Antisemitism today appears in violence, conspiracy, collective blame, and the normalization of old lies. Christians have both a biblical and moral obligation to recognize it and stand beside their Jewish neighbors.

By Jill Szoo Wilson
Writer | Theatre Artist | Educator

This essay is part of One Story. One Covenant. One Messiah, an ongoing series about Israel, the Church, and the covenant faithfulness of God.

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On Yom Kippur in October 2025, an attacker drove a car into people gathered outside a synagogue in Manchester, England, and began stabbing worshipers. Two Jewish men were killed. In December, gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, killing fifteen people. Three months later, an armed man rammed a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, while children were attending preschool. He opened fire and set off an explosion before dying at the scene; no one else was killed. The FBI later called the attack a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism “purposely targeting the Jewish community.”[1]

These attacks occurred in different countries and arose from different circumstances, but their victims were selected for the same reason: they were Jewish, or they had gathered in recognizably Jewish places. Such violence is the most visible form of antisemitism. It’s not the only form, and it rarely begins there.

FBI data released in 2026 recorded 1,528 anti-Jewish hate-crime incidents in the United States during the previous year. Jewish people, approximately two percent of the American population, were the targets of nearly two-thirds of all reported religion-based hate crimes.[2] The figures describe criminal acts, but the climate surrounding them also includes harassment, vandalism, conspiracy theories, and a steady insistence that Jewish people exercise hidden control over governments, media, finance, and war.

Some of that language now reaches millions through personalities whom many Christians once trusted, and some still do. In October 2025, Tucker Carlson devoted a long interview to Nick Fuentes, who used the appearance to speak about “Jewish oligarchy” and attack “these Zionist Jews.” Carlson’s decision produced a revolt within conservative institutions and condemnation from Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson. Interviewing someone does not automatically mean you agree with everything they say. Giving an extremist access to an enormous audience, however, while leaving his central claims substantially unchallenged, changes the social status of those claims. What had been confined to the fringe enters ordinary political conversation.[3]

Candace Owens has gone further, making conspiratorial allegations herself. In November 2025, she alleged without evidence that Israel was blackmailing the president through the Jeffrey Epstein disclosures: “For those who struggle with context clues, THEY = Israel, who Jeffrey Epstein worked for. This is how our nation is run.” In February 2026, she amplified the claim that “America is controlled by the people who call us goyim.” Goyim is the plural of goy, a Hebrew term for non-Jews or Gentiles; the word is not inherently derogatory. Owens has also told listeners that Jewish people controlled the slave trade and warned them to identify the Chabad center nearest their homes, declaring, “These people are dangerous.” Chabad-Lubavitch is a worldwide Hasidic Jewish movement known for its synagogues, religious education and community outreach.[4]

British journalist Melanie Phillips has described this development as the mainstreaming of Jew-hatred. Her argument is not that antisemitism belongs to only one political faction; she has repeatedly traced its movement through both progressive and conservative circles. The present danger lies partly in respectable leaders refusing to draw a firm boundary when conspiratorial claims appear among their own allies. Leaders may defend their silence as openness to debate, but leaving conspiracy claims unanswered allows fringe ideas to appear credible.[5]

Concern about antisemitism does not place the Israeli government, its policies or individual Jewish public figures beyond legitimate scrutiny. Israel’s government can be criticized. Its military decisions can be investigated, its leaders can be opposed, and American aid can be debated. Jewish writers and citizens routinely participate in these debates. Political criticism crosses into antisemitism when responsibility moves from particular officials and policies to Jews as a people; when unsupported allegations of secret Jewish control replace evidence; when Jewish institutions abroad become targets for anger at Israel; or when familiar stories about Jewish money, disloyalty, corruption and manipulation are revived under contemporary names.

Messianic Jewish teacher and author Daniel Thomas Lancaster offers a useful distinction. Writing for The Emmaus Table, he describes anti-Zionism as hostility toward “the land of Israel,” antisemitism as hostility toward “the people of Israel,” and anti-Judaism as hostility toward “the scriptures of Israel.” Lancaster emphasizes that these forms of hostility are closely related but not identical. Keeping them distinct allows Christians to criticize particular policies without treating Jewish identity, Jewish Scripture, or the Jewish connection to Israel as the problem.[6]

These distinctions matter because antisemitism often presents itself as forbidden knowledge. The speaker claims to be asking the questions others will not permit, while every missing piece of evidence becomes further proof that powerful Jews have concealed it. The theory therefore cannot be corrected: denial confirms the conspiracy, objection demonstrates control, and demands for evidence become censorship. An old prejudice acquires the posture of courageous inquiry.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks compared antisemitism to a virus because it changes form in order to survive. Jewish people have been condemned for opposite things: for being rich and poor, capitalist and communist, separate from society and too influential within it. Rabbi Pesach Wolicki has addressed one form this takes today: viral social-media posts claiming that the Talmud teaches Jewish people to hate, rob or kill non-Jews. The Talmud is a vast collection of rabbinic discussions about Jewish law, Scripture, ethics, history and daily life, compiled over several centuries. It preserves arguments and disagreements, including opinions that other rabbis rejected, so an isolated sentence does not necessarily represent an accepted Jewish teaching. Wolicki explains that many of the alarming quotations circulated online are invented, mistranslated, drawn from rejected opinions, or removed from the historical discussion that gives them meaning. These fragments are then presented as evidence of what all Jewish people supposedly believe. The method gives prejudice the appearance of scholarship.[7]

