French evangelicals respond to anti-Semitism with a theological colloquium

“Ideological, political and religious justifications of the hate” against Jews should be stopped, the body representing 70% of evangelical Christians in France says.

The National Council of Evangelicals in France (CNEF) has organised a colloquium on the rise of anti-Semitic attitudes, which have led to an increase in insults, threats and crimes.

According to the organisers, movements on opposite ends such as radical Islamism and fascism share strong anti-Semitic attitudes, “disguised as anti-Zionism or anti-racism”.

Christians who have been “guilty of nourishing this hatred in ancient history and long complicit of its consequences by their silence in recent history, cannot remain indifferent to this new rise of anti-Semitism”, the CNEF says.

The one-day conference will be held on October 5 in Paris. Participants will include Richard Prasquier, former President of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, Annette Wieviorka, French historian specialised in the Holocaust, Étienne Lhermenault, President of the CNEF, Jacques Buchhold, Professor of New Testament at the Faculty of the Free Evangelical Theology of Vaux -sur-Seine.

SOCIAL CONTEXT

In the last 15 years, anti-Semitic aggressions have increased in France. The killing in a Jewish school of Toulouse (2012), the attack against the Hyper Cacher in Paris (2015) and the assassination of Sarah Halimi and Mireille Knoll (2017 and 2018) have been some of the most tragic cases.