Antisemitism and Christianity

There is good evidence that anti-Semitism in Europe (and later America) has its roots in this verse:

Matthew 27:25 Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.

The author of the gospel was probably trying to exonerate Pilate, to make the text palatable to the gentiles, and was probably refering to the destruction of the Temple when he said his blood was on their hands. However, the effect was to have the whole Jewish race pronounced guilty of deicide. The so-called "Blood Curse", the Jews as the "Christ killers".

We can see the early church fathers took it that way in many quotes:

If someone had killed your son. could you stand the sight of him or the sound of his greeting? Wouldn't you try to get away from him as if he were an evil demon; as if he were the Devil himself? The Jews killed the Son of your Master......... Will you so dishonor Him as to respect and cultivate His Murderers, the men who crucified Him?
- John Chrysostum C. 390 CE

Chrysostum wrote a whole series of homilies on this subject.

You can hear the wailing and lamentations of each of the prophets, wailing and lamenting characteristically over the calamities which will overtake the Jewish people because of their impiety to Him who had been foretold. How their Kingdom . . . would be utterly destroyed after their sin against Christ; how their Father's law would he abrogated, they themselves deprived of their ancient worship, robbed of the independence of their forefathers, and made slaves of their enemies instead of free men.
- Eusebius c. 340 CE

For the circumcision according to the flesh; which is from Abraham, was given for a sign, that you may be separated from other nations and from us, and that you alone may suffer that which you now justly suffer, and that your land may be desolate and your cities burned with fire, and that strangers may eat your fruit in your; presence and not one of you may go up to Jerusalem.'
- Justin Martyr C. 160 CE

Quotes from here:
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/g/goodman/lowe.htm

We may thus assert in utter confidence that the Jews will not return to their earlier situation, for they have committed the most abominable of crimes, in forming this conspiracy against the Savior of the human race…hence the city where Jesus suffered was necessarily destroyed, the Jewish nation was driven from its country, and another people was called by God to the blessed election.
- Origen of Alexandria

The synagogue is worse than a brothel…it is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts…the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults…the refuge of brigands and dabauchees, and the cavern of devils. It is a criminal assembly of Jews…a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ… a house worse than a drinking shop…a den of thieves, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils, a gulf and a abyss of perdition."…"I would say the same things about their souls… As for me, I hate the synagogue…I hate the Jews for the same reason.
- John Chrysostom

Yes, you Jews. I say, do I address you; you, who till this very day, deny the Son of God. How long, poor wretches, will ye not believe the truth? Truly I doubt whether a Jew can be really human… I lead out from its den a monstrous animal, and show it as a laughing stock in the amphitheater of the world, in the sight of all the people. I bring thee forward, thou Jew, thou brute beast, in the sight of all men.
- Peter the Venerable

Their rotten and unbending stiffneckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without pity of anyone.
- John Calvin

Quotes from here:
http://www.yashanet.com/library/fathers.htm

This page details numerous anti-Semitic events through history (note: the first few were not at the hands of Christians, but the vast majority were):
http://www.hearnow.org/caljp.html

A page detailing a number of attacks of Christians against Jews in Russia (Pogroms) between 1880 and 1920, when some 60,000 Jews were murdered:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/pogroms.html

As Jesus said,  Ye shall know them by their fruits. We can certainly see the fruits of the anti-Semitic core of Christianity.

Martin Luther

Luther's blueprint for the holocaust:

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. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. ...
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. ...
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. ...
Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. ...
Fifth, I advise that safe­conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. ...
Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. ...

It is worth noting Martin Luther's influence on Hitler:

I do insist on the certainty that sooner or later—once we hold power—Christianity will be overcome and the German church, without a Pope and without the Bible, and Luther, if he could be with us, would give us his blessing.

To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.

A History of Atrocities

The third wave of crusaders during the first crusade went on a Jew killing spree in Rhineland, killing 5000 in 1096.

In 1190 nearly all the Jwes in Norwich, England were slaughtered, and 57 in nearby St Edmunds. 500 died at York.

1221 an anti-Jewish riot in Erfurt.

1236 Crusades kill around 3000 in Anjou and Poitou.

1241 progrom in Frankfurt, 180 killed.

1264 massacre in London.

1288 104 Jews killed ion Bonn.

1321 around 5000 massacred in central France after a false accusation

1348 Jews blamed for the black death. More than 200 communities destroyed. Around 3000 Jews are massacred the following year in Erfurt, and many more in Speyer, Worms, Berlin, Breslau, Cologne, Strasbourg, Mainz (over 6000), as well as Brussels the next year.

The Brussels massacre, in 1370, due to false accusations of host desecretation. Although only a handful were killed, this is notable as it was still celebrated until shortly after WW2.

1474 Christiams slaughters around 360 Jews in Cartellone, Sicily

1492, the year Columbus found the Americas, 200,000 Jews are expelled from many European countries (after being robbed first, of course).

In 1506 a crypt-Jew dares to express doubt about a miraculous vision, and over 2000 are killed , led by Dominican monks.

