Church's Ministry among Jewish People

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Church's Ministry Among Jewish People (short CMJ, English for "Church service among Jews") is the name of an Anglican missionary society. It was founded in London in 1809 and has since built hospitals, schools and churches in over a hundred cities.

history

Since the Reformation , the idea of ​​evangelizing Jews in the context of various biblical passages (for example Romans 1,16  ELB or Romans 11,12–15 ELB ) slowly arose  , which was increasingly widespread in England at the beginning of the 19th century. The gospel was to be brought near "to the Jews as well as to the Greeks" . This idea was taken up by the son of a Frankish rabbi, Joseph Frey , who believed in Jesus Christ and began his missionary work among the poor Jews in East End London from 1805 .

On February 15, 1809 , he and a few other CMJ founded under the name London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, LJS (London Jews' Society) for short . In the first few years the pietistic work of the mission extended exclusively to the Jews in London and some other places in the United Kingdom and consisted primarily of sermons and lectures in houses and churches in East London, the translation of the New Testament into Old Hebrew and Yiddish and the construction of two schools for Jewish children, one for girls and one for boys. However, they did not want to keep the activities limited to England and so in 1817 a co-founder of the community, Lewis Way , went to mainland Europe with two friends to see whether and in what way activities among Jews were possible. When this trip proved a success for him and the LJS, branches outside the British Isles were established in Amsterdam and Basel in 1820 , as well as in Cochin , Calcutta and Madras in India.

The company's first branches in what is now Germany were also founded in 1820, followed by a subsidiary in Berlin in 1822, where it was called the Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews . Shortly afterwards, further subsidiaries were founded from here, for example in Posen , Breslau and Königsberg . In 1834 a free school was established. The Prussian subsidiary was founded by the kings there, starting with Friedrich Wilhelm III. , supported.

Portal of a former CMJ hospital in Jerusalem

The implementation of the decision to settle a branch of the mission in Jerusalem , the city that traditionally means most to the Jews, began in 1822 when Joseph Wolff came to Jerusalem on a trip through the Middle East and worked there for some time . From 1823 Lewis Way visited the Levant with WB Lewis of the LJS , followed in 1825 by Pastor John Nicolayson and Doctor George Edward Dalton. All encountered great difficulty in establishing a permanent establishment of the London company. The Ottoman rulers forbade any distribution of the biblical writings that had been brought with them, among the rabbis of Jerusalem were outspoken enemies of the followers of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah , and even the representatives of the Christian denominations that had long been based in Jerusalem rejected a Protestant presence in the city . In addition, George Dalton fell seriously ill and died on January 25, 1826. A few years later, despite all the obstacles, John Nicolayson remained permanently in Jerusalem as the representative of society. Through the newly created consulate of the United Kingdom in Jerusalem in 1839, British and other Protestant Christians enjoyed unprecedented protection. In spite of Islamic law, which strictly forbids the building of new churches, the construction of the Christ Church on the west hill of Jerusalem was completed in 1849 , as it was an exception as the private chapel of the British consul. As early as 1841, at the suggestion of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, the Prussian-English diocese of Jerusalem was established and the ordination of Rabbi Michael Solomon Alexander , who came to believe in Jesus Christ and became the first Anglican bishop in Jerusalem , took place. This was followed by the construction of an industrial building in which olive wood products were made, a hospital for poor Jews, and, under Alexander's successor, Samuel Gobat, a girls 'and boys' school, primarily for Jewish children.

The Jews living in the Diaspora - which almost all of them were at this time - were spread across Christian and Muslim countries with a few exceptions . A country with a large Jewish population was Abyssinia , to which four missionaries trained in St. Chrischona were sent in 1855 . With the permission of Emperor Theodor II, they distributed Bibles, New Testaments and Psalms in the Amharic language among Christians and Jews and set up schools in Gondar and in the village of Awora, which is inhabited by Beta Israel . However, in the 1860s the policy of the emperor turned around, who due to misunderstandings not only arrested the English consul Charles Duncan Cameron , but also the missionaries whom he held hostage. In this situation the British Ethiopia expedition of 1868 under Robert Napier took place , during which the hostages were freed.

