1 

SCJR 16, no. 1 (2021): 1-25   

 

 

“Supersessionism”:  

The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism 

 
MICHAEL G. AZAR 

michael.azar@scranton.edu  

University of Scranton, Scranton, PA 18510 

 

Introduction 

 

In 1972, George Khodr, a prominent Orthodox metropolitan in Lebanon, wrote 

a report for the World Council of Churches on Eastern Christian “feelings and re-

actions” to the “Palestine problem.”1 Among many other and varied observations, 

he raised concern that “a certain Zionist press” had declared “Christian Arabs” to 

be “enemies of Israel.” “It refers,” he writes, “not to a simple political feud, in 

which these Christians are not disunited from their non-Christian compatriots, but 

to their theological attitude loyal to the Patristic [sic] tradition.”2 For Orthodox Ar-

abs such as Khodr, the accusation that fidelity to the fathers—a characteristic claim 

of Orthodox Christianity especially—made one an enemy of Israel was easily prob-

lematic, if not dangerous, as a mischaracterization both of political views and of 

theological understanding.  

It is unclear to what publication Khodr was referring. However, in that same 

year, A. Roy Eckardt, an American Methodist theologian and “pioneer” of Jewish-

Christian relations,3 published an overview of recent Christian approaches to the 

State of Israel in Midstream, the American, self-designated “Zionist publication”4 

of the Theodore Herzl Foundation.5 Given Midstream’s circulation and the growing 

geopolitical chasm between the U.S. and Lebanon at the time, one suspects that the 

                                                            
This article has benefited from the careful reading and critiques of several friends and colleagues, in-
cluding especially R. Kendall Soulen and Philip Cunningham, who each read and graciously discussed 

more than one draft with me; my colleagues at the University of Scranton and the Orthodox Christian 

Studies Center of Fordham University; as well as Michael Legaspi, Karma Ben-Johanan, Stephen Shoe-
maker, the anonymous reviewers of SCJR, and the journal’s co-editor, Ruth Langer. I remain deeply 
indebted to each—even and especially when we may have come to significantly different conclusions.  
1 Metropolitan George Khodr, “The Feelings and Reactions of the Eastern Christian towards Issues 

Arising from the Palestine Problem” (1972), 4212.07.22/01 Orthodox churches 1965-1978, World 
Council of Churches Archives.    
2 Khodr, “The Feelings and Reactions,” 4.  
3 See Ralph Blumenthal, “Roy Eckardt, 79, a Pioneer in Christian-Jewish Relations,” New York Times, 

May 9, 1998. Notably, Eckardt was also a past president and founder of the American Academy of 
Religion (formerly, the National Association of Biblical Instructors).  
4 “Statement of Purpose,” Midstream 1.1 (1955): 3.  
5 A. Roy Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives on Israel,” Midstream 18 (1972): 40-50.  



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       2 
 

 

               

    

article was unknown to Khodr, but its context, content, and rhetoric are neverthe-

less of the precise sort that formed the basis of his concerns. In this essay, Eckardt 

surveys a variety of American and European “perspectives” on Israel. Examining 

the “more conservative” expressions of those who openly resisted Israel’s post-

1967 policies, Eckardt draws his readers’ attention away from the social, political, 

legal, or moral objections that these detractors had voiced. Instead, he tells the Zi-

onist publication’s readers: these Christians’ true “ground for political opposition 

to Israel” was their adherence to a “traditional” theological predisposition, in which 

“the church, the ‘new Israel’” had “taken the place” of “the ‘old Israel,’ the Jewish 

people.”6 In other words, Christians who resisted Israel’s policies did so, to use 

Khodr’s words, not because of “a simple political feud,” but, in Eckardt’s charac-

terization, because of their adherence to “traditional” theology. To encapsulate this 

claim, Eckardt coins an entirely new term: “supersessionism.”  

Now a half century later, Eckardt’s neologism has come to “dominate” the 

“current scholarly discourse regarding the Church’s relationship to the Jewish peo-

ple.”7 It has served Western theologians well as the chief heuristic device for 

assessing, and normally rejecting, the “standard theological foundation of the rela-

tionship with Judaism” in Christian history.8 It has engendered a wealth of 

discussion and debate over the origins of its typical components (e.g., notions that 

the “church” replaced “Israel” or that the “law” has been “abrogated”), its linguistic 

roots (e.g., in the Latin supersedere), or its various definitions and subcategories. 

What follows below adds a new dimension by unpacking the origin not of the os-

tensible components or of the linguistic roots, but of the neologism itself as a 

heuristic device—the umbrella category, the taxonomy, the way of reading and la-

beling theological positions and opponents. Aside from one partial exception,9 the 

actual origins of this way of categorizing, this way of reading, have never entered 

into the discussion, and that is what we choose to explore here, while also consid-

ering some of the effects of the political perspectives in which this theological 

neologism was forged.  

 

 

 

 

                                                            
6 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 43.  
7 Matthew A. Tapie, “Christ, Torah, and the Faithfulness of God: The Concept of Supersessionism in 
‘The Gifts and the Calling,’” SCJR 12 (2017): 1-18, here 1.  
8 As described in the 2015 statement from the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the 
Jews, “‘The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable’ (Rom 11:29)—A Reflection on Theological 

Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations” 17. For the statement, with commentary, see Philip 

A. Cunningham, “The Sources behind ‘The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable’ (Rom 11:29): 
A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 
50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate (No. 4),” SCJR 12 (2017): 1-39.  
9 R. Kendall Soulen, “Supersessionism,” Encyclopedia of Jewish-Christian Relations, ed. Walter 

Homolka, Rainer Kampling, Amy-Jill Levine, Christoph Markschies, Peter Schäfer and Martin Thurner 
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020).  



             

              3                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

A Few Clarifications at the Outset 

 

This article proceeds along three primary lines. First, through an examination 

of the writings of Roy Eckardt, his wife, Alice Eckardt, and their friend and col-

league, Franklin Littell, it demonstrates that this categorizing of ancient and 

modern Christian thinkers under the umbrella of “supersessionism” (along with the 

label for its proponent, the “supersessionist”) originated not in scholarly works of 

theological history or systematic theology, but in the hostile political environment 

of burgeoning American Christian support for the State of Israel’s military superi-

ority.10 The rhetoric surrounding these first appearances, we will see below, 

ensured that the neologisms allowed these authors to diminish the validity of moral, 

ethical, or political concerns raised by Christians regarding Israel’s post-1967 pol-

icies by rooting the chief cause of those concerns in an unethical, antiquated, and 

historic—especially Greek patristic—theology. In other words, it was not the spe-

cifics of Israeli policy that comprised the main cause of Christian discontent with 

the new state, but the underlying and ancient Christian “supersession” of Jews in 

toto. In this way, Christian detraction from Israel was totalized as a product of his-

toric anti-Judaism (or antisemitism) rather than a diverse and worthwhile array of 

concerns often having little to do with this “traditional” theology.  

Second, this article will foreground the way that this tendency to totalize Chris-

tian detraction from the State of Israel employed Eastern Christians, Arabs, and 

church fathers. While each of these figures factors saliently and regularly into the 

writings under consideration here, they typically function as rhetorical, totalized 

figures rather than figures governed by the nuances of reality or close textual ex-

aminations. To be clear, our focus will not be on the figures themselves (Orthodox, 

Arab, or church father), the characteristics of their approaches to Jews, Jewish prac-

tices, Zionism, or the State of Israel, or whether those approaches harbored “anti-

Jewish” sentiments that could be designated “supersessionist” according to the 

term’s typical usage. Rather, our focus will be on the totalizing and rhetorical role 

that each of these played in those writings that first employ “supersessionism” (or 

“supersessionist”) as a category. Our focus, one might say, is not on the varied sets 

of data, but the origins of a way of reading that data. 

The third and final part of this article will demonstrate that, in light of their 

opposition to “traditional” theology and their treatment of Christian Arabs (espe-

cially Orthodox) and their “non-Christian compatriots,” the Eckardts, Littell, and 

other likeminded pioneers of American Christian-Jewish relations did not so much 

overcome the “supersessionism” myth that they identified and rejected as much as 

they redirected its principal elements toward a new cast of characters. Moreover, 

given their own explicit and overwhelming personal advocacy for military support 

                                                            
10 This essay does not fully explore the entirety of either the Eckardts’ or Littell’s approaches to Jews, 

Jewish practices, Zionism, or the State of Israel; rather, it focusses on a specific aspect of those broader 
approaches—the creation and use of the category of “supersessionism.” 



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       4 
 

 

               

    

for the State of Israel, there came to be little divide between their rhetorical dismis-

sal of those negatively affected by the state and their real support of violence 

against them.  

