Asian Christians and Jews: Let's Learn Together

In scholarly circles, Asian Christian studies and the Shoah studies (Holocaust)are often perceived as two separate intellectual entities. By that I mean the participants of each camp seldom see themselves having much common interest with each other. What is the problem if we believe post-Shoah theological reflections and Asian Christianity are two unrelated intellectual territories? Could learning with Jews help Asian Christians redefine their religious identity in the pluralistic world? What happens when Jewish-Christian dialogue extends its horizon beyond the usual European Christian contexts and meets Asian theological-cultural studies?

Theological reflections of the Shoah are a significant intellectual topic in western Christianity, but not in Asian Christianity. Asian Christians, seminaries, and churches both in Asia and around the world continue to pat inadequate attention to the Shoah and Jewish-Christian dialogue, partly because many of them may have mistakenly perceived anti-Semitism was (and is) a European issue. Asian may be physical absent from the Nazis regime when the anti-Judaic rhetoric was spread, but they belong to the same religious family called Christianity where they were responsible for providing the theological seedbed for the Shoah. By not seriously taking the Shoah as a theological topic for Asian Christianity, many Asian Christians continue to accept the conventional Christian theological bias against Jews and Judaism.

Asian Christians came to know Christianity through the teachings of Western missionaries during the time of colonialism. When Christianity came to Asia, the Christian self-understanding had been thoroughly "infected" with the anti-Judaic virus; supersessionism was the standard interpretive lens to interpret scripture and matters of faith. This questionable Christian self-identity has not been significantly purged in today's Asian churches around the world. Instead, this erroneous bias meets the strong Asian cultural ideals toward honouring elders, traditions and authority. This is an alarming issue.

Jewish-Christian dialogue and the reflection on the Shoah are significant interpretive windows to see the world and faith. The reason for this is that the emergence of the Jesus' movement and rabbinic Judaism grew out of the same political reality under the demise of imperial Rome, the background for the tense theological debate about faith and identity. That debate was so acrimonious that it eventually parted the two traditions. Asian Christianity is an offspring of western Constantinian Christianity. There is a need to explain as clearly as possible to Asian Christians who tend to walk away from this topic why they need to engage.