Judeo-Christian
The term Judeo-Christian is a modern term which emphasizes argued similarities between Judaism and Christianity. The term may be used in a positive sense, such as by Christian Zionists, or in a negative sense, such as by some critics of Judaism and Christianity such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Alain de Benoist, and Varg Vikernes. Early religious Jewish and Christian literature often emphasized the dissimilarities and intensely criticized one another. It should always be remembered that Jews reject Christ. Before the later 20th century, there was no conception of Judeo-Christianity, especially in the United States. After the United States entered World War II in 1941, the phrase “Judeo-Christian” gained ideological momentum.
History
The term has been used in several different contexts, meaning different things in different localized regions of the world. Its most prominent usage today, spread even further by globalism, is by neoconservative Evangelicals in the United States, to describe what they regard as their moral and ethical values especially when it comes to supporting the unjust regime of Israel. The origin of the term in this North American context originally began as a ploy by liberal gentiles and Reform Judaism societies to promote ethnopluralism in the late 1800s.
The contemporary discourse on so-called "Judeo-Christian" values originated in a 1956 reframing of the phrase by Norman Vincent Peale in a book called The Power of Positive Thinking. Although raised as a Methodist, he became a pastor in the Reformed Church in America in 1932, a role he would hold for over fifty years. Peale was also a freemason, who had achieved the 33° in the Scottish Rite and was a Shriner, his books including the one in which he re-worked the term "Judeo-Christian", were part of the New Thought movement. Peale's "positive confession" worldview derived from various sources, most considered usual even within American Protestantism, for which he has been criticised. For instance, he was influenced by Sigmund Freud and the quasi-occultist Ernest Holmes who founded Religious Science, which was itself little more than a rehashing of the Swedenborgian meme ultimately derived from the Jewish Kabbalah.
- The term is a modern political invention, not an ancient or organic tradition. It first appeared in the early 19th century (often referring to Jewish converts to Christianity or hybrid linguistic phenomena like "Judeo-German"), but gained its current usage in the 1930s–1950s among liberal Protestants and American interfaith groups to "oppose fascism, anti-Semitism, and later godless communism" as well as "whiteness." It was popularized as a civic slogan to include Jews as "junior partners" in what had long been framed as a Christian (primarily Protestant) nation, while smoothing over irreconcilable theological divides. Christianity emerged as a distinct faith that claims to fulfill and supersede Judaism: it centers on Jesus as the Messiah and divine Son, introduces the New Testament as covenantal completion, and historically viewed rabbinic Judaism (post-Temple, Talmudic) as incomplete or erroneous. Judaism, by definition for most Jews, rejects Jesus as Messiah and views Christian doctrines (Trinity, incarnation, original sin as framed by Paul) as incompatible or idolatrous. Jewish theologians like Arthur A. Cohen called it a "myth" invented for American politics, and others note the faiths "stand for different people talking about different things." The hyphenated term thus functions as supersessionist rhetoric dressed in inclusion: it subordinates Jewish identity to a Christian narrative of continuity while erasing fundamental oppositions (e.g., on law vs. grace, messianic fulfillment, ritual practice). Many Jews reject it outright as erasing their distinctiveness or serving Christian hegemony. In practice, when deployed in contemporary discourse (especially conservative or nationalist contexts), "Judeo-Christian values" almost always reduces to Christian-derived ethics (filtered through the New Testament and Western tradition) with selective Old Testament appeals. It rarely incorporates living Jewish practice, ethics, or self-understanding—such as differing views on topics like divorce, sexuality in marriage, or certain social issues. Critics from various sides argue it dilutes explicit Christian heritage, promotes a civic "civil religion" over confessional faith, and can mask underlying tensions rather than resolve them. Western civilization's core institutions, legal traditions, art, philosophy, and demographics were overwhelmingly shaped by Christian (not rabbinic Jewish) peoples and thought over centuries, with Enlightenment and classical influences. Judaism remained a small minority faith in Europe with limited demographic or institutional impact. In short, "Judeo-Christian" is a rhetorical scam in the sense that it papers over profound incompatibilities for political utility, often advancing a diluted, pluralistic, or supersessionist agenda at the expense of clear Christian particularity. It is not a neutral descriptor of shared heritage but a constructed phrase that serves whoever wields it—frequently to the detriment of rigorous theological honesty.
Further reading
- Andrew Fraser: The WASP Question, Arktos, 2011