Why Christians Must Recognize Antisemitism

Christians should be especially prepared to recognize this pattern. We worship Israel’s Messiah, read Israel’s Scriptures, and confess a gospel carried to the nations by Jewish apostles. Paul tells Gentile believers that we do not support the root; the root supports us. Paul warns Gentile Christians against receiving Israel’s spiritual inheritance and then looking down on Jewish people.

Our own history makes vigilance more urgent. Christian teaching helped create a world in which Jewish people could be described as rejected by God, collectively guilty for the death of Christ, and condemned to suffer as witnesses to Christian truth. Those teachings did not cause every modern expression of antisemitism, but they trained generations of Christians to regard Jewish humiliation as theologically intelligible. Repentance requires more than disavowing the worst episodes of that history. It requires recognizing the habits of thought that made them possible.

One of the most influential expressions of this idea came from Augustine of Hippo (354–430), a North African bishop whose theology profoundly shaped Western Christianity. His teaching became known as “witness theology”: the belief that Jewish people should be preserved rather than destroyed because their continued existence and possession of the Hebrew Scriptures served as witnesses to Christian truth. Augustine also interpreted their exile and political subordination as evidence that God had rejected them and transferred their covenant identity to the Church.

The theology of Jewish displacement—the teaching that Jewish people lost their covenant identity and that the Church took their place as Israel—is not merely a matter of Christian history. One contemporary example appears in official explanations published by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. WELS says that Jewish people “forfeited” their designation as God’s chosen people when they rejected Jesus. It also teaches that the “Israel of God” no longer refers to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Elsewhere, the denomination describes the Christian Church as “a continuation of the real Israel.” This language is far removed from the hatred expressed in Luther’s late anti-Jewish writings, and that difference is important. It nevertheless shows how Jewish displacement can remain embedded in Christian teaching after open expressions of hatred have been rejected.[8]

The Jewish return to the Land of Israel is more than a modern political development. In her 2026 book Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege, British Jewish journalist and author Melanie Phillips describes Judaism as a “unique fusion of the people, the religion, and the land.” The Torah connects the Jewish people to a particular land; some commandments can be observed only there, and Jewish worship has preserved the hope of return for centuries. That hope appears in daily prayers, in the Passover declaration “Next year in Jerusalem,” and throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.

This connection helps explain why the existence of modern Israel challenges witness theology. If Jewish exile and political powerlessness were treated as evidence that God had rejected the Jewish people, their return to their ancestral land does not fit the expected story. The establishment of a sovereign Jewish state does not settle every biblical or political question, but it contradicts the expectation that Jewish people would remain permanently scattered and subordinate.

Some people answer this challenge by claiming that today’s Jewish people are not actually descended from biblical Israel. If modern Jews are impostors, then biblical Israel has not returned to the land, and witness theology remains intact. This claim can merge with racial conspiracies asserting that the Jewish people’s ancestry was fabricated, that the original Jews disappeared, or that some other ethnic group represents the true Israel. What sounds like a dispute about ancient ancestry can therefore bring an old Christian theology of Jewish rejection together with a modern conspiracy about Jewish identity.[9]

How Christians Can Stand with Jewish People

What should Christians do now? Paul’s warning against Gentile arrogance gives us a place to begin. Christians who have been grafted into Israel’s covenant story should speak about Jewish people with humility and gratitude, remembering that “it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you” (Romans 11:18). Scripture also commands, “You shall not spread a false report” (Exodus 23:1), and warns against answering a matter before hearing the evidence (Proverbs 18:13). Before Christians repeat an accusation involving Jewish people, we should ask whether it can be verified, whether it holds an entire people responsible for the actions of individuals, and whether criticism of a particular Israeli policy has been turned into suspicion of Jews everywhere. A broadcaster who repeatedly presents Jewish people as the hidden cause of wars, scandals or political failures should not continue to receive our trust.

Scripture requires more than refusing to spread falsehood. Jesus commands us to love our neighbors, and Paul tells us to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). Churches can live out those commands by building relationships with local synagogues before an attack occurs, asking Jewish leaders what support would be useful, attending public vigils and opposing threats against Jewish institutions as readily as we would oppose threats against our own. Christian leaders should correct antisemitic claims when they appear in conversation, including when the person repeating them belongs to our political party or attracts an audience we would otherwise like to keep.

These acts of neighbor-love also belong to Christian civic engagement. Paul urges believers to recognize the character of the time in which they live (Romans 13:11) and to remain alert and persevering in prayer (Ephesians 6:18). That spiritual watchfulness should shape the way Christians respond to dangers developing around them. Grace Church St. Louis offers one local example of this approach. Its Civic Engagement ministry teaches that Christian responsibility extends beyond the church campus and into the public square. Grace encourages Christians to pray, study, engage, and vote while remembering that their ultimate hope rests in Christ rather than any political outcome. Applied to the present rise in antisemitism, that calling requires Christians to recognize dangerous ideas, tell the truth about them, and stand publicly beside Jewish people who are being threatened.[10]

In June 2026, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution condemning violence, cultural hatred, and conspiracies about Jewish-controlled cabals as “sinful, unchristian, and an assault on both biblical truth and basic human dignity.” It called Christians toward biblical teaching, personal friendship, courageous public witness, and prayer.[11] The resolution offers an important model because it joins theological conviction to public responsibility. Antisemitism is not merely poor manners, a partisan distraction, or somebody else’s prejudice. For Christians, resisting it belongs to faithful discipleship.

The consequences of silence are already visible in armed synagogue security, Jewish celebrations treated as potential targets and decisions about whether a Star of David is safe to wear in public. The title of Dara Horn’s book People Love Dead Jews identifies another danger: a culture may honor Jewish victims of the past while showing far less interest in the safety, testimony and self-understanding of living Jewish people. Christian solidarity cannot be confined to Holocaust remembrance while prominent voices teach enormous audiences to interpret their Jewish neighbors through suspicion of Jewish power.[12]

Our Jewish neighbors should never be expected to answer for every decision of the Israeli government, every action of a Jewish public figure or every accusation a conspiracy theorist invents. Antisemitism erases the individual and replaces a person with a theory about Jewish power. Christian love must restore the person to view. Elie Wiesel warned, “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” When Jewish people are threatened, neutrality is not a harmless middle ground. Let them find Christians beside them, making their safety our concern and refusing to leave them alone beneath the weight of an ancient hatred.[13]

Notes

1. “Synagogue Attack on Yom Kippur Kills Two in UK’s Manchester,” Reuters, October 2, 2025; “Australia Begins Inquiry into Antisemitism After Bondi Attacks,” Reuters, February 23, 2026; Jennifer Runyan, “Detroit Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Runyan Delivers Final Update on West Bloomfield Attack,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, March 30, 2026.
2. Anti-Defamation League, “2025 Marked Third-Highest Year on Record for Anti-Jewish Hate Crimes, FBI Reports,” August 17, 2026. The FBI data count reported criminal incidents; the ADL’s broader audit uses a different methodology and also includes noncriminal harassment and vandalism.
3. “Tucker Carlson’s Interview with Far-Right Antisemite Nick Fuentes Divides Conservatives,” The Guardian, October 31, 2025; “Johnson: Carlson Interview with Fuentes Was a ‘Big Mistake,’” Politico, November 25, 2025. Carlson has disputed the claim that the interview endorsed racial hatred.
4. Candace Owens, posts on X, November 13, 2025, and February 28, 2026; Anti-Defamation League, “Candace Owens,” updated March 26, 2026. The quoted claims are Owens’s; no evidence establishing the alleged Israeli control or blackmail accompanied them.
5. Melanie Phillips, “The Mainstreaming of Jew-Hatred,” November 14, 2025, and “American Conservatism and ‘the Jewish Question,’” December 26, 2025.
6. Daniel Thomas Lancaster, “The Three Frogs: Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, & Anti-Judaism,” The Emmaus Table, June 2, 2026.
7. Jonathan Sacks, “Antisemitism Mutates,”; “Rabbi Pesach Wolicki Lights Up the Lies About Jews and the Talmud,” August 13, 2025.
8. Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, “God’s Chosen People?” September 12, 2017; and “Israel and the Church,” July 16, 2015.
9. Pesach Wolicki, “A Crisis of Faith: The Christian Debate over Jews, Covenant, and Israel,” The Jerusalem Post, March 29, 2026; Melanie Phillips, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege (New York: Wicked Son, 2026), chap. 2.
10. Grace Church St. Louis, “Civic Engagement,” and Glen Callanan, “Protecting Missouri’s Future: A Christian Call to Consider Amendment 4,” May 31, 2026.
11. Southern Baptist Convention, “On Antisemitism,” adopted June 2026.
12. Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 2021).
13. Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Oslo, December 10, 1986.

Further Reading

• Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Hate Crime Statistics.”
• Anti-Defamation League, Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2025.
• Melanie Phillips, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—and Why Only They Can Save It.
• Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present.
• Pesach Wolicki, “A Crisis of Faith: The Christian Debate over Jews, Covenant, and Israel.”
• Southern Baptist Convention, “On Antisemitism.”
• Romans 9–11.