The End of Days or the Beginning of a New Era? American Jewish Interfaith Relations in the Age of Evangelicalism
In examining the history of American Jewish interfaith relations in the 1960s and 1970s, this paper argues that Jewish organizations’ engagement with theologically conservative Christians occurred at a time of fracture for Jews and liberal Protestants. Evangelicals, who had moved from a subculture to the American mainstream in the postwar period, appealed to American Jewish religious and communal leaders as new allies given their increased influence in American politics and their overwhelming embrace of Israel. This new conservative Christian hegemony presented American Jewish organizations with an opportunity to establish the first sustained dialogue between Jews and evangelicals in the United States, but it would require a reevaluation of communal priorities.