Judeo-Christian Tradition Analysis
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Ohio Governor John Kasich, whose bid for the presidency appears to be running on fumes, announced earlier this week that the U.S. should develop a federal agency to export “Judeo-Christian values.”
No surprise there. Most Republican candidates have worked to appeal to religious conservatives, and using the buzz phrase “Judeo-Christian” is a tried and true way to do it. But in point of fact, there really is no “Judeo-Christian tradition.” Said tradition is nothing but a Cold War invention that elides thousands of years of history in the service of identity politics.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting there are no shared values between Christians and Jews. There are. But there are shared values between …show more content…
Its invention has been exhaustively examined by U.S. historians. Martin Marty's Modern American Religion treated the subject extensively. The historian Mark Silk has a helpful article summarizing the creation of the term, and Deborah Dash Moore has written about how the experience of World War II G.I.s led to a shared identity among Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Even as early as the 1960s, Arthur Cohen was decrying what he called The Myth of the Judeo-Christian …show more content…
DeMille’s film.
So when Kasich mentions exporting “Judeo-Christian values,” he is walking well-trodden political ground, and he apparently knows this, pointing out that this tactic of Western evangelism was used in the Soviet era. But just as it was then, it still is an intentionally exclusionary ploy, a dog whistle suggesting that in order to be truly American, even truly Western, one must be Christian or Jewish (even though Jews have only recently been afforded this identity).
The equation of “Judeo-Christian” with “Western” and “democratic” is an ideological construction, not a historical one. The Western tradition (which has not been all good, let’s remember) has seen contributions from the religious, the anti-religious and many in between. But historical accuracy isn’t really the goal here, is it? No, the underlying intent is the assertion of one religious and cultural identity over and against another group of people – in this case Muslims rather than Communists. Needless to say, even if exporting democratic ideals is the goal, why is religious demarcation necessary? India, for example, is a large democracy and is not
Ohio Governor John Kasich, whose bid for the presidency appears to be running on fumes, announced earlier this week that the U.S. should develop a federal agency to export “Judeo-Christian values.”
No surprise there. Most Republican candidates have worked to appeal to religious conservatives, and using the buzz phrase “Judeo-Christian” is a tried and true way to do it. But in point of fact, there really is no “Judeo-Christian tradition.” Said tradition is nothing but a Cold War invention that elides thousands of years of history in the service of identity politics.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting there are no shared values between Christians and Jews. There are. But there are shared values between …show more content…
Its invention has been exhaustively examined by U.S. historians. Martin Marty's Modern American Religion treated the subject extensively. The historian Mark Silk has a helpful article summarizing the creation of the term, and Deborah Dash Moore has written about how the experience of World War II G.I.s led to a shared identity among Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Even as early as the 1960s, Arthur Cohen was decrying what he called The Myth of the Judeo-Christian …show more content…
DeMille’s film.
So when Kasich mentions exporting “Judeo-Christian values,” he is walking well-trodden political ground, and he apparently knows this, pointing out that this tactic of Western evangelism was used in the Soviet era. But just as it was then, it still is an intentionally exclusionary ploy, a dog whistle suggesting that in order to be truly American, even truly Western, one must be Christian or Jewish (even though Jews have only recently been afforded this identity).
The equation of “Judeo-Christian” with “Western” and “democratic” is an ideological construction, not a historical one. The Western tradition (which has not been all good, let’s remember) has seen contributions from the religious, the anti-religious and many in between. But historical accuracy isn’t really the goal here, is it? No, the underlying intent is the assertion of one religious and cultural identity over and against another group of people – in this case Muslims rather than Communists. Needless to say, even if exporting democratic ideals is the goal, why is religious demarcation necessary? India, for example, is a large democracy and is not