The pogroms against the Jews in Russia from 1881 affected the Society to the extent that many of the surviving Jews fled to Europe and the Ottoman Empire, where numerous mission stations provided first aid. The LJS set up a fund of 100,000 pounds especially for the refugees . Although many Jews - especially in Jerusalem - were critical of London society or even avoided all contact, many of the refugees appreciated the help, so many even that the Jerusalem Mission was financially overburdened and only survived through donation campaigns in England could hold.

The First World War meant the Society for the Jerusalem branch that large parts of the work are set had. The British employees were allowed to return to the United Kingdom to prevent attacks by the Ottomans. Many of the Society's facilities were confiscated to house soldiers and horses.

In the Third Reich , the mission to the Jews was generally rejected. For example, the German Christians , who represented the National Socialist ideology, wrote in their guidelines: “We see the mission to the Jews as a grave danger to our nationality. It is the entrance gate of foreign blood into our national body. Besides the Outer Mission it has no raison d'etre. We reject the mission to the Jews in Germany as long as the Jews have citizenship and there is thus a risk of racial concealment and hybridization. The Holy Scriptures also have something to say about holy anger and failing love. In particular, marriage between Germans and Jews is to be forbidden. ”The Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews also had great difficulties during this time. In 1938 the interior of the company's headquarters on Kastanienallee in Berlin was devastated by a roll-up command , and in January 1941 the Gestapo closed the headquarters completely. In the process, the company's extensive library was probably largely destroyed; only a small part has passed into the Berlin State Library .

George Leonard Carey was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in more than a century to refuse to patronize CMJ in the 1990s . In an interview he justified this decision with the fact that he "took office as president or patron of more than 400 organizations and had to clean up". In addition, he does not think the patronage is necessarily compatible with his presidency of the Council of Christians and Jews.

Today, CMJ consists of eight national branches in Israel , the United Kingdom , the United States , Canada , South Africa , Australia , Ireland, and Hong Kong . In Israel there is a church (the Christ Church in Jerusalem ), a school (the Anglican International School in Jerusalem ) and three guest houses (Beit Bracha in Migdal , Beit Immanuel in Jaffa and the Christ Church guest house in Jerusalem).

aims

The eponymous endeavor to convey the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth to the Jews was decisive for the foundation of the LJS. Special emphasis is placed on ensuring that the belief in Jesus as the Tanakh 's promised Mashiach (משיח) no pagan distortion of Judaism represents, but is consistent with the Hebrew Bible. In the Christ Church in Jerusalem , for example, an altar cross was omitted in order not to give visiting Jews the impression that a strange god was being worshiped here. The Austrian-Jewish writer Ludwig August Frankl wrote in the travelogue of his visit to Jerusalem in 1856: “The church rises up with three pointed arches, between which there are brown wooden beams. No cross on the high altar, instead two black marble tablets on which the Ten Commandments are engraved in Hebrew gold script. On the simple dark wooden benches [...] there was a prayer book in - the Hebrew language that happened to be left lying around . ”According to § 2 of the statutes of the Berlin Society , it was important not to have any earthly secondary intentions in the mission. There it says: “Society will never attract proselytes by earthly advantages which they hope Jews convert to Christianity , but like the Lord and his apostles , they will try to gain truth by teaching them.” But that is not the only thing Goal of society. In addition to this, Kelvin Crombie names three other goals:

First, CMJ wants to bring the Church back to its Jewish roots. For this purpose, for example, informative trips under the name Shoresh Tours ( Hebr. שורש for "root") to Israel are offered, through which a better understanding of Judaism and the Holy Land is to be conveyed.

Second, the Society sees a fulfilled prophecy in the Hebrew Bible foretold return of the Jews to Eretz Israel and supports the Jews' Aliyah .

