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AJC's Interreligious Affairs Department lists no evangelicals with whom it is now in dialogue. AJC members so severely criticized one leader of AJC's interreligious affairs, who was friendly toward evangelicals, that the leader quit.

Jewish attitudes started to change when Jews realized that evangelicals also cared about religious freedom in Russia. Younger Jewish activists such as Harris were helping hundreds of persecuted Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union during the 1970s. They came across evangelicals who were similarly troubled about Christians trapped behind the Iron Curtain. In one year alone, evangelicals provided $20 million to resettle Russian Jews in Israel, according to Yechiel Eckstein of the Center for Jewish and Christian Values in Washington.

When the "Evil Empire" fell in 1989, however, Jews and evangelicals drifted apart. On domestic issues, most Jews were miles apart from politically conservative evangelicals. "We came in the gate together but then we went out apart," Harris said.

Orthodox Jews are the exception. Most Jewish leaders consider Eckstein, an Orthodox rabbi, a maverick figure who left the Anti-Defamation League because of his pro-evangelical stance. But "evangelicals have always given their support to Israel," Harris said, which has mitigated Jewish distrust.

Michael Horowitz, a former Reagan administration official, had earlier convinced some liberal Jewish groups often associated with the AJC to unite with evangelicals on religious freedom. David Saperstein, a Reform Judaism lobbyist in Washington, joined evangelicals in promoting the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. AJC also asked Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to address its board that year.

Starting in 1995, Jewish and evangelical organizations jointly attacked a host of evils, such as slavery in Sudan, sex trafficking, prison rape, and religious persecution around the globe. And AJC sponsored and published studies showing that the Christian Right is not anti-Semitic.

Evangelical leaders won respect by publicly denouncing anti-Semitism. In March 2002 seven prominent evangelicals, including leaders from the Southern Baptist Convention, the NAE, and the National Religious Broadcasters, implored President Bush to vigorously condemn anti-Semitism in "keeping faith with our own virtues."

When the AJC joined with Vanderbilt University's First Amendment Center in 1999 to draft guidelines on expressing religious faith in public schools, the NAE hailed the effort as "a step toward protecting religious freedom in the classroom." An evangelical also quietly gave money to the center, which subsequently published a pamphlet on what forms of religious expression are constitutionally permissible in public schools.

Observers say the AJC shows a new willingness to work with evangelicals. For example, when other major Jewish groups pilloried conservative William Pryor, a federal district court nominee, for saying that American law has its roots in Christian values, the AJC declined to join the critics.

Three years ago, after a government-sponsored study found that the strongest and most consistent non-Jewish supporters of Israel are evangelicals, Israel began to woo evangelical opinion leaders who could present its case to the American people.

In building common cause around Israel and some social issues, many Jews have finally recognized evangelicals' passionate humanitarianism. Now even messianic Jews are welcome at the table when the discussion is on pragmatic issues.

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October 2003, Vol. 47, No. 10