In light of this exploration, we will conclude by briefly considering the com-

mon role played by “supersessionism” as a sort of “gateway” into Jewish-Christian 

relations for non-Western theologians, especially Orthodox Christians, with the 

hope of reshaping a historically problematic aspect of Jewish-Christian relations 

that has tended to confirm, rather than challenge, Orthodox and other Arab Chris-

tian hesitancy toward Jewish-Christian dialogue.11 The present study does not seek 

to undermine or underappreciate the unprecedented attempts of the Eckardts, Lit-

tell, and their contemporaries to undo the drastic effects of historic Christian 

degradation of Jews. Rather, it draws attention to the negative, and too often ne-

glected, effect that the rhetoric of their theological neologisms had and continues 

to have on traditions often overlooked in Western interreligious and theological 

discourse.12  

 

The Eckardts, Midstream, and Opposition to Arabs Prior to 1972 

 

The decades-long careers of both Roy Eckardt and his wife, Alice, were de-

fined by a persistent dedication to “post-Shoah” theology and the reshaping of 

Christian approaches toward Jews that fittingly earned them recognition as among 

the “pioneers” of Jewish-Christian relations. By the late 1960s this commitment to 

Jewish-Christian relations had become inseparable, for them and for many of their 

colleagues, from a positive commitment to the State of Israel and regular activism 

against Arab concerns. While it was the “whirlwind tour of Israel” offered to Roy 

by the Israeli government in 1966 that firmly pushed their scholarly interests to-

ward this “new direction”13 of explicit political support, it was nonetheless the Six-

Day War of June 1967 especially that led to their increased activities on behalf of 

Israeli concerns and explicitly against those of Arabs.  

Writing back-to-back articles for The Christian Century in August 1967—be-

fore Alice had herself visited the region14—the Eckardts lamented the Christian 

“silence” to Israel’s near destruction in words of a poignantly anti-Arab tone that 

clearly reflect the government-sponsored nature of Roy’s trip the previous year: 

                                                            
11 This essay stems from a larger project examining the various historical, theological, and political 

dimensions of Orthodox Christian participation in Jewish-Christian dialogue, with a particular focus on 

the Middle East. One such section will be devoted to patristic approaches to Jews—a topic not under 
consideration in the present essay.  
12 While Arab Orthodox Christians form a major part of the present examination, such is simply a matter 
of focus and is not meant to distract from the importance or experiences of other Eastern, Orthodox, or 
non-Arab Christian traditions (e.g., Greek, Slavic, Syriac, Armenian, etc.). 
13 Alice L. Eckardt, “Growing into a Daring and Questioning Faith,” in Faith Transformed: Christian 

Encounters with Jews and Judaism, ed. John C. Merkle and Walter J. Harrelson (Collegeville, MN: 
Liturgical, 2003), 17-36, here 22.  
14 See Eckardt, “Growing into a Daring…,” 23. This was also Alice’s very first publication (see 34, n. 
8).  



             

              5                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

“Palestine/Israel,” they affirm, has only ever been the “original homeland” of the 

Jewish people “and of no other living nation.”15 The “original and continuing cause 

of the Arab refugee problem and its recent aggravation has been Arab intransigence 

and hostility” since “Israel tried to convince them to stay” in 1948.16 Any “refu-

gees” (a term they place in quotes) really only resisted, and therefore fled, “Jewish 

sophistication, Jewish intransigence, Jewish power.”17 Such was the nature of the 

Eckardts’ totalized view of Arabs: “The one unbreakable bond that unites the Arab 

peoples is their conviction that Israel deserves to die.”18 This “bond,” in other 

words, was characteristic not of some Arab leaders or spokespeople, but of “the 

Arab peoples” in toto.  

Though they thus believed that Arab opposition was rooted chiefly in a sort of 

monolithic and violent hatred of Israel, the focus of the Eckardts’ concerns was the 

reasons why Christians had come to sympathize with Arab causes. Such sympa-

thies, they lamented, were misguided and due to two main reasons: first, a concern 

for American missionaries “hard at work in Arab lands”19 and, second and most 

importantly, because “Christendom,” having neglected its own “Hebraic roots”20 

while claiming the mantle of “the real Israel,”21 had “for centuries” taught that 

“Jews have no ultimate or integral right to exist.”22 The Eckardts did not seriously 

entertain any of the legal, political, or moral concerns voiced by “Arabs” or “Chris-

tians” (terms that for them did not yet overlap23). The problem for Arabs, in the 

Eckardts’ view, was a deeply rooted violent tendency; for Christians, a deeply 

rooted theology. These twin assertions would, in a few short years, form the basis 

of Roy Eckardt’s coining of the term “supersessionism.”   

Shlomo Katz, the founding editor of Midstream, decided almost immediately 

to reprint the Eckardts’ second article in his journal.24 He undoubtedly recognized 

that it was in keeping with his publication’s general anti-Arab tone over the pre-

ceding two decades. Since its founding in 1955, as Emily Katz has shown, 

Midstream’s contributors generally kept in step with its editor’s own views and 

regularly offered essays that patronized, caricatured, and promoted “assumptions 

                                                            
15 Originally published as two separate articles in The Christian Century on July 26 and August 2, 1967, 

I cite the compiled reprint in A. Roy and Alice L. Eckardt, “Again, Silence in the Churches,” in A. Roy 
Eckardt, Elder and Younger Brothers: The Encounter of Jews and Christians (New York: Charles 

Scribner’s Sons, 1967), 163-177, here 165.  
16 Eckardt, Elder and Younger…, 167-68. 
17 Eckardt, Elder and Younger…, 171. 
18 Eckardt, Elder and Younger…, 170.  
19 Eckardt, Elder and Younger…, 171-72.  
20 Eckardt, Elder and Younger…, 174.  
21 Eckardt, Elder and Younger…, 171, emphasis original.  
22 Eckardt, Elder and Younger…, 170.  
23 In a later revision and expansion, they acknowledge the existence of Arab Christians but do little 
more (see A. Roy Eckardt, Your People, My People: The Meeting of Jews and Christians [New York: 
Quadrangle, 1974], 122-51). 
24 A. Roy and Alice L. Eckardt, “Silence in the Churches,” Midstream 13 (1967): 27-32.  



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       6 
 

 

               

    

about Arab backwardness and the unmitigated benefits that Israeli civilization af-

forded these minority populations.” 25 As such, contributors were generally 

“unwilling to summon empathy of any sort for Arabs,”26 and, together with other 

concurrent publications, “generally decried Arabs as, at worst, obstinate aggressors 

who acted in bad faith, or, at best, pawns in the Soviet Union’s cynical game of 

geopolitical chess.”27  

Around the same time that the Eckardts’ 1967 article appeared in Midstream, 

Shlomo Katz wrote to Roy Eckardt to ask him to contribute “a personal examina-

tion of what Israel means.”28 And Eckardt’s contribution five months later—the 

first of at least three more contributions to Midstream—does precisely that. While 

this article does not quite carry the virulence of the earlier articles, Eckardt none-

theless again foregrounds the seemingly natural affinity between the theologically 

rooted “annihilationist designs” of fellow Christians and the “cancer of extermina-

tionism that pervades the Arab world.”29 By the end of the 1960s, the Eckardts were 

making their central point abundantly clear for both Christian and Jewish audi-

ences: Christian historic hostility toward Jews had left the Christian soul open and 

unrefined, in danger of being metabolized into an “Arab sympathizer.”30 As such, 

any “socio-political” concerns for Palestinian rights and refugees, as Alice Eckardt 

would later say with shocking forthrightness, were “essentially beside the point.”31 

If, in the Eckardts’ view, the real problem is with a historic Christian theological 

predisposition, the need to address other concerns becomes far less important. What 

they are still lacking, however, is a precise label by which to describe this theolog-

ical predisposition.  

A trip to the Middle East together in 1969 seems to have tempered the Eck-

ardts’ generally totalized views of Arabs slightly, but by no means significantly. 

While they show some concern for Palestinian refugees (without quotes, this time) 

in their 1969 report of this journey,32 they assert that such suffering was nonetheless 

a byproduct of an otherwise and entirely just cause that had been exacerbated by 

the Arab failure to “bring themselves to recognize” the beneficial “achievements” 

brought by Israel’s victory in 1967.33 And while they, for the first time, 

                                                            
25 Emily Alice Katz, “‘A Questioning of the Jewish Status Quo’: Midstream, Shlomo Katz, and Amer-
ican Zionist Letters at Midcentury,” Jewish History 29 (2015): 57-96, here 70-71.  
26 Katz, “A Questioning…,” 71.  
27 Katz, “A Questioning…,” 82, describing an anti-Arab tendency shared by Jewish Frontier and Amer-

ican Zionist, but less so by Commentary (see 87-88).  
28 A. Roy Eckardt, “Eretz Israel: A Christian Affirmation,” Midstream 14.3 (1968): 9-12, here 9.  
29 Eckardt, “Eretz Israel,” 11. 
30 See Roy Eckardt’s defense of this term in Eckardt, Your People, 174, n. 8. Otherwise, see A. Roy 
Eckardt, “The Jewish-Christian Encounter,” CCAR Journal 15 (1968): 22-30.  
31 Alice L. Eckardt, “The Enigma of Christian Hostility to Israel,” Women’s League Outlook 42 (1972): 
5-7 and 24-25, here 7.  
32 A. Roy and Alice L. Eckardt, “The Tragic Unity of Enemies: A Report from the Middle East,” The 

Christian Century 86 (1969): 73-76. Alice describes this eight-week trip elsewhere as well (“Growing 
into a Daring…,” 23-24).  
33 See Eckardts, “The Tragic Unity,” 73.  