Thirdly, CMJ supports the movements of Jewish Christians or Messianic Jews that are hostile from other sides , for example a messianic Jewish community meets in the Christ Church in Jerusalem.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Crombie: For the Love of Zion. 1991, pp. 12-13.
  2. ^ Fritz: To the Jew First or to the Jew at Last? 2014, p. 28.
  3. ^ Gidney: The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. 1908, pp. 39-44 / 54-56.
  4. London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (Ed.): The Thirteenth Report, (Annual Report) London 1821, pp. 64/85.
  5. ^ Stefanie Pfister: Messianic Jews in Germany. A historical and religious sociological investigation. Lit Verlag, Berlin 2008, p. 60 f.
  6. ^ A b Michaela Scheibe, Heike Pudler, Martin Hollender: Jewish mission and book robbery. The Berlin State Library restitutes prints from the "Library of the Society for the Promotion of Christianity Among the Jews". In: library magazine. No. 2/2010, Berlin State Library, pp. 69–74 ( PDF file; 2.6 MB ).
  7. ^ Anne Purschwitz: Jew or Prussian Citizen? The emancipation debate in the field of tension between government policy, religion, bourgeoisie and the public (1780–1847). In: Manfred Hettling, Paul Nolte (eds.): Bürgerertum New Series (= studies on civil society. Volume 16). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2018, pp. 252–257.
  8. Crombie: For the Love of Zion. 1991, pp. 17-18.
  9. ^ Gidney: The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. 1908, p. 120.
  10. Crombie: For the Love of Zion. 1991, p. 4.
  11. ^ Gidney: The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. 1908, pp. 237-243.
  12. ^ Gidney: The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. 1908, p. 345.
  13. ^ Gidney: The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. 1908, p. 368.
  14. ^ Alan Moorehead : The Blue Nile, Hamilton, London 1962, p. 211.
  15. ^ Alan Moorehead : The Blue Nile, Hamilton, London 1962, p. 266.
  16. Perry: Jewish Mission. 2006, p. 120 ff.
  17. Perry: Jewish Mission. 2006, p. 183 f.
  18. Kurt Dietrich Schmidt (ed.): The Confessions and Basic Statements on the Church Question of 1933, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1934, p. 136.
  19. Cornelia Briel: Confiscated, blackmailed, captured. Nazi looted property, Reichstauschstelle and Prussian State Library between 1933 and 1945. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 192.
  20. Be Generous! In: Huw Spanner. Interviews. Retrieved June 17, 2019 .
  21. CMJ Locations. In: CMJ USA. Retrieved July 5, 2019 .
  22. Welcome. In: Anglican International School Jerusalem. Retrieved July 5, 2019 .
  23. Crombie: Restoring Israel. 2008, pp. 184-189.
  24. Crombie: For the Love of Zion. 1991, p. 2.
  25. Ludwig August Frankl : To Jerusalem! Vol. 2, Baumgärtner's Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1858 ( digitized versionhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fia801406.us.archive.org%2F7%2Fitems%2Fnachjerusalem01frangoog%2Fnachjerusalem01frangoog.pdf~GB%3D~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ% 3D ~ double-sided% 3D ~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D , PDF file; 13.5 MB), p. 70.
  26. Ludwig Couard: Society for the promotion of Christianity among the Jews in Berlin. In: Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung. (April 16-19, 1828), No. 31-32, 1828, Col. 245-248 / 253-256.
  27. Crombie: For the Love of Zion. 1991, p. 3.
  28. Shoresh Study Tours to Israel. In: CMJ USA. Retrieved January 7, 2019 . It says here: “We take into account the fact that historically Yeshua acted and spoke as a Jew among Jews in the Land of Israel. Our study tours are designed to give you new ears to hear biblical teachings in their original context and to help you grasp the Jewish roots of the New Testament faith. "
  29. About us. In: Christ Church Jerusalem. Retrieved July 5, 2019 .