After decades of successful rapprochement, a conference at the end of June, 2003 revealed that a long-discredited theological aberration is threatening to open a new rupture between Christians and Jews -- in the service of Islam. Replacement theology is, in brief, the idea that Christians are the true inheritors of God's Old Testament promises to Israel. It discards St. Paul's New Testament assurance that God has not rejected His people (Romans 11:2) and, in its extreme form, repudiates the Old Testament after the fashion of the Marcionite sect, which the Church declared heretical in the second century C.E. Marcion articulated his anti-Jewish doctrine in this way around the year 144 C.E.:

"We Christians worship an entirely different God from that of the Jews. We have absolutely nothing in common with them. Their scriptures bear witness to a completely different divinity. Indeed, our Christian religion was founded with the purpose of putting the Jewish heritage to rest once and for all."

Why is the exhumation of musty theological controversies worthy of note? Because these neo-Marcionite replacement theology advocates are mounting in the U.S. and Europe a concerted and thoroughgoing attempt to end Christian support for Israel, particularly among pro-Zionist evangelical Christians. This, of course, plays right into the hands of radical Muslims, who have used Islam's even more virulent form of replacement theology against Jews and Christians alike for centuries in order to justify killing, enslaving, and displacing them.

Sizer's inflammatory writings meld warped, ahistorical sociopolitical "narrative" to heretical theology and blatant hatred of Jews.

The conference, a U.K. Evangelical Alliance "Consultation" on the Holy Land held on June 26, 2003 in London, was addressed by our friend and mentor Bat Ye'or, the renowned historian of Islam's institutionalized injustices toward religious minorities, which have come to be known as dhimmitude. Another speaker was the Anglican Rev. Stephen Sizer. At his website Sizer openly and unapologetically exhorts Christians to accept replacement theology and, on its basis, to repudiate Israel. He advocates:

1) a Marcionite separation of the Gospel from the Old Testament;

2) a reading of the Old Testament from a perspective that denies that modern Jews have any legitimate Jewish identity or continuing standing as the People of God (in opposition to Romans 11:1 and 29);

3) an affirmation that the present state of Israel and its citizens are not heirs to the Biblical Israel, and that because of the sins of the Jews, Israel has lost its covenant with God. That covenant has been transferred to the Palestinians, innocent victims of a demonized Israel;

4) a demonization of the state of Israel to prove the cancellation of the covenant;

5) an aiming of this campaign at evangelical Americans in order to suppress their support for Israel.

Sizer's inflammatory writings meld warped, ahistorical sociopolitical "narrative" to heretical theology and blatant hatred of Jews -- Judenhass. For example, he states that "a return to Jewish nationalism would seem incompatible with this New Testament perspective of the international community of Jesus."

Fiendishly dealing in half-truths and distortions, he claims: "The covenant between Jews and God was conditional on their respect for human rights. The reason they were expelled from the land was that they were more interested in money and power and treated the poor and aliens with contempt. In the United States, politicians dare not criticize Israel because half the funding for both the Democrats and the Republicans comes from Jewish sources."

Not surprisingly, Sizer complements these hateful attitudes with the tired canard about Israel (the Middle East's sole, vibrant, multi-religious and multi-ethnic democracy!) being an apartheid state that he terms "even worse than South Africa." He admits to wishing for Israel's liquidation.

Sizer is not alone. In February 2002, British journalist Melanie Phillips published a chilling article (http://pws.prserv.net/mpjr/mp/sp160202.htm) chronicling the resurgence of replacement theology, catalyzed by Palestinian Christian revisionists. Two neo-Marcionist Palestinian clerics, the brazen Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu El-Assal, and the more "discreet" Father Naim Ateek, are at the vanguard of the new replacement theology movement. As noted by Ms. Phillips, Bishop El-Assal stated regarding Palestinian Christians, "We are the true Israel ... no one can deny me the right to inherit the promises, and after all the promises were first given to

Outpost               - 8 -               September 2003