             

              7                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

acknowledge the concerns of local Christians,34 Roy Eckardt, in a later reworking 

of this same report, backtracks, suggesting that “stressing Arab rights” too much 

risks “a strengthening of those forces and interests that are bent upon the destruc-

tion of the Jews and Israel.”35 In the end, the only way, he argues, for “Arab 

sympathizers” to “heal the Arab world of its powerful impulse to self-destruction” 

and to “preclude the terrible eventuality that future generations will have to remem-

ber Arabs along with Nazis as the wholesale slaughterers of Jews in the twentieth 

century” is for Christians to hold to “a categorical insistence upon the ethnic and 

national rights of the Jews of Israel.”36 In other words, Christians must overcome 

their historic theology that, seemingly exclusively, had precluded them from both 

recognizing the virtue of the State of Israel and “healing” the Arabs’ pervasive ten-

dency, in Roy Eckardt’s explicit view, toward self-inflicted violence. Eckardt’s 

assessment of the State of Israel’s various detractors thus regularly comprised both 

a sweeping generalization of historic Christian theology and a totalized view of 

Arabs; what he did not posit, so far, was a term by with which to label that theology.  

 

Roy Eckardt’s Neologism and “Traditional” Christianity 

 

When Roy Eckardt returned to Midstream’s pages in 1972, he offered a con-

tribution (“Christian Perspectives on Israel”) that would prove monumental for 

Jewish-Christian relations and the study of early Christian thought in ways likely 

little anticipated by him and little recognized still. His article examines a range of 

Christian perspectives, liberal and conservative, Catholic and Protestant. While the 

perspectives that he explores are varied, the chief object of his opposition is none-

theless, once again, Christians, who since 1967, in Eckardt’s view, had stood guilty 

of a quadripartite crime: “anti-Judaism,” “antisemitism,” “anti-Zionism,” and 

“anti-Israelism.”37  

The sense in which Eckardt uses these terms—including the individual 

meanings, but, more to the point, the nature of the link between them—was, at the 

time, remarkably recent (if not entirely unprecedented).38 While both Eckardt’s use 

of these ideas and their prior history warrant their own extended discussion, it is 

most important, for now, only to note that Eckardt understands the phenomenon of 

Christian antisemitism not merely as a specific manifestation of wider racial, eco-

nomic, or social opposition toward Jews (as, for example, Zionist forefathers like 

                                                            
34 Eckardts, “The Tragic Unity,” 74-75. 
35 Eckardt, Your People, 177.  
36 Eckardt, Your People, 177.  
37 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 40-41. 
38 In fact, Eckardt himself recognized the novelty of his language in 1971; see A. Roy Eckardt, “The 
Nemesis of Christian Antisemitism,” Journal of Church and State 13 (1971): 227-44, here 234, and 

“Anti-Israelism, Anti-Semitism and the Quakers,” Christianity and Crisis 31 (1971): 180-86, here 180. 

It is unclear which of these two articles came first, but note the important linguistic difference. Cf. A. 
Roy Eckardt, “The Devil and Yom Kippur,” Midstream 20 (1974): 67-75, here 67. 



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       8 
 

 

               

    

Moses Hess or Theodore Herzl had argued39) but as a unique manifestation of the-

ological views—that is, of “anti-Judaism.”40 Eckardt similarly characterizes 

Christian “anti-Zionism” and “anti-Israelism” (both of which are terms that had 

undergone significant linguistic changes in 1948) as the results of the umbrella 

concept of “anti-Judaism” (and the antisemitism to which it had given rise) rather 

than results of ethical, political, or legal objections.41 In Eckardt’s view, “Christian 

attitudes to Israel, many of which are hostile, must be understood in continuity with 

the long tradition of Christendom’s antipathy toward Jews and the persecution of 

Jews.”42 Once again, other issues are “essentially beside the point”43 when the chief 

issue is theological (“anti-Judaism”).  

Roy Eckardt first turns to address liberal Protestant Christianity (especially 

Unitarians), whose casting off of “traditional” Christianity should have led them 

also to cast off antisemitism/anti-Judaism, but it had not.44 Next, Eckardt turns to-

ward “more conservative” Protestant Christians, whom he accuses of 

“theologizing” the “political domain of erstwhile Palestine,” by which he means a 

“resort to Christian religious judgments and scriptural passages in order to question 

and even to negate Zionist and Israeli claims.”45 The first of his two lightning rods 

here is a spring 1968 statement from American missionaries in Beirut. While the 

statement does not appear to have been widely published or noticed,46 it is tremen-

dously important for Eckardt, so we will briefly review the original statement 

before continuing with Eckardt’s use thereof.  

                                                            
39 Moses Hess in Rome and Jerusalem (1862); Theodore Herzl in The Jewish State (1896).  
40 While not entirely unknown in preceding decades, this view gained exponential traction in the 1960s 

and 70s, most notably with the publication of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The 
Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York: Seabury, 1974). 
41 Eckardt misleadingly uses an article from Edward H. Flannery (“Anti-Zionism and the Christian 

Psyche,” JES 6 [1969]: 173-84) in order to bolster his emphasis on “anti-Judaism” as the cause of 
antisemitism, but Flannery had posited the former as only one possible cause of the latter (see 181 and 

183). Nonetheless, Flannery would later change his position: Compare Edward H. Flannery, The An-

guish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Anti-Semitism (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 60-61 and 
the revision of the same section in The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, 
Rev. and updated (New York: Paulist, 1985), 62-64. 
42 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 40. The novelty of this language is evidenced by the fact that, in a 

1974 revised and expanded version of their 1967 articles above, the Eckardts add the word “anti-Juda-

ism” as a totalizing term to encapsulate the Christian position which they seek to oppose (it was not in 

the original); see Eckardt, Your People, 122-51, here 151 (this revision encompasses other articles as 

well). Compare Roy Eckardt’s distinction between “anti-Judaism” and “anti-Semitism” early in his 

career in Christianity and the Children of Israel (Morningside Heights, NY: King’s Crown, 1948), xii-
xiii. 
43 Eckardt, “The Enigma,” 7.  
44 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 41.  
45 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 42.  
46 See Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 50, n. 10. I cannot find the statement printed anywhere besides 
Monday Morning, a small Presbyterian magazine for ministers, which is the version I cite below: “The 

Continuing Middle East Crisis,” Monday Morning 33 (September 23, 1968): 3-6. Eckardt himself only 
cites an original copy from the authors’ file in Beirut.  



             

              9                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

These missionaries offer seven points with the explicit purpose of helping 

American Christians better understand the “Middle East crisis.”47 First, they com-

bat a series of “stereotypes” of Palestinian Arabs as uneducated, technologically 

inept, wandering nomads who failed to see the benefits of the land until Israel first 

made the “desert bloom.”48 Second and third, they stress the need to listen to the 

“facts” and “feelings” from “both sides,” such as the Arab evidence against the 

notion that they had left in 1948 “of their own free will.”49 Fourth, the authors 

question the notion that “might makes right”—whether for Israel itself or for the  

“many Christians” who believed its military victories were evidence of “God’s 

grace.”50 In the fifth point they challenge the “assumption” that Israel’s land-gain 

in 1967 “represents the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy” (at the time, a 

growing assertion in American Evangelical circles).51 Sixth, they remind their read-

ers of the Christian obligation “to minister to the last, the least, and the lost of this 

world.”52 Their final point stresses the need not only to “bind up wounds but to 

prevent new ones” by supporting, for example, the UN resolution demanding Is-

rael’s withdrawal from its 1967 gains, while “wondering” whether “political and 

economic pressures” should now be employed in order to persuade Israel to abide 

by the UN resolution.  

Whatever the statement’s ostensible “balance” or lack thereof, it clearly raises 

cultural, historical, political, moral, and social concerns in regard to Christian sup-

port for Israel’s administration and military superiority since 1967 (not 1948). But 

Eckardt characterizes it exclusively as a theologically motivated attempt to dele-

gitimize Zionism and the State of Israel itself (not merely its post-1967 policies).53 

The only portion he quotes comes from the fifth point, though he misleadingly in-

troduces it with the authors’ fourth point. Here is his presentation, complete with 

his own ellipses and bracketed phrases:  

 

Isn’t it too simple to assume that [the military action of Israel] is a manifesta-

tion of God’s grace?  

                                                            
47 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 3.  
48 “The Continuing Middle East Crisis,” 3. The Eckardts and other likeminded pioneers of American 

Jewish-Christian relations, such as Edward Flannery, John Oesterreicher, and Franklin Littell, each 
promoted a version of these stereotypes. For the Eckardts, see above; for Littell, Oesterreicher and 
Flannery, see below. 
49 “The Continuing Middle East Crisis,” 4. This myth was largely abandoned in Israeli society a few 

years later, but at the time was widely held, including by the same American “pioneers” in the previous 

note. On the change in Israeli society, see Rafi Nets-Zehngut, “Origins of the Palestinian Refugee Prob-
lem: Changes in the Historical Memory of Israelis/Jews 1949-2004,” Journal of Peace Research 48 
(2011): 235-48.  
50 “The Continuing Middle East Crisis,” 5.  
51 “The Continuing Middle East Crisis,” 5.  
52 “The Continuing Middle East Crisis,” 5-6.  
53 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 42. For a wider account of the complex history and political effects 

(or lack thereof) of Protestant missionary interaction with Zionists and Zionism, see David Hollinger, 

Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (Princeton: 
Princeton University Press, 2017), 117-138.   



