Christianity and the institutionalization of antisemitism: a contemporary theological perspective

To what extent, if any, was traditional Christianity responsible for the Holocaust, and how should Christian theological thinking readjust to the post-Holocaust world? There are, it is suggested, strong historical continuities between Christian and political and racial anti-Semitism. Jesus' message was perverted so that so-called Christians were gradually conditioned to progressively accept anti-Jewish boycotts, legal restrictions, physical assaults, segregation and, ultimately, extermination. The Final Solution has, according to German theologian Johannes Metz, compelled theologians to examine critically the moral values embedded in the Christian tradition. "A Christianity that developed its identity through anti-Semitism now has to seek nourishment from its Jewish origins."