1543, Martin Luther publishes "On the Jews and Their Lies", advocating burning down synogogues and persecuting Jews.

1648-55 Cossacks slaughter up to 100,000 Jews as part of the Khmelnytsky Uprising.

1881-84 Pogroms across Russia

Nazi Germany

The horror of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany - a predominantly Christian country - was the ultimate outcome.

These were some of the reasons why most Christians in Germany welcomed the rise of Nazism in 1933. They were also persuaded by the statement on “positive Christianity” in Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform, which read:

"We demand the freedom of all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good."

Despite the open antisemitism of this statement and its linkage between confessional "freedom" and a nationalistic, racialized understanding of morality, many Christians in Germany at the time read this as an affirmation of Christian values.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005206

The Nazi leaders had questionable religious beliefs, often a mix of Christian and Pagan beliefs with the occult thrown in. It would be dubious to call any of them actually Christians.

However, the rank-and-file Nazis were predominantly Christian:

The German census of May 1939 indicates that 54 percent of Germans considered themselves Protestant and 40 percent considered themselves Catholic

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gmuw9TvbFdUC&pg=PA10&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

With a population that is 94% Christian, we can be sure that most of the Nazis were themselves Christian. Furthermore, it is clear that the Nazi leaders targeted their speeches at Christians, and Hitler often mentioned Jesus in his speeches.

Still others actively supported Nazism, calling themselves “storm troopers of Jesus Christ.” As a result, as Protestant churches responded to National Socialism, some struggled to preserve the independence of their churches from politics and government, while others sought to claim a central place for Christianity in Nazi Germany.

https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-5/protestant-churches-and-nazi-state

Both politicians and church leaders took advantage of the public appeal of church liturgy to Nazify churches and re-Christianize Germany. On February 3, 1933, four days after Hitler was appointed Chancellor, pastor Joachim Hossenfelder led a service of thanksgiving at the Mariankirche in Berlin. He used 1 Corinthians 15:57 as his sermon text: “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Solberg 147).

On March 20, 1933, Protestant church leader Otto Dibelius preached at a service in the Nikolaikirche in Berlin. His sermon text was Romans 8:31, “If God be for us, who can be against us.” Afterward, Hermann Goering joyfully shook his hand.

https://www.theologycorner.net/apocalypseandanalysis/2018/1/3/what-was-a-nazi-church-service-like

This web site features numerous images of Nazis, showing their Christian influence
http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm

Eckart further associated the release of Satan to the emancipation of the Jews of Europe. In other words, with Jewish emancipation, Satan had been loosed, and his world rule via the Jews was imminent. Eckart ended his piece with a reference to Revelation 12, writing, “for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”9
World War I was now reinterpreted as being part of a much larger battle between the forces of good and evil, Aryan and Jew. Eckart wrote: “this war was a religious war, that one finally sees clearly! A war between light and darkness, truth and lies, Christ and Antichrist.” He concluded: “When light clashes with darkness, there is no coming to terms! Indeed there is only the struggle for life and death, till the annihilation of one or the other. Consequently the World War has only apparently come to an end.”10
Eckart and the Nazis came to believe that they were a chosen elect whose divinely inspired mission was to save the world by defeating the satanic Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. For those who converting to Nazism, their once confused and meaningless lives were suddenly transformed. They had a nation, a race, indeed a world to save. And if this meant sacrificing their lives to fulfill this holy mission, then they would gladly do so.11

https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/newsletter/posts/2015/2015-08-04-Redles2.html

Further Comments

Observations by other commentators:

These anti-Semitic statements were and still are the principal cause of all persecutions, oppressions and pogroms in which Jews have suffered.  These anti-Semitic accounts in the New Testament have taught mankind to hate the Jew.  As long as the New Testament continues in print (at least in its present form) the Jew will be hated.  Here are but a few verses from where Christianity borrowed its anti-Semitic sentiments.
“The children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8.12)
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!  Behold your house is left unto you desolate.” (Matthew 23.37,38) Then answered all the people (Jews) and said, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25). 1 “But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you to councils, and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten” (Mark 13.9)

http://jdstone.org/cr/files/antisemitisminthenewtestament_1.htm

As a Christian, it seems to me that Christianity has sadly played a significant role both in anti-Judaism and the persecution of the Jewish people. The teachings of various established churches included the charge that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, and thus they deserved to be punished. The prolonged suffering and dispersal of Jews among the nations were seen as just retribution for their monumental crime of killing God.

http://int.icej.org/news/commentary/sad-legacy-christian-anti-semitism

In the first millennium of the Christian era, leaders in the European Christian (Catholic) hierarchy developed or solidified as doctrine ideas that: all Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ; the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and the scattering of the Jewish people was punishment both for past transgressions and for continued failure to abandon their faith and accept Christianity.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007170

Addendum

I have removed this quote by Augustine from he above text, as there is some question as to whether this was really about the Jews.

How hateful to me are the enemies of your Scripture! How I wish that you would slay them (the Jews) with your two-edged sword, so that there should be none to oppose your word! Gladly would I have them die to themselves and live to you!
- St. Augustine