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       10 
 

 

               

    

… [We] must challenge the assumption that the Israeli occupation of Jerusa-

lem, and indeed of large portions of Palestine, represents the fulfillment of Old 

Testament prophecy. The Old Testament does speak of the return of Israel to 

the promised land, but Christians should remember three things: (1) the great 

prophetic voices in the Old Testament…constantly warned Israel that a gra-

cious God would judge severely any injustice his chosen people committed; 

(2) by the end of the Old Testament period such promises of return were un-

derstood as part of the action of God at the very end of history rather than of 

men within history; and (3) the New Testament understands the whole Old 

Testament experience as having been transposed into a new key by the coming 

of Jesus Christ: so that the Church is the new “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16). If 

Jesus made it clear that God is to be worshiped neither on Mt. Gerizim nor in 

Jerusalem (John 4:21) [a misquotation, by the way54], can Christians believe 

that God’s promise is fulfilled by the occupation of Palestine by the modern 

political state of Israel? What do we mean when we sing, “Noel, Noel, born is 

the King of Israel?”55 

 

Eckardt immediately follows with a second lightning rod:  

 

The contention of the Beirut group was given renewed voice in a sermon on 

Palm Sunday, 1972 by Edward L. R. Elson, Chaplain of the U.S. Senate and 

former head of the anti-Israeli organization American Friends of the Middle 

East.56 In seeking to rebuke Christians who allegedly find a fulfillment of 

prophecy in current administration of Jerusalem, Elson told his hearers that the 

Christian church is “the new Israel of God.”57 

  

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the original account of Elson’s sermon, 

so I am unable to compare it to Eckardt’s summary. However, suffice it to say that 

Eckardt’s report is not firsthand (and probably not even secondhand), nor terribly 

balanced, as he relies on the account given in the Near East Report—the newsletter 

distributed by the decidedly pro-Israel lobby group, AIPAC (American Israel Pub-

lic Affairs Committee), to members of congress and other Washington notables.58  

                                                            
54 Eckardt’s footnote reads: “Jesus is actually reported by John as saying, “the hour is coming when 
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (“Christian Perspectives,” 50, 

n. 9). Why Eckardt calls this a “misquotation” is unclear, since the statement is not even claiming to 
have quoted Jesus, but merely paraphrasing what most biblical scholars accept to have been the case.  
55 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 42.  
56 This was an erstwhile pro-Arab organization with which, it appears, the CIA was involved. See Hugh 

Wilford, “American Friends of the Middle East: The CIA, US Citizens, and the Secret Battle for Amer-
ican Public Opinion in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–1967,” JAS 51 (2017): 93-116.  
57 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 42-43.  
58 Near East Report (March 29, 1972). See also the subsequent issue (April 5, 1972), which reports on 

the Christian reactions to the Palm Sunday sermons. On the Near East Report, see John L. Moore, ed., 

The Washington Lobby, 3rd ed. (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1979), 143. For another de-
scription of this Palm Sunday event and the response from Christians Concerned for Israel (to be 



             

              11                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

One need not to defend or even sympathize with either the “Beirut group’s” 

statement59 or Elson’s in order to recognize that Eckardt cites two American Pres-

byterian statements (though he does not mention that affiliation) and examines both 

as if they are exclusively theological objections to Israel. Even further, he obscures 

the fact that these statements were responses to a specific theological claim by 

characterizing the point to which they were each responding (Christian belief that 

1967 was the fulfillment of prophecy) as “alleged.” As Eckardt himself will 

acknowledge in the same article, this phenomenon was, by 1972, hardly “al-

leged.”60 After all, another Presbyterian, Nelson Bell (founder and editor of 

Christianity Today, as well as Billy Graham’s father-in-law), had written on July 

21, 1967, “That for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now com-

pletely in the hands of the Jews gives a student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed 

faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.”61 Such was even more thoroughly 

confirmed by the 1500-person conference Christianity Today held in Jerusalem in 

1971, which was attended by both David Ben-Gurion and Zvi Werblowsky (a 

prominent scholar and periodic advisor to the Ministry of Religious Affairs) and 

focused on the connection between biblical prophecy and Israel’s six-day victory.62 

Yet, in Eckardt’s overall rendering, this was not an inner-Christian debate, in which 

the Beirut authors or Elson had waded into theological waters regarding biblical 

prophecy and its fulfillment in the church because fellow Christians had affirmed 

those same prophecies on behalf of Israel’s military victories. It was not a debate 

in which theology was one aspect of otherwise worthy social, political, or other 

concerns—whatever the quality of that theology. It was, rather, an exclusively the-

ologically motivated—seemingly ex nihilo—attempt to delegitimize Israel itself 

(rather than merely challenge its post-1967 policies).  

Having thus established the seemingly and theologically sui generis nature of 

Christian opposition to the State of Israel, Eckardt introduces an entirely novel 

term, immediately following: 

 

                                                            
addressed below), see Caitlin Carenen, The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and 

Israel (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 159-60. 
59 An “open letter” from the same “Beirut group” a year later is far more castigating of Israel’s actions. 
Nonetheless, even there they attempt to be “evenhanded” (lamenting, for example, the presence of 

“bigoted anti-Jewish propaganda pamphlets”). For the full version, see “Middle East Crisis Continues,” 

Monday Morning 34 (September 22, 1969): 3–6, and for the Eckardts’ characterization of the statement, 
see Encounter with Israel, 257.  
60 Sources on this phenomenon abound. See, e.g., Timothy P. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: 
How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), or, more re-

cently but with different emphases, Jason Olson, America’s Road to Jerusalem: The Impact of the Six-
Day War on Protestant Politics (Lanham: Lexington, 2018). 
61 L. Nelson Bell, “A Layman and His Faith: Unfolding Destiny,” Christianity Today, July 21, 1967.   
62 See Olson, America’s Road, 112-14. Cf. Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 45.  



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       12 
 

 

               

    

Here are spokesmen who intrude theological supersessionism into the political 

domain. The fact that the church, the ‘new Israel,’ has taken the place, alleg-

edly, of the ‘old Israel,’ the Jewish people, becomes the ground for political 

opposition to Israel.63 

 

After offering Midstream’s readers this neologism, Eckardt displays again his ear-

lier tendency to view “traditional” theology as a sort of impetus that had allowed 

Christians to become “Arab sympathizers.” This “Christian traditionalist-negative 

stance toward the Jewish people” (as he later describes it64) had enabled these 

Christians to share the goal of Israel’s enemies:    

 

The surface insistence that theology is to judge politics is a cloak for other 

purposes. Reputedly Christian reasoning has become, in fact, an ideology to 

justify and advance a specific political program: the forcible transfer of land 

to the foes of Israel.65 

 

Concluding this section soon after with reference to a French Christian publication, 

Témoignage chrétien (though he neither quotes nor cites anything specific from 

it),66 he more clearly specifies his understanding of the more traditional “Christian 

right,” claiming that “traditional supersessionist theology”—which he now defines 

as the belief that “the church is the fresh, spiritual ‘new Israel’ replacing the out-

moded, evil ‘old Israel’”—had combined with a leftist “condemnation of Zionism 

and Israel.”67 For Eckardt, this newly designated “supersessionist theology” is nei-

ther temporal nor simply a product of contemporary circumstances; it is cosmic; it 

is “traditional.” It is, in his characterization, not a theological response to prophet-

ically rooted Christian support for Israel, but “the ground” from which springs a 

uniquely Christian opposition to Israel itself. With Eckardt’s assertions, within a 

self-described “Zionist publication” with an established history of anti-Arab rhet-

oric, it is no wonder that someone in Metropolitan Khodr’s position raises the 

concern that Christian Arabs were being portrayed as “enemies of Israel” not be-

cause of “a simple political feud,” but because of their devotion to ancient Christian 

traditions.68 Eckardt indeed casts “traditional” Christianity in little else than a vil-

lainous role and, in this particular article, overlooks entirely the actual perspectives 

                                                            
63 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 43. Emphasis mine.  
64 Your People, 110. 
65 “Christian Perspectives,” 43. Eckardt later revises the language in such a way that makes his point 
about “the hidden but real intention of the Beirut churchmen” even stronger (Your People, 111).  
66 The only citation he gives is his own, unpublished talk the previous March: “The Churches, Anti-

Semitism, and the Holocaust.” There is a chapter by the same name that appears two years later in Your 
People (7-28), which one can assume is the published version of the talk, but he does not quote 
Témoignage chrétien there either.  
67 Eckardt, “Christian Perspectives,” 43. 
68 Khodr, “The Feelings and Reactions,” 4.  



             

              13                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

of Arabs, Christian or otherwise, except to identify them as the real cause of “so-

called Israeli militarism.”69 

When Eckardt later turns in the same article to “evangelical literalism,” he is 

no longer on the extreme attack. While he clearly rejects their desire (no longer 

“alleged”) to interpret/justify the State of Israel through a prophetic/eschatological 

lens, he does not, on the whole, condemn them, perhaps because their political 

support of Israel had made their theology less problematic for now.70 Similarly, 

when he turns to the “theological justifications for the State of Israel” espoused by 

Catholic thinkers like John Oesterreicher and Edward Flannery (whom we will ad-

dress below), he does so with trepidation, holding that such positions, while largely 

laudable, nonetheless risk imposing “a double standard” on Israel that may dimin-

ish or obscure the “objective historical, moral, and juridical considerations” that 

are the “primary elements in the support for Israel that are increasingly affirmed 

and shared by Catholics, Protestants, and others” who unite with “those who speak 

from the standpoint of secular-ethical authentication and of international law.”71 

Eckardt concludes the essay by again reemphasizing that, whatever one’s “spir-

itual” views in regard to its people or historic founding, Israel stands with 

“historical and moral” justification.72 And it is thus to its founding, and toward its 

people, that the Christian must react with “celebration” and “thanksgiving” “be-

cause their Jesus Christ was and remains a Jew.”73  

 

Franklin Littell’s Neologism and the “Greekness” of Christianity 

 

After Roy Eckardt coined the term “supersessionism,” its rise in Jewish-Chris-

tian/Israeli-American relations as the chief descriptor for the “traditional” Christian 

views of Jews did not quickly reach beyond his circle of family and friends.74 Two 

years later, Alice Eckardt uses the concept to describe Christianity’s “genocidal” 

tendency—“if not for racial genocide for Jews, then for religious genocide through 

conversion”75—which had caused Christianity to see itself as the “new Israel,” 

thereby entailing “the death of the ‘old Israel’” and comprising the reason why 

more Christians did not rally to support Israel in June 1967, the potential moment 

                                                            
69 “Christian Perspectives,” 44. 
70 The Eckardts’ critique of this sort of “Christian Zionism” becomes clearer later: see Alice and Roy 
Eckardt, “The Achievements and Trials of Interfaith,” Judaism 27 (1978): 318-23, here 320.  
71 See “Christian Perspectives,” 47-49, here quoting 49 and 47. Eckardt is speaking primarily of the 
members of Christians Concerned for Israel, to whom we will return below (see also n. 58 above).  
72 “Christian Perspectives,” 49. Cf. Eckardts, “The Achievements,” 320. 
73 “Christian Perspectives,” 49.  
74 Cf. David Nicholls, “Modifications and Movements,” JTS 25 (1974): 393-417, here 397-98, which 
employs the term, but with a meaning entirely unrelated to Eckardt’s, as if Nicholls too was coining it.   
75 Alice L. Eckardt, “The Holocaust: Christian and Jewish Responses,” JAAR 42 (1974): 453-69, here 
454.  



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       14 
 

 

               

    

of a “second Holocaust.”76 But besides the Eckardts, few would have more success 

in promoting this basic narrative than their friend and fellow pioneer in Jewish-

Christian relations and “post-Shoah” theology, Franklin Littell.  

A strong advocate for a Jewish state (notably even before 1948), Littell 

founded Christians Concerned for Israel shortly after the Six-Day War (later to be 

succeeded by the still-active National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel). 

Like Roy Eckardt, he despised the American missions center in Beirut, noting that 

it had become “nothing but a pumping station for Arab League/Muslim Holy War 

propaganda for the destruction of Israel and the Jews.”77 Accordingly, as we will 

see further below, the image of “the Arab” that he regularly put on display was 

consistent with, if not even more negative than, that of the Eckardts and Midstream 

above: Arabs regularly appear in his writings as violent, Communist-directed 

pawns who had wrongly garnered the sympathy of liberal Christians.78 And the 

reason that so many Christians had fallen for Arab propaganda was for him, as it 

was for the Eckardts, the “traditional” Christian view of Jews and Judaism.  

Despite the fact that his works generally reveal an unfamiliarity with late-an-

tique Christian thought—he claims for example that Nicea “set off the ‘Old 

Testament,’” as opposed to the “New Testament,” and thereby set “in place” the 

“superseding myth, which already carries the genocidal undertone,”79 when Nicea 

did not at all deal with the issue of canonicity, never mind the other inaccuracies 

implicit in this statement—Littell regularly totalizes and blames the patristic period 

for offering to Christianity an antisemitic, “superseding” view of Jews to which 

Nazis, Arabs, and their Christian sympathizers would eventually hold.80 As he 

shows in his most well-known work, The Crucifixion of the Jews (1975), there are 

few reasons for Christian “anti-Zionism”—the “new code word for Antisemi-

tism”81—beyond this ancient “superseding or displacement myth,” which had for 

millennia declared that “the mission of the Jewish people was finished with the 

coming of Jesus Christ, that ‘the old Israel’ was written off with the appearance of 

‘the new Israel.’”82  

                                                            
76 A. Eckardt, “The Holocaust,” 464, with reference to Emil L Fackenheim, Quest for Past and Future: 
Essays in Jewish Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1968). Despite Eckardt’s implication, Fackenheim did not 
share her “supersessionist” vocabulary, though he did share the general idea (see Quest for Past…, 23).  
77 Franklin H. Littell, “Reflections on a Visit to Israel,” The Reconstructionist 36 (February 1970): 7-
12, here 10.   
78 Littel makes this link amid Arabs, Communists, and misled Christians throughout his works. See, 

e.g., Franklin H. Littell, “Historical Reflection: The Holocaust and Beyond” (Speech at Eastern College, 

1985), TLITFZ201307000204, Subseries 12.5: Speeches, lectures, and article manuscripts, 1938-2006, 
Franklin H. Littell Papers, Temple University, 6-8.  
79 Littell, “Historical Reflection,” 4.  
80 See, esp., Franklin H. Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 24-43, 
where Littell, unlike the Eckardts, at least directly cites some early Christian sources. 
81 Littell, The Crucifixion, 97.  
82 Littell, The Crucifixion, 2. Emphasis mine. This develops the same point regarding the “superseding 

theory” that Littell had explored earlier in “Christendom, Holocaust and Israel: The Importance for 
Christians of Recent Major Events in Jewish History,” JES 10 (1973): 483-97.  



             

              15                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

In his 1982 “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust” (an essay originally 

presented at a Jerusalem conference on Nazism), Littell provides, akin to the Eck-

ardts, a groundbreaking way to label and reify the notion that Christian resistance 

to Israel was a misguided enterprise, rooted in both an unfortunate adherence to 

church fathers and misdirected sympathies with Arabs, with no legitimate political 

or ethical basis.83 Overall, he seeks to show in this essay how Christianity can “be-

come credible again.”84 His chief concern is liberal Protestantism, which had, in 

his view, been deceived by Communists and the recent attempt of refugees in the 

“Near East” to “create a ‘Palestinian’ identity” (we will return later to his use of 

quotation marks here).85 And more specifically at fault is the liberal tendency to-

ward “universalism,” which, as Littell explains, is rooted in the “Greek” ideas with 

which the gentile fathers had tainted Christianity’s Jewish roots and thereby dis-

mantled the particularity of the Jewish people.86 This triumph of Greek 

universalism over Jewish particularity came with (or led to) accusations of dei-

cide87 and the notion that “with the New Dispensation the historic mission of the 

Jewish people is ended. They are to scatter, wither away and disappear from his-

tory. The ‘New Israel’ has superseded the old.”88 The patristic writers “took over” 

the Jewish Scriptures, promulgated a “radical break between the age of the Jews 

and the age of the Church,”89 and thereby created the “superseding theory” that 

disregarded Jewish history entirely. For one who remains faithful to this way of 

thinking, recent events present a challenge: “To the supersessionist,” he summa-

rizes, “both the Holocaust and a restored Israel are unintelligible.”90 Here Littell 

offers a neologism, “the supersessionist,” the concrete exponent of Eckardt’s “su-

persessionism.” Though Cyprian, a Latin writer—and a notably unique one at 

that—is the only patristic authority that Littell cites (in a discussion primarily of 

Greek ideas),91 for him, all are equally guilty in providing the foundation of later 

Christian resistance to the State of Israel.  

The restored State of Israel has, according to Littell, once and for all put to bed 

the “Greek-philosophical” view of history and its “old myth of Jewish decline and 

disappearance” that had viewed Jews as a “fossil.”92 Christians who fail to recog-

nize this are guilty of the “terrorist weapon, political Antisemitism [sic],” to which 

                                                            
83 Franklin H. Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” in Papers Presented to the Interna-

tional Symposium on Judaism and Christianity under the Impact of National-Socialism (1919–1945), 
ed. Jacob Katz (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1982), 455-83. 
84 Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 455.  
85 Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 456.  
86 See, Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 457-60.  
87 See Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 462. 
88 Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 463.  
89 Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 464. 
90 Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 465. 
91 Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 462-63.  
92 Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 466-67.  



