Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate
Professor William Nicholls is one of those rare thinkers capable of combining extraordinary scholarship and erudition with a deep understanding of human nature and human aguish. Above all, he is a man of remarkable courage, a courage stemming from his ownsense of morals and faith. Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate is a work with no precedent and no equal. At one level, it is a brilliant, breathtaking chart of the history of Christianity, from its birth to modern times, and the legacy of hatred that it promoted, in both its religious and secular forms. At a second level, this book is designed to delineate Christian responsibility, not only for the butcheries and persecutions of the past, like the Spanish Portuguese Inquisitions, but also andspecifically for the destruction of six million Jews during the Holocaust. As a Christian, deeply committed to the faith of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, Professor Nicholls not only feels the rage for this historical travesty but also the moral, nay, the religious charge, to face up to the burden of this responsibility and to redress this wrong. Written in a scintillating and swift, stripped-down prose, this is a luminous and compelling book that could change forever Christian perception of (Professor José Faur, author, In the Shadow of History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity)Professor Nicholls' history of the Christian origins and perpetuation of, and the church's continuing responsibility for, the antisemitic myth—including that myth's secularized and racist forms—is a marvel of contemporary historical and moral scholarship. We are given a comprehensive, definitive accounting of Christian hate for Jews from its beginnings to today—all in some 500 pages—together with compelling proposals for religious and theological reform and renewal. This historical exposition extends as well to the many moral, theological, political, and psychoanalytic dimensions of the question of antisemitism. We may expect this work to remain authoritative for a long time. It is a gem. (A. Roy Eckardt, University of Oxford)Professor William Nicholls is one of those rare thinkers capable of combining extraordinary scholarship and erudition with a deep understanding of human nature and human aguish. Above all, he is a man of remarkable courage, a courage stemming from his own sense of morals and faith.Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hateis a work with no precedent and no equal. At one level, it is a brilliant, breathtaking chart of the history of Christianity, from its birth to modern times, and the legacy of hatred that it promoted, in both its religious and secular forms. At a second level, this book is designed to delineate Christian responsibility, not only for the butcheries and persecutions of the past, like the Spanish Portuguese Inquisitions, but also and specifically for the destruction of six million Jews during the Holocaust. As a Christian, deeply committed to the faith of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, Professor Nicholls not only feels the rage for this historical travesty but also the moral, nay, thereligiouscharge, to face up to the burden of this responsibility and to redress this wrong. Written in a scintillating and swift, stripped-down prose, this is a luminous and compelling book that could change forever Christian perception of itself and bring a propitious change in Christian attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. (Professor José Faur, author,In the Shadow of History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity)