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Harry Underwood

On Euro-Christian Judeophobia and religious majoritarianism

  •  Even before Israel was created (or re-created) as a nation-state, the religion of Judaism was treated by both its adherents and detractors as a religion and ethnicity concurrently. For its adherents, the ethnicity was wrapped up within the religion after the forced disappearance of Judea as a recognizable entity (let alone a state) of the Levant, and then shipped throughout the resulting diaspora. For its detractors, the religion poses, and has long posed, a small but almost frightfully bright stumbling block to their various aspirations (most of which are expansionist, irredentist, revanchist, territorialist and/or totalitarian in their tone and motivation), and even those non-Jews whose ancestors were practicing Jews were suspected of being allies of “the other” and "the evil". The sentiments of both groups continue to this day, and continue to influence the policies of various individuals and groups who are emotionally involved with both the goings on of the tiny state of Israel and the fate of the persistent-minority Jewish diaspora in Western countries.

    As anti-Semitism, particularly the most expressed type of such irrationality which primarily exists in the European continent, precedes the establishment of Israel, Israeli identity and the Hebrew culture, anti-Semitism/Judeophobia (and its related pathological obsessions) is best addressed as a problem of the majoritarian ideologies which incubated the sentiment in its various incarnations and facets throughout the histories of both Europe and Christianity. While Europe primarily served to spread the obsession and knowledge of the obsession throughout the non-Western world, Christianity served to spread and snowball the obsession throughout Europe in the late Roman and post-Roman era. Its two most cited sources in the ancient pre-Roman and proto-Roman period are Greece and Egypt, both of which had intimate and alternating relationships with Judea from antiquity; the latter enjoys a role within the semi-mythological history of the Judeans and their predecessors as oppressors, imperialists and slavemasters, while the Greeks retain a role as oppressors in the post-Alexandrian period, leading to the Maccabean revolt and the short-lived independence under the Hasmonean local dynasty. At best, Judeophobia has mostly, initially originated from poor cultural and political relationships between heavyweights of the ancient near-Levant.

    So what of breaking up the historical roots of Judeophobia in Europe so as to set a standard for similar endeavors throughout the world? Intrastate federalism, proportional parliamentary representation, well-connectedness and the breakup of state relationships with ethnocultural identities/grievances/motivations have all been a part of combating and ameliorating the loose ends which had been left by the World War I allies to, eventually, the Nazis. However, the breakup of religious and ideological monopolies and strangleholds has yet to be fully addressed or implemented. 

    Atheism of the state should be a start, but the breakup of religious majorities over national populations is most likely to be accomplished in the non-profit, non-government sector by actively promoting the ordination and blessing of a wide and widely-divergent variety of religious adherences and affiliations, including the various NRMs. The best that is hoped from the unconditional blessing and enabling of various religious adherences is that the ideological breakup in host countries will lead to a de-emphasization and de-obsession of European and Christian relationships with religious minorities, as the deflation of the monopoly will likely result in a more minority-welcoming and self-assimilating/integrating approach by the European peoples. 

    Hence, religious competition needs to be encouraged in Europe, as it has been encouraged in North America for quite some time. If a competitive religious marketplace can succeed in the breakup of religious monopolies over state populations and cultural identities in Europe, then perhaps it can succeed elsewhere outside the Western world, including Saudi Arabia and other countries with existing prohibitions against conversion and proselytization away from state-preferred majority religions.

    My belief is that the ULC movement, with its universal ordination, and the Unitarian Universalists, with their universal reconciliation, are at the pinnacle of creating and maintaining (respectively) this religious and ideological freedom and diversity. Both theologies are, in my opinion, necessary and vital in these days and times, and are the most fundamental bulwarks against ethnic- and religiously-motivated fear and violence, as was witnessed through Euro-Christian and other histories.