Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde turned heads at an inaugural prayer service earlier this week when she ended her sermon with a plea for returning president Donald Trump to “be merciful to the stranger” and “honor the dignity of every human being.” Budde’s plea evoked a proud Christian tradition of solidarity with the powerless and marginalized. While often downplayed in politically conservative strains of Christianity, that ethos lies at the historical foundation of the religion. Her reference to the “stranger,” moreover, recalled Jewish Passover traditions, which remind Jews to treat strangers with respect “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Jews have also been known to pen paeans to Christianity’s emancipatory theology, surprising as that may sound. Consider, for example, an article published in the Chicago-based, Yiddish-language newspaper Jewish Labor World in 1908 under the headline “Christianity as a Revolutionary Movement.” Besides presenting a polemical reading of Christianity as a radical movement of justice and equality, it is remarkable for appearing in a Yiddish newspaper—not the first place you’d expect to read an encomium on Christian values.
Jewish Labor World (Idishe Arbayter Velt in Yiddish) was founded in Chicago in 1908. While more obscure than the famous leftwing Yiddish newspapers of the day, such as the anarchist Fraye Arbeter Shtime (the Free Voice of Labor), Idishe Arbayter Velt nevertheless played a significant role in the development of the Jewish socialist and labor movement in Chicago and the wider United States. The paper was published as a weekly until 1917, after which it became a daily and merged with the better-known New York-based Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward). I encountered the paper through my research into Jewish Chicago at the Newberry Library. The article, which I’ve translated from Yiddish, was written by Hillel Rogoff, the Idishe Arbayter Velt’s first editor.
Christianity as a Revolutionary Movement by Hillel Rogoff
The original Christian ideas were revolutionary. The hope prevailed among the followers of the Christian religion that Jesus would soon return to this world with a great military force, and after a bloody war, he would destroy the Roman government and, in its place, found a state in which all people would live equally and fraternally.
Customarily, such a hope appealed strongly to the oppressed masses: the worse the poverty among the proletarians became, the more they were drawn to the Christian movement, which painted such a bright, lofty future for them.
The poverty at that time was the great social question in Rome. Even the Roman government took measures to alleviate people’s suffering. But the government couldn’t give out more than a little bit of aid, and what they gave hardly sufficed at a time when thousands of people were unable to find gainful employment of any kind. Many Roman intellectuals dismissed poverty as a harmless phenomenon. No help was to be found except for from the preachers of Christianity.
First, these Christians cast the whole blame for such troubles upon the ruling classes and awoke in the masses a feeling of revolution against these rulers. Further, they undertook practical work to help the poor. Whoever founded a Christian community took it upon themselves as their first duty to combat the poverty and need of the masses. They introduced communism into the provision of food. All who belonged to the same community ate from the same table and lived together fraternally. If there was one rich man in a community, the others did not lack. He shared each bite with everyone.
The Christian doctrines, the dogmas and ceremonies, did not at that time constitute the main point of Christianity. They were merely the clothes in which the noble work was clad. And because Christianity gave the masses something practical, because the poor man knew that being a member of a Christian community, he would at least not need to suffer any hunger, many thousands of proletarians joined up.
It goes without saying that the Roman government considered these communities a great danger. They openly cursed the Roman aristocracy’s libertine lifestyles and blamed them for the troubles of the land. From the beginning, the government threatened the leaders and agitators and ordered them to stop their propaganda, but that was of little avail. To the contrary, with every day their numbers grew, and what’s more, they grew bitterer in their appeals to Roman society. The government saw that they could not achieve their goals with talk and orders alone, so they decided to drown the whole movement in a sea of blood.
This struggle of the Romans against the first Christians is one of the most appalling chapters of world history. Christians were persecuted with fire and sword. Every day, masses of them were thrown before hungry wild animals. They were forced to endure great suffering; they were routinely burned and roasted and torn limb from limb.
When trouble befell the land, Christians were blamed, and they had difficulty evading the charges. When the harvest was poor, the Roman army was defeated on the battlefield, or an epidemic broke out in the city, Christians were invariably scapegoated. The government already had its own hired servants who used to incite the blind masses in such times; they used to attack the weak, defenseless Christians and treat them a thousand times worse still than the Black Hundreds treated the Jews in the time of terrible pogroms. [The prior sentence is very hard to read due to the poor quality of the scanned microfiche, but I’m fairly confident it is accurate. Yiddish keners can correct me if I’m wrong.]
The Christian communities were strengthened by these persecutions, however. Thousands saw the government’s murderousness and began to sympathize with the persecuted. Gradually, the sympathizers were drawn to the Christian communities and became Christians themselves. Furthermore, the Christians held fast to their beliefs. For them, death was a game. Young girls used to endure burning and being torn apart by wild animals without so much as shedding a tear. Many considered it a blessing to die for God [kidesh hashem] because then the Church would recognize them as holy martyrs, for whom the doors of paradise are always open wide. The joy with which many used to sacrifice themselves for their religion drew thousands of fresh adherents, and Christianity increasingly captivated the better, noble children of the people.
By the dawn of the third century, Christianity had become a powerful force in Roman society. The government began to understand that to continue their struggle would endanger them more than it would the Christians. Thus, the persecutions gradually came to an end, and the government began to seek peace with the Christian communities. And from this very peace with Rome, developed the Christian Church, the dark power of the Middle Ages.
As long as the proletariat, the poor, oppressed worker, was its bearer and disseminator, Christianity remained true to its first principles. Then it was the preacher of revolution and the protector of the poor. As the government forged a partnership with the Christian faith and aristocrats began to adopt it as their own religion, however, Christianity took on a different guise.
The story that Jesus will soon return and introduce a free society where all will be equal and live happily has been twisted to refer only to the next life. In our world, all must go on as usual; only after death will Jesus show mercy to his true servants and make them happy. This is taken a step further still, and everyone who sticks to the old belief that Jesus will return to this world to introduce justice is cursed as a heretic. According to the preachings of the Church, the truly pious need not concern himself with this world. Here is not the place for earthly pleasure but only service to God. Pleasure will only be enjoyed later as compensation for following God’s commandments now.
Sources:
Rogoff, Hillel (under the pseudonym Ger Toshav). “Christianity as a Revolutionary Movement.” Idishe Arbayter Velt, July 24, 1908. Accessed via the Newspaper Collection at the National Library of Israel.
Bregstone, Philip. Chicago and Its Jews. Self-published in Chicago, 1933.
Hertz, J.S. Di Yidishe sotsialisṭishe bavegung in Ameriḳe 70 yor sotsialisṭishe ṭeṭiḳayṭ, 30 yor Yidisher Sotsialisṭisher Farband (The Jewish Socialist Movement in America: 70 Years of Socialist Activity, 30 years of the Jewish Socialist Federation). Der Veker. New York, 1952. Accessed via the Yiddish Book Center’s Digital Yiddish Library.