Evangelizing the chosen people : missions to the Jews in America, 1880-2000
With this book, Yaakov Ariel offers the first comprehensive history of Protestant evangelization of Jews in America to the present day. Based on unprecedented research in missionary archives as well as Jewish writings, the book analyzes the theology and activities of both the missions and the converts and describes the reactions of the Jewish community, which in turn helped to shape the evangelical activity directed toward it. Ariel delineates three successive waves of evangelism, the first directed toward poor Jewish immigrants, the second toward American-born Jews trying to assimilate, and the third toward Jewish baby boomers influenced by the counterculture of the Vietnam War era. After World War II, the missionary impulse became almost exclusively the realm of conservative evangelicals, as the more liberal segments of American Christianity took the path of interfaith dialogue. As Ariel shows, these missionary efforts have profoundly influenced Christian-Jewish relations. Jews have seen the missionary movement as a continuation of attempts to delegitimize Judaism and to do away with Jews through assimilation or annihilation. But to conservative evangelical Christians, who support the State of Israel, evangelizing Jews is a manifestation of goodwill toward them
Print Book, English, ©2000
University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, ©2000
History
x, 367 pages ; 25 cm.
9780807825662, 9780807848807, 0807825662, 0807848808
43708450
Part I: The rise of the movement to evangelize the Jews, 1880-1920
Eschatology and mission
The missionary work
The converts
The Jewish reaction
The reputation of the missions. Part II: Years of quiet growth, 1920-1965
Choosing sides
Getting acquainted with the Jews
The Yiddish translation of the New Testament
The Moody Bible Institute and the training of missionaries to the Jews
The rise of the American Board of Missions to the Jews
Tension and rivalry
The rise and fall of the Presbyterian Mission to the Jews
The Chicago Hebrew Mission
American missionary work in Israel
The converts' community
The missionary impulse
A less heated reaction. Part III: The coming of age, 1965-2000
The changing times
Jews for Jesus and the evangelization of a new generation
The rise of Messianic Judaism
The missionaries become real
The new face of the missionary movement
Conclusion
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