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       16 
 

 

               

    

their “centuries of theological and cultural antisemitism” had led.93 Thus, for Chris-

tians to become credible again they must abandon their triumphalist ways (which, 

along with “supersessionism,” is the real problem for Littell).94 They must 

acknowledge and come to terms with the Holocaust, particularly the Christian in-

volvement; they must reject universalism (which was, for Littell, the “Greek” 

legacy of the patristic era) and recognize the particularity of the Jewish people; they 

must acknowledge Christianity’s own roots in Judaism. And most especially, they 

must support the State of Israel—that is, the “reborn Israel”—and avoid the temp-

tation toward “even-handedness.”95 Consistent with the Eckardts, for Littell, 

Christian resistance to Israel’s policies was rooted in a poor, traditional, and 

“Greek” theology; he does not seriously consider other reasons.  

 

The Political Roots of “Supersessionism”: A Summary 

 

The ideas often denoted by the term “supersessionism” (e.g., that the “church” 

has replaced “Israel”) are rooted in writings long before the twentieth century, and 

its nominal (supersession) and verbal (to supersede) counterparts had appeared be-

fore 1972, for example among Protestants who had “superseded” Jewish fidelity to 

Torah and, though surprisingly rarely acknowledged, other Christians (i.e., Roman 

Catholics).96 But the way of categorizing—the “-ism” in which the “-ist” believes, 

the newly identified “traditional doctrine” and totalizing heuristic device for as-

sessing and rejecting historic and contemporary Christian teaching on Jews—

originated amid the heresiological and political concerns of Roy and Alice Eckardt 

and Franklin Littell. The line of reasoning which led to the creation of this taxon-

omy is rooted not in theological scholarship that entails a close reading of ancient 

texts, but in a quite specific chain of events: 1) the Eckardts’ and Littell’s strong 

reactions to 2) fellow (American Protestant) Christians, who themselves had re-

acted to 3) the growing body of Evangelical Christians who, because they saw new 

and exciting evidence of biblical prophecy and God’s ongoing covenantal fidelity 

to his people, justified and exulted in 4) Israel’s clear demonstration of military 

superiority in and administrative policies after the Six-Day War.  

In this environment, the neologisms debut as tools not to demonstrate (for their 

opponents assert otherwise) but in order to reify the claim that Christian objection 

to the State of Israel (rather than to the prophetically/biblically based approval of 

its post-1967 policies) was rooted above all in a “traditional” condemnation of the 

                                                            
93 Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 468.  
94 See Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 480.  
95 Littell, “Christian Antisemitism and the Holocaust,” 481. 
96 See, e.g., H. Christopher, “On Instrumental Music in Churches of Christ,” Lard’s Quarterly 4 (1867): 

349-68, here 353. For brief examinations of the linguistic precursors to “supersessionism,” which I am 

not offering above, see, e.g., Soulen, “Supersessionism”; Terence L. Donaldson, “Supersessionism and 
Early Christian Self-Definition,” JJMJS 3 (2016): 1-32; or Matthew A. Tapie, Aquinas on Israel and 

the Church: The Question of Supersessionism in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Eugene, OR: Pick-
wick, 2014), 9-24. 



             

              17                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

Jewish people as a whole. It was this “traditional” theology, rather than salient po-

litical, legal, or ethical concerns, that effected a uniquely Christian resistance that 

enabled the Christian to share the nefarious goals of Israel’s Arab enemies. Since, 

for the Eckardts and Littell (and here, they are not alone), Israel was in the right 

morally, historically, legally, politically, socially and in many other ways of speak-

ing, Christian resistance must be theological.97 What is not opposed as an “Arab 

front” or deception by “Arab propaganda” is opposed as bad theology.98  

 

The Rhetorical Figures of Arabs, Eastern Christians, and Church Fathers 

 

The chief objects of the Eckardts’ and Littell’s criticisms in the texts consid-

ered here (and several of their other writings) are European/American Christians 

whose “supersessionism” had left the door open to misguided sympathies with Is-

rael’s enemies. “Arabs” themselves, however, function as little more than rhetorical 

figures distanced from the nuances of reality. They do not amount to much more 

than ignorant rejectionists whose tendency toward violence allowed them to be 

dragged along by Communists while mischievously molding the theologically pre-

disposed American Christian into an “Arab sympathizer.” The accompanying 

terms that each of these pioneers themselves use to describe Arabs unfortunately 

add a dark dimension to their stalwart defense of Jews and a Jewish state in the 

decades following the Shoah. And still worse when one turns to the manner in 

which they handled the nuances of Palestinians—particularly Littell,99 who was 

wont to place “Palestinian” in quotes, who suggested that “Palestinians” were de-

mographically comprised of post-Zionist Arab immigrants who thereby had no 

longstanding tie to the land100 (thus not really “refugees”101), and who held that 

“Palestine,” as a political concept, was “entirely a myth, a product of propagandists 

of the PLO and their supporters and fellow-travellers [sic].”102 One’s concern for 

the State of Israel or for revising historic Christian teaching after the Shoah does 

not have to come with a regular dismissal of Palestinian history and interests, but 

for these American pioneers, it did.  

Their considerations of Arab and Palestinian Christians themselves, insofar as 

they were explicitly acknowledged at all, likewise tended more toward rhetoric 

                                                            
97 In addition to the many examples above, see Eckardts, “The Achievements,” 320. 
98 Cf. the Eckardts’ description of the Americans for Middle East Understanding (founded in 1967) in 
“The Achievements,” 321.  
99 Cf., e.g., Eckardts, “Tragic Unity of Enemies,” 75. 
100 See Littell, “Historical Reflection” 5-6, where he favorably cites Joan Peters, From Time Immemo-
rial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine (New York: Harper & Row, 1984). Peters’ 

work was roundly rejected by the majority of the scholarly (including Israeli) community, but it was 

quite impactful for those in the anti-Palestinian movement like Littell. Shortly before her death in 2015, 
Prime Minister Netanyahu called Peters to praise her for all she had done “for Israel” (Ron Grossman, 
“Joan Caro, author of controversial book on Israel, dies at 78,” Chicago Tribune, January 7, 2015).  
101 See, e.g., Littell, “Christian Antisemitism,” 456 above. He elsewhere speaks of Palestinian “refu-
gees” with quotes but of Jewish refugees (from Arab nations) with none (“Reflections on a Visit,” 7). 
102 See Littell, “Historical Reflection,” 6.  



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       18 
 

 

               

    

than reality. In 1992, Littell asserted, in his regular column for the Philadelphia 

Inquirer, that the claim to be a “Palestinian Christian” was little different from the 

“Deutsche Christian” movement and attempt to make Jesus Aryan.103 He referred 

to Christianity in the Holy Land in 1970 as “repulsive, coming from the very lowest 

level of Christendom” holding that it would be “gain for Christianity pure and un-

defiled if the [Israeli] government would simply expel the ‘Christian’ money-

changers and bigots from the country” (though, notably, he spoke more positively 

of European and American Christians residing there).104 When it came to Eastern, 

particularly Orthodox, Christianity, to which the majority of Arab Christians hold, 

these writers react either with disdain (especially Littell) or shocking oversight (es-

pecially the Eckardts). Littell more than once agreed with the notion (expressed at 

a 1910 meeting of American and European missionaries) that had the “Church of 

Syria” been more faithful,105 it would never have had to suffer the dominance of 

Islam and ensuing reduction to the “little fossilized remains of Christian commu-

nities” that it had become.106 Roy Eckardt’s introduction to his own edited 1970 

collection, Christianity in Israel (remarkably comprised exclusively of European 

and Israeli, notably governmental, sources107), says nothing of the Orthodox, the 

largest single block of local Christians.108 Perhaps he considered such oversight to 

be justified, since he elsewhere does not include Orthodox Christianity as among 

“the two main branches of Christianity” and asserts that its future relations with 

Jews did not “look very promising.”109  

Though their own views of patristic thinkers as principle villains in the Jewish-

Christian saga may not have been the cause of their low regard for Orthodox Chris-

tianity, it assuredly did not help, and scholars even still notably lament Orthodox 

                                                            
103 Franklin H. Littell, “Lest We Forget #636: The Aryan Jesus” (typescript, Philadelphia, April 15, 

1992), Temple University. “Lest We Forget” was a weekly column that Littell wrote for the Philadel-
phia Inquirer. Thus, these claims were meant for a wide audience.  
104 Littell, “Reflections on a Visit,” 9-10. Littell would repeat similar views in 1984 as well: “the Chris-
tian presence ‘in the Holy Land’ is scarcely representative of Christianity at its best.” Franklin H. Littell, 

“Teaching the Holocaust and Its Lessons,” JES 21 (1984): 531-35, here 533. This context has to do 

with Holocaust education/scholarship in Israel, where he also remarks on the misuse of the Holocaust 
among “a type of right-wing Israeli politics.” 
105 See, e.g., Littell, “Christianity and Totalitarianism” (speech at Glenview Community Church, Glen-
view, IL, 1965), TLITFZ201310000219, Subseries 12.5: Speeches, lectures, and article manuscripts, 

1938-2006, Franklin H. Littell Papers, Temple University, 3 and “Like a Mighty Stream” (speech at the 

Conference on “The Instinct for Righteousness,” Houston, 1985), TLITFZ201504000014, Subseries 

12.5: Speeches, lectures, and article manuscripts, 1938-2006, Franklin H. Littell Papers, Temple Uni-

versity, 2. He seems to have viewed the state of the nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox Church and 
the later rise of Communism similarly. See, e.g., Littell, “Christianity and Totalitarianism,” 4. 
106 “Like a Mighty Stream,” 2. Littell is summarizing the 1830s assessment of the American Board of 

Commissioners, and he uses the same point in a variety of places. See, e.g., Franklin H. Littell, “The 
Holocaust and the Christians,” Journal of Church and State 41 (1999): 725-38, here 729.  
107 A. Roy Eckardt, ed., Christianity in Israel (New York: American Academic Association for Peace 
in the Middle East, 1971).  
108 Eckardt, ed., Christianity in Israel, 2.   
109 See Your People, 189 and footnote. Interestingly, Eckardt here admits that it is “unwarranted” to 
ignore Orthodox Christianity in interreligious discussions. 



