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Court Preacher Adolf Stöcker Introduces Antisemitism to the Christian Social Workers’ Party (September 19, 1879)

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At this point we make our first demand: pray, a little more modesty! We do not deny that Israel carried the knowledge of a personal, single God through the ancient world like a sacred flame. But then came Christ and completed the faith with a richer conception of God and a higher Truth. And it is a matter of historical fact that the nation of Israel constantly fell back into the coarsest sort of idolatry. The powerful personalities sent by God to fend off this backsliding succeeded for only short intervals. It is truly not the merit of Israel to have preserved the doctrine of the one God of the world but the result of God's grace. Equally true is it that the ideas of religious freedom and tolerance in the modern sense are not characteristic of the Old Testament. Whosoever broke the sabbath was stoned. The priests of Baal were slaughtered. This was part of the peculiarities of their legal system. Far be it from us to reproach the Old Testament for this reason. But it is certainly erroneous when Jews take credit for ideas that were completely unknown to their religion in its historical form. They must know that they had a priestly caste (the very opposite of equality), that they cultivated slavery (the very opposite of freedom), and that they practiced polygamy (the very opposite of the ideal family life). It was Germanic-Christian life that first corrected these errors. It is true that Israel had enlightened economic laws: social forms of property, prohibition of interest, and extreme compassion for the poor. But we need only mention these things in order to feel the fearful distance between the Old Testament and the modern Jew. Only German law protected the conception of communal property; only the Christian church spoke out against the taking of interest. In just these matters the errors and sins of modern Jewry are clear for all to see.

Even conceding that Israel has a lofty and lasting mission, who are the shining thinkers and poets filled with the spirit of God, proclaiming the living God, praising Him, and bringing Him honor? Perhaps the editors of the [Berliner] Tageblatt? Or the scholars of Kladderadatsch?* Where is the school for the prophets of the Holy Ghost in which the apostles for this world mission are to be educated? where the missions? where the missionaries? perhaps on the stock exchanges of Berlin, Vienna, and Paris? Oh, no. The Jews would not be so foolish. And just this is their doom. They foundered on Christ, lost their divine course, and surrendered their divine mission. Unheeding of the pithy maxim of the Lord Jesus that “thou canst not serve both God and Mammon,” the Jews ran after the golden calf, leaving off the ways of God.

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* One of the most successful of several satirical illustrated journals, Kladderadatsch was left-liberal in political orientation. Its satire fell upon friend and foe indiscriminately, however.

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