by John K. Roth

An American Protestant Christian philosopher, I have studied, written, and taught about the Holocaust for more than fifty years. Early on, that life-changing work showed me how tragically my Christian tradition led to Nazi Germany’s genocide against the Jewish people. No Christianity = No Holocaust—that is the devastating connection. It compels me to do what I can to mend Christian-Jewish relations. 

When my guiding friend Elie Wiesel arranged for me to live in Israel and to teach at the University of Haifa in the early 1980s, my commitment to foster good relations between Christians and Jews also made me a post-Holocaust Zionist who affirms the State of Israel’s rightful existence and its responsibility to defend itself. Decades later—in 2024—I am still a Zionist. But the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel, and the State of Israel’s response—a massive military retaliation producing an immense humanitarian crisis for Palestinians in Gaza—require me to interrogate my Zionist identity and to assess the impact of the Hamas-Israel War on Christian-Jewish relations. 

A stress test—that is what the Hamas-Israel War creates for Christian-Jewish relations. The war quizzes those relations. It will show how much pressure, tension, wear-and-tear they can stand and how resilient and constructive Christian-Jewish relations can be in unsettling and unsettled circumstances fraught with difficulties that will not soon be resolved. 

Such moods put me in conversation with my friend Carol Rittner. We sensed that other American Christian colleagues committed to improving Christian-Jewish relations might be feeling versions of them too. Soon a book project–Stress Test: The Hamas-Israel War and Christian-Jewish Relations was underway. 

Stress Tests enlists American Christian writers to speak courageously about Christian-Jewish relations in 2024 and beyond. The need is to probe beyond polite diplomacy to confront the carnage unleashed by the Hamas attack on October 7, to assess the State of Israel’s devastating response. That demanding work also requires Christians to respond to the anger, frustration, and grief that grip people, especially young people, as they confront the violence—rape and hostage-taking and also starvation and, arguably, ethnic cleansing—that inflames more war-threatening upheaval. The health and future of Christian-Jewish relations depend, at least in significant ways, on how well American Christians meet these challenges. 

The personal test confronting me is to determine what it means for my Christian identity to include being not only a post-Holocaust Zionist but also one who is pro-Palestinian. My chapter in this book stress-tests that commitment.