“I think it’s a fair question to think about,” Sauvé said.
Notably, antisemitic rhetoric throughout history has often been couched in language of “the Jewish question.”
Sauvé clarified that he believes that “if you begin to answer every problem with ‘the Jews,’ you’ve gone off somewhere” and joked that he hoped his remarks were “fair, balanced, [and] nuanced.”
“I want to be able to critique Jewish ideology on the exact same level that we regularly critique Muslim ideology and never get in trouble for,” Sauvé later said, “except probably among Muslims, which is kind of scary.”
Arguing that a “bad theological element” has been baked into the conversation, Sauvé said that questioning whether Italian immigrants integrated into American society “well enough” has “less theological baggage” than “the Jew question.”
Wolfe characterized the backlash that typically results from speaking this way as “a Jesus juke.”
Webbon argued that modern Israel and the Jewish people are “not Christian adjacent.”
“Israel is not hated because of a whiff of Christ. Israel has no whiff of Christ,” Webbon said. “They are hated, if anything, not because they’re lumped into Christianity but because they are lumped into whiteness.”
“If there is a global animosity toward Israel, it is not a whiff of Christianity, a whiff of Christ. It’s not because they’re Christian adjacent—I won’t let them have that,” Webbon said. “They hate Christ.”
Wolfe then said that American Christians should reject the idea of “Judeo-Christian” values.
“If we say that America is a Judeo-Christian country, then it can’t be a Christian country,” Wolfe said. “And when we talk about a Judeo-Christian ethic…it’s code for essentially a Universalist.”
“It’s essentially saying, ‘Any and all, come here, nations of the world,’” Wolfe continued. “So we have to get rid of that.”
ChurchLeaders has reached out to Brian Suavé and Dr. Stephen Wolfe for comment and will update this article in the event of a response.