             

              19                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

devotion to patristic literature as an assumed reason why Orthodox Christian-Jew-

ish dialogue has not reached a standard more acceptable to Western Christianity.110 

Yet, for all of the culpability that these pioneers place on the church fathers, they 

do not betray much knowledge of patristic literature at all. They are, like Arabs and 

Eastern Christians, chiefly rhetorical figures. Roy Eckardt, for example, examines 

the “foundations of Christian antisemitism” in the early period while depending 

entirely on secondary citations of patristic writers.111 Not even in his doctoral the-

sis—which Alice Eckardt later remembered as bringing both of them “face to face 

with the Adversus Judaeos history” that inspired their “new thinking” in order to 

overcome “traditional theology”112—does he cite any patristic writers, but rather 

offers a blanket summary that they all “denounced the Jewish religion as a work of 

the Devil and said Jews were destined for eternal torment in hell.”113 Littell, like-

wise, offers no evidence that his understanding of patristic literature went beyond 

an introductory level114 and his generalizations of patristic writings are only slightly 

less sweeping than Eckardt’s.115 Despite claims to summarize the “the thinking of 

the church fathers” and to draw that “thinking” directly to “gas ovens and crema-

toria,”116 the “church father” for these pioneers remained little more than a 

“rhetorical,” or perhaps “hermeneutical,” church father: an antisemitic and poor 

reader of Scripture unworthy of serious attention.  

Such is by no means to claim that church fathers did not harbor some, or even 

many, of the ideas denoted by the Eckardts’ and Littell’s “supersessionism” (any 

more than the preceding consideration of their “rhetorical Arabs” should imply that 

no Arab has ever borne the sort of violent hatred for Israel that they so often fore-

grounded).117 The varied forms of “anti-Judaism” among the church fathers or the 

subsistence of antisemitism in certain Eastern Christian or Arab communities—

both of which are important, and far more trodden, topics of study—constitute, in 

the case of our examination of these pioneers, separate issues. To use a relevant, 

albeit imperfect, analogy from another common topic in Jewish-Christian relations, 

our focus here is not on Jewish approaches to Torah per se, but on the misdirected 

Christian tendency to categorize all such views, whatever they are, under the um-

brella of “legalism.” Our focus is not on the data per se, but on the way of reading 

                                                            
110 R. Kendall Soulen, “Jewish-Christian Relations: Patristics and Orthodox Churches,” EBR 14:234-

235, here 235. Cf. Sandrine Caneri, “The Orthodox Church in Dialogue with Judaism: Toward an Of-
ficial Document?,” The Wheel 17/18 (2019): 33-40. 
111 See Your People, 7-28, here 13. Eckardt depends largely on the work of James Parkes and Gregory 
Baum.  
112 Eckardt, “Growing into a Daring…,” 20.  
113 Eckardt, Christianity and the Children of Israel, 1-2.  
114 See, for example, Franklin H. Littell, Historical Atlas of Christianity, 2nd rev. and exp. (New York: 
Continuum, 2001), 23-38.  
115 E.g., The Crucifixion, 24-32.  
116 Eckardt, Your People, 14 and 13.  
117 Regarding the applicability of the term “supersessionism” to patristic writers, see Michael G. Azar, 

“Origen, Scripture, and the Imprecision of ‘Supersessionism,’” JTI 10 (2016): 157-72; Charles Meeks, 

“Superseding Patristic Supersessionism: Hilary of Poitiers and Cyril of Alexandria on Hosea 1–3,” JTI 
14 (2020): 87-101; and Donaldson, “Supersessionism.”  



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       20 
 

 

               

    

the data, especially when that way of reading developed in sources with little 

demonstrated knowledge of the data itself. Our focus here, in other words, is the 

totalizing way that the Eckardts and Littell employed Arabs and church fathers as 

rhetorical constructions that served their tendency to root contrary Christian polit-

ical outlooks in the theological soil of “supersessionism.”  

While the term “supersessionism”—the heuristic device, the way of reading—

would eventually rise to prominence in more theologically oriented writings and 

with more scholarly precision,118 it originated nonetheless from a political outlook 

in which Arabs featured prominently, but were scarcely considered, church fathers 

were regularly alluded to, but hardly read, and Orthodox Christian Arabs—who, 

one might say, combine the worst of both worlds—were unworthy of serious atten-

tion, except to be implicated explicitly and implicitly, as both Arabs and 

“traditional” Christians, in crimes against Jews and the State of Israel. These sorts 

of mischaracterizations, oversights, or outright dismissals of ancient peoples and 

traditions were undoubtedly due to the pioneers’ primary focus of affirming Jews, 

Jewish concerns, and the State of Israel: to borrow a phrase from elsewhere, their 

sentiments toward Arabs and Palestinians, Christian or otherwise, formed the “neg-

ative side” of what one might call their “Israel hermeneutic.”119 Because of that, 

these tendencies of dismissal or oversight unfortunately amounted to something 

strikingly similar to the historic “supersessionism” or the Spätjudentum myths that 

these pioneers sought to overcome.   

 

“Supersessionism” Redirected 

 

The pioneers did not reject the idea that there was a “new Israel”; they simply 

believed that it was not the Christian church. For them, the “new Israel” was the 

State of Israel that had been “resurrected,” as Littell believed, from the Jewish “cru-

cifixion” in the Shoah and the centuries preceding it.120 For the Eckardts, 1948 was 

likewise a “resurrection,”121 but not merely of the Jewish people or a “resurrection 

of Israel.”122 Rather it was a resurrection of the “State of Israel,”123 a resurrection 

of the “Medinat Yisrael,”124 which had its “founding fathers” in the early propo-

nents of Zionism and Palestine’s early Jewish colonies,125 toward whose 

                                                            
118 Especially with the publication of R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology 
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996). See also Donaldson, “Supersessionism.” 
119 Cf. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, 64.  
120 The namesake idea of Littell, The Crucifixion (see, e.g., 130).  
121 See, e.g., Alice Eckardt and A. Roy Eckardt, Encounter with Israel: A Challenge to Conscience 

(New York: Association, 1970), 58-72. This book was requested as a development of their 1967 Chris-
tian Century articles (see Eckardt, “Growing into a Daring…,” 23). 
122 Eckardts, Encounter with Israel, 19.  
123 Eckardts, Encounter with Israel, 16, 158; emphasis mine.  
124 Eckardts, Encounter with Israel, 70; emphasis mine. 
125 Eckardts, Encounter with Israel, 80.  



             

              21                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

“sacrificial toil” the long-neglected land had looked with hope.126 This new Israel 

never “stole the land away from its inhabitants”127 because the latter had not been 

properly organized anyway, and it is therefore to this Israel and this resurrection 

that the Christian must react with celebration. It is no wonder that Roy Eckardt told 

a group of Houston clergy in 1970 that a true Christian must support the State of 

Israel—for Jesus would have been “an Israeli” in contemporary terms, and it is 

therefore “in an Israeli munitions factory” that one finds true Christian witness.128 

And so the other elements of “supersessionism” were also redirected. For these 

American pioneers, it was no longer ancient Israel that was moribund and fossil-

ized; it was the Arab (even specifically Christian) communities of erstwhile 

Palestine. It was no longer Jewish history that could be violently written off; it was 

Arab history (and still more Palestinian, insofar as they believe it ever existed). It 

was no longer Jewish religious practices that were worthy of supersession; it was 

“traditional” Christianity in general, if not Eastern Christianity specifically. It was 

no longer Jews, but “Arab nations” who were “real disciples of the devil,” along 

with Christian sympathizers and agents of “evenhandedness,” the UN, and the 

WCC.129 It was no longer the people of Israel that was the “barren” womb out of 

which new life would spring, but the uncultivated, “malaria-infested marshes…bar-

ren land” of Palestine that was the “desert” which the State of Israel made to 

“bloom.”130  

 

Rhetorical Violence and Real Violence 

 

Numerous scholars have concurred with a point that the Eckardts and Littell 

were admirably among some of the first to make: that centuries of rhetorical vio-

lence against Jews (largely by means of “hermeneutical” or “rhetorical” Jews rather 

than encounters with “real” Jews) were bound one day to culminate in real violence 

against Jews, as it had most especially under the Nazis.131 Whether it is a “red 

                                                            
126 Eckardts, Encounter with Israel, 45.  
127 Eckardts, Encounter with Israel, 233.  
128 As quoted in “See Christ in Israeli bombs,” National Catholic Reporter, February 4, 1970. See a 

similar point in Your People, 181-82. The newspaper report of this event comes just below another 

article wherein Edward Flannery assures an American Jewish meeting that the US would continue mil-
itary support of the State of Israel, thereby resisting the temptation to “evenhandedness.” At the same 

meeting, Flannery declared that he was “suspicious” of “many of those who shed copious tears for Arab 

refugees but never fail to turn that problem into a big stick with which to beat Israel.” See “Bishop’s 
Aide Hopes for Closer U.S.-Israel Ties,” National Catholic Reporter, February 4, 1970. 
129 A. Roy Eckardt, “The Devil and Yom Kippur,” 70, 72, 67, 69.  
130 John M. Oesterreicher and Edward H. Flannery (on behalf of the Institute of Judeo-Christian Studies 

at Seton Hall), “A Statement of Conscience” (Nov 17, 1967), available in “Middle East - collation of 
documents and comments prepared by Jerusalem Rainbow Group,” Box 68, Folder 5, Rabbi Marc H. 

Tanenbaum Collection, American Jewish Archives, 61-66. The authors also call the notion that Arabs 

were driven out of their homes in 1948 a “gross misrepresentation,” but fail to specify why. For Roy 
Eckardt’s approval of this statement, see “Christian Perspectives,” 48.  
131 See, e.g., Barbara M. Meyer, “Structures of Violence and the Denigration of Law in Christian 
Thought,” SCJR 13 (2018): 1-21. 



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       22 
 

 

               

    

thread”132 or a “ghastly line”133 that links church fathers to concentration camps 

and Nazi propaganda, it is one that is commonly asserted. And if for that reason 

alone, the scholar and participant in interreligious dialogue must always be keenly 

aware of such rhetoric. In that light, our discussion of the origins of a theological 

category that was coined with rhetorical figures and that served to ignore or mis-

characterize, if not “supersede,” the varied detractors from the State of Israel, 

cannot ignore the link between the disparaging rhetoric of the Eckardts, Littell, and 

several other pioneers toward Arabs (Christian or not) and their actual and explicit 

support of violence against them. Their rhetoric was hardly unrelated to the actions 

they promoted.  

Examples abound, but here must be limited to a select few: Roy Eckardt and 

Littell signed on to a June 1970 letter petitioning President Nixon to send fighter-

bombers to Israel in order to maintain its military superiority—a letter which John 

Oesterreicher organized on behalf of numerous other Catholic and Protestant pio-

neers in Jewish-Christian relations.134 Oesterreicher and Flannery had earlier that 

year called for defunding “Arab refugee camps”135 on behalf of Seton Hall’s Insti-

tute of Judeo-Christian Studies, and a month before the June letter, Oesterreicher 

had written to President Nixon, on the institute’s letterhead, asking him to show 

“similar firmness” on behalf of Israel as he had promised in Vietnam.136 In the years 

preceding, the founding director of the Center for Jewish-Christian Studies at Chi-

cago Theological Seminary, Andre Lacocque, praised the richness of Jewish 

culture and explicitly mocked the supposed vacuousness of Arab as a “confronta-

tion between a western sensibility on the one hand and a vicious complext [sic] of 

inferiority on the other hand,” while confirming that God was on the side of “His 

People,” rejecting any attempt of “the ‘Christian’ Arabs” (note the use of quotes) 

to claim to be “Israel,” and refusing to “cry crocodile tears on the Arab victims” 

any more than he would a mass murderer and rapist.137 And even if other scholars 

and founding pioneers did not go quite so far, one should still not overlook other, 

more subtle, but equally important, links between scholarly literature and real vio-

lence, such as evident in the origins of W.D. Davies’s now-classic book on “the 

land,”138 which he wrote at the request of a “prominent government figure in Israel” 

                                                            
132 Littell, The Crucifixion, 1.  
133 Andrew T. Lincoln, Truth on Trial: The Lawsuit Motif in the Fourth Gospel (Peabody, MA: Hen-
drickson, 2000), 405.   
134 “Christian Clergy Calls on Nixon to Back Israel,” B’nai B’rith Messenger, June 26, 1970.  
135 “Judeo-Christian Institute Demands Withdrawal of Support for Refugee Camps until Terrorism Ter-
minates,” The Jewish News, February 27, 1970.  
136 Night Letter to President Nixon (May 2, 1970), Series 1.5, Box 16, Folder 45, The Monsignor Field 
Archives and Special Collection Center, Seton Hall University. 
137 Andre Lacocque, Letter to Howard Schomer (Executive Director, Specialized Ministries Depart-
ment, National Council of the Churches of Christ), July 18, 1967, in “Middle East - collation of 

documents and comments prepared by Jerusalem Rainbow Group,” Box 68, Folder 5, Rabbi Marc H. 
Tanenbaum Collection, American Jewish Archives, 37-39.  
138 The Gospel and the Land: Early Christianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine (Berkeley: University 
of California Press, 1974). 



             

              23                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

who had called during the Six-Day War to ask if Davies would “would go on record 

as a scholar…to defend Israel’s claims to Palestine and Jerusalem.”139 As it hap-

pens, Davies’ book was featured a few years later in a lengthy discussion in 

Midstream, with a variety of other notable scholars participating.140 Some of the 

same scholars had also joined Davies, Eckardt, Lacocque and others in publishing 

a statement in the New York Times shortly after the Six-Day War that affirmed the 

theological reasons why Jerusalem should remain “united” under Israeli control.141  

Indeed, “the land,” for obvious reasons, became a central issue in these schol-

arly Jewish-Christian encounters (and remains one still).142 And here once again 

was a place where the pioneers’ support for overcoming the “supersessionist” claim 

that Jews had no right to the land melded with their supersession of Palestinian 

claims, and the border between rhetorical and real violence proved porous. In the 

wake of the Six-Day War, Israel announced a series of building plans for the newly 

burgeoning city of Jerusalem, including, among other features, a “ring” of “neigh-

borhoods” on the hilltops around Jerusalem (now to be designated as Jerusalem). 

In June 1971, after concerns had been raised about what these building plans might 

mean for non-Jewish populations, most of the pioneers above, and more, issued a 

statement in Israel’s defense.143 The plans, they assured, were merely a “renewal” 

of rundown areas and in no way a threat to the wellbeing of Arab populations (the 

designation, “Palestinian,” is notably absent). And after a group of bishops in Jor-

dan had written to the Vatican expressing concerns over the building plans a few 

months earlier, Oesterreicher offered a scathing response along the same lines. The 

bishops, he asserted, were peddlers of “propaganda” and “alarmists” wrongly using 

the name of Christ. Though he labeled the concern that the building plans would 

hinder free access to the holy sites as the result of an “imagination run wild,” he of-

fered a hypothetical caveat: “Their fears,” he said with striking prescience, “would 

have some semblance of rationality, if that ‘Hebrew Belt’ was a series of military 

fortifications or a row of police stations, and not a scattering of apartment 

houses.” He further reminded them that “Jesus…was a Jew, not a Jordanian” and 

hoped that they, like Jesus’s crucifiers, would be forgiven for their ignorance.144 

Given his close association of Jesus and the State of Israel here, and his censuring 

of Christians who had opposed its policies, Oesterreicher’s concluding allusion to 

                                                            
139 Truman G. Madsen, introduction to W.D. Davies, “Israel, the Mormons and the Land,” in Reflections 
on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels, ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo: Religious Studies Center 

Brigham Young University, 1978), 79. 
140 W. D. Davies et al., “Symposium: The Territorial Dimensions of Judaism,” Midstream 29 (1983): 
32-43. 
141 The advertisement/statement (“Jerusalem Should Remain United”) is found on p. 12 of New York 
Times, July 12, 1967.  
142 Most recently, see Philip A Cunningham, Ruth Langer, and Jesper Svartvik, eds., Enabling Dialogue 
about the Land: A Resource Book for Jews and Christians (New York: Paulist, 2020).  
143 A copy of “Statement of Concerned Christians [CCI] Adopted at Emergency Conference on Jerusa-

lem and Israel,” along with a press statement from Littell, June 10, 1971, is available in pp. 24-29 of 

“Christians Support Unified Jerusalem,” an undated collection of reports and statements prepared by 
the Interreligious Affairs Department of the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Archives.  
144 As quoted in “Judeo-Christian Studies Director Accuses Jordanian Bishops,” NC News Service, 
April 22, 1971, available in pp. 18-19 of “Christians Support Unified Jerusalem” (see previous note).  



               

               Azar: “Supersessionism”: The Political Origin of a Theological Neologism       24 
 

 

               

    

Jesus’s crucifiers (Luke 23:34) is familiar, but with a different set of referents. 

Whereas the ancient “supersessionism” myth so foregrounded by the pioneers of 

Christian-Jewish relations had identified Jesus’s messiahship (and Jewish supposed 

rejection thereof) as the determining factor in the possession of the land, Jesus’s 

Jewishness (and Arab supposed rejection thereof) was now employed to serve the 

same purpose.  

 

