Dr Jim West is a Baptist preacher.
Dr Jim West says this of the anti-Nazi activist and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who plotted to kill Hitler:
Personally I never really cared for his theology. Too whiny. Plus plotting to murder someone, even a horrible someone… well, it’s just worse than anything Pat Robertson or Fred Phelps ever said.
If you’re a Christian and you want to kill Hitler, that makes you worse than God-hates-fags-Jews-and-Sweden pastor Fred Phelps.
Dr West thinks that Luther was not antisemitic – even when he wrote his tirade against the Jews, On the Jews and their Lies.
Here are some excerpts from Luther’s tirade against the Jews, On the Jews and their Lies:
Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?
I shall give you my sincere advice:
First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. […] Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God. […] I advise that safeconduct on the highways be abolished completely for them. […]
I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]}. For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants.
My essay, I hope, will furnish a Christian (who in any case has no desire to become a Jew) with enough material not only to defend himself against the blind, venomous Jews, but also to become the foe of the Jews’ malice, lying, and cursing, and to understand not only that their belief is false but that they are surely possessed by all devils.
Luther didn’t hate the Jews- even when he wrote his tirade. He hated falsehood. And he hated falsehood whether it was found in Rome or Wittenberg. Those poorly informed historical ignoramuses who repeatedly denounce Luther as an anti-semite are simply wrong. They know nothing of Luther nor anything of the history of the Church. All they know is their own biases and prejudices.
Dr. West also admires the theology of Gerhard Kittel, and wants to rehabilitate Kittel.
Kittel was a theologian who discussed the extermination of the Jews as a solution to the Jewish question, but dismissed it along practical grounds. Kittel eventually settled on making Jews second-class citizens to Germans, and later joined the Nazi party.
Dr West appears to lend to credence to two distinct antisemitic theologies, separated by four centuries.
The organisers of the Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 conference have endorsed Dr West’s website, and tried to help Dr West gain followers on Twitter.
When I highlighted this story, Dr West responded on his blog. Rather than address the substantive issues, he wrote:
Just a quick observation: Christian Zionists, who speak so much about love of Israel and God, are quicker to malign, misrepresent, and attempt to deceive concerning those with whom they disagree than Satan himself.
It’s best – if some feckless and dim ‘Christian’ zionist tries to interact with you- to ignore them and let them wallow in their own cesspool of vile Hagee-esque idiocy. They aren’t interested in conversation, they are only interesting in hearing you say something which they can then distort and post on their silly (and widely ignored) websites so as to demonize you and exalt their own heretical anti-christianity.
He then sent a Twitter message to Christ at the Checkpoint 2012:
– tell ya what, side with peace and with the oppressed and the christian zionists come at you with every slander they can
To which Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 replied:
@drjewest Yep – they sure do.
At Christ at the Checkpoint 2010, Dutch missionary-turned-antizionist activist Brother Andrew, spoke with Stephen Sizer about the need for a Christian jihad. Both men agreed that Islamist jihadists had “every right” to attack the West.
Stephen Sizer is an organiser of Christ at the Checkpoint 2012, having spent a large part of his ministry assisting Holocaust deniers and Islamists in the Christian-hating government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ben White will also attend Christ at the Checkpoint 2012, as well as Messianic theologian Richard Harvey.
Indeed, Christians from various denominations will speak at the event. Samuel Rodriguez, the President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, is speaking. Also attending are popular US preacher (and former “spiritual adviser” to Bill Clinton) Tony Campolo, and President of the World Evangelical Alliance and Asia Evangelical Alliance, Sang-Bok David Kim.
The impressive range of Christian theologians adds a scholarly gravitas to Checkpoint 2012.
Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 claims to be about peace, yet the organisers are willing to back a man who openly promotes a pro-Nazi theologian Gerhard Kittel, and defends On The Jews and their Lies as a work against the falsehood of Jews.
Is this the return of overt antisemitic thought to mainstream academic theology?
Did it really leave all nominally-Christian theological institutions for good in 1945?
