Working quickly, [guard Allan] Houston indexed a passage on his Palm Pilot. "Matthew 26, verse 67," he said. "Then they spit in Jesus's face and hit him with their fists."'

"It say anything about who wanted Jesus dead?" Ward asked. "There are Christians getting persecuted by Jews every day. There's been books written about this—people who are raised Jewish and find Christ, and then their parents stop talking to them."

"You know, there's Jews for Jesus, man," [power forward Kurt] Thomas offered me, running a hand over his cornrows.

In closing, Houston led the group in prayer, asking God to help them compete well "and watch over those teammates that are injured."

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April (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45