The profound relationship between anti-abortion activism and Anti-Semitism

The so-called Pro-Life movement claims all kinds of righteousness and virtue. Some of its advocates have recently made outrageous statements, including Illinois Governor candidate Darren Bailey, who said “The attempted extermination of the Jews of World War II doesn’t even compare on a shadow of the life that has been lost with abortion,” he said.

Now, that's a disturbing comment all on its own. For one thing, the word 'attempted' used by Bailey is a perverse hint that perhaps the job begun by the Holocaust was somehow not completed. The fact that more than six million Jewish people were slaughtered in gas chambers, murdered mass execution style, succumbed to hunger or disease, or were worked to death in concentration camps doesn't seem to register with Bailey as any sort of human tragedy. Those people are just "numbers" to him––and what––the inevitable product of their resistance to Christian approval?

Only half reformed

Even Martin Luther, the author of the Reformation, was a noted anti-Semitic. His impatience with the refusal of Jews to comply with the demands of the Christian church drove his frustration. “I would willingly do my best for your people, but I will not contribute to your [Jewish] obstinacy by my kind actions. You must find another intermediary with my good Lord,”?he once wrote to a Jewish associate looking for collaboration.

But Luther also recognized that Christian attempts to convert Jews were less than astute. “If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian. They have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings; they have done little else than deride them and seize their property. When they baptize them they show them nothing of Christian doctrine or life, but only subject them to popishness and monkery ... If the apostles, who also were Jews, had dealt with us Gentiles as we Gentiles deal with the Jews, there would never have been a Christian among the Gentiles …” he wrote.

Anti-Semitism persists

It appears that among some proponents of the Christian religion, the attitude toward Jewish people hasn't improved all that much. Depicting the Jewish lives lost to the Holocaust as a seemingly small cost to the history of the human race is one of the most despicable forms of Christian anti-Semitism imaginable.

But so-called "Christians" like Darren Bailey are so obsessed with their present political priorities and ideology, they feel comfortable writing off millions of lives to make a point that the practice of abortion even for medically justified reasons, or because a woman was raped or the victim of incest... is far worse than the wholesale gassing people of people to death in chambers constructed for that sole purpose.

The level of cynicism involved in such pronouncement also disregards the real facts about abortion. That is, every woman seeking an abortion at some point had an interaction with a man equally responsible for her circumstance. The simplest solution to that problem is the regular and easily accessible provision of birth control so that men don't get women pregnant. And why won't some Christians get behind the idea of birth control to help women prevent unwanted pregnancies? Because actions of that nature conflict with anachronistic, patriarchal, literalistically biblical notions that women's bodies are designed for the sole purpose of producing children. Basically, it's still about men spreading their "seed" wherever and whenever they wish. And yes, that's just as disgusting and misogynistic as it sounds.

Scapegoating and gaslighting

And thus, abortion opponents would rather engage in self-righteous scapegoating of women in every circumstance to claim virtue for their opposition to abortion. Such is the case with the likes of Darren Bailey making political points with an evangelical Christian voting block that has made anti-abortion a sentimental pillar of its political priorities. Bailey proves that there are no lengths to which some so-called Christians will go to pursue their aims. Even spouting anti-Semitism by dismissing the Holocaust as a blip in human history is fair game for the legalistic vipers controlling conservative Christianity today. Honestly, such language is a form of gaslighting, a psychological ploy of pitting one horror against another to claim moral equivalency. That is deplorable.

Even more cynically, Bailey doubled down on his claims that Jews themselves support his comparison. As quoted on an NBC 5 story, “The Jewish community themselves have told me that I’m right. That ad went out a day before we met with the Jewish, a day after we met with the Jewish community,” he said. “And (Gov. J.B.) Pritzker, you know, knew that. So the timeliness was no mistake and all the people at the Chabads that we met with and the Jewish rabbis they said ‘no, you’re actually right.’”

That's a classic case of confirmation bias. It's pretty simple these days to find someone in the religious spectrum––even between religions––to support self-righteous claims. That doesn't make them correct, or anywhere near honest. Religious fundamentalists of every stripe find their way to extremist views. There are Christian terrorists as well as Muslim or Jewish terrorists in this world. All of them twist their respective scriptures into reasons to control or kill people from other cultures and faith traditions.

The poison of corrupt Christian tradition

But it's far worse when simple solutions to the world's problems, including abortion, are ignored in favor of dysfunctionally self-righteous excuses to persecute and blame others in the name of religion. That habit of leveraging old or traditional attitudes has a sordid history. As Adolf Hitler himself once stated, the Christian religion persecuted and killed Jews for 1500 years before he turned that tradition into part of his excuse for the Final Solution. “The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc., because it recognized the Jews for what they were …. I recognize the representatives of this race as pestilent for the state and for the Church…”

—Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933

As I wrote in my recently published book Honest-To-Goodness: Why Christianity Needs a Reality Check and How to Make It Happen , "For all his angry words, Hitler also knew how to “talk the talk” and sound like an apologetic Christian to win over hearts and minds. In this calculating rant, Hitler mimics the type of confessional language so valued for Christian approval:?

“In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgment and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and all cowardly servility, that He may grant us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that He may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger.... I am convinced that men created by God should live following the will of the Almighty... If Providence had not guided us I could often never have found these dizzy paths.... Thus it is that we National Socialists, too, have in the depths of our hearts our faith. We cannot do otherwise: no man can fashion world history or the history of peoples unless upon his purpose and his powers there rests the blessings of this Providence.”

-Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Wurzburg on June 27, 1937

Hitler shows us that those who know how to "talk the talk" of self-righteous religion are able to convince people to dispense with crimes against humanity to justify claims to political power and absolute authority over human society. But the disturbing truth, and the relationship between Hitler's actions and Christianity's proxy responsibility for his actions, is that the Christian religion from its outset with the consolidation of Roman power on its side became the one thing Jesus most despised, a legalistic religion consumed with its own authority. The actions of the religion in its crusades, religious wars, inquisitions, persecutions, torture, and colonial occupation of other cultures dwarfs any supposed comparison with the supposedly secular scourge of abortion.

Ignoring truths in favor of power

And in the case of abortion, Christians can't claim the authority of a higher power at all because accusing women of committing a crime against God when full efforts to assist those in crisis are ignored. That is the exact opposite of what Jesus teaches. Scripture tells us that when the Lord was challenged to weigh in on the fate of a woman accused of adultery and about to be stoned, he wrote in the dust and then stated, "Let he that is without sin cast the first stone." By his actions and words, Jesus was indicting the institutional cruelty and vigilante judgment of a society more intent on punishment than compassion. Jesus condemns the use of law to control the hearts and minds of the populace. He would say the same thing about anti-abortion activism today.

As I commented in my book, "The Pro-Life movement acts righteous while ignoring the problem's source and viable prevention measures. If Jesus were to return and weigh in on the issue of abortion, he would tell the entire Pro-Life movement, “If you have to rely on the law to carry out God’s will, you have already failed.”?

We need to stop allowing extremist Christians and politicians from conflating law alone with righteousness. That's neither honest or virtuous at any level. We've recently seen how badly the Christian religion and evangelicals can be exploited by corrupt, amoral politicians seeking their approval while respecting nothing about the core traditions of the faith. You know who we're talking about. But he's not alone in those moral crimes.

Christopher Cudworth is the author of the book Honest-To-Goodness: Why Christianity Needs a Reality Check and How to Make It Happen. He is available for speaking engagements and forums. He can be reached through Linkedin or at [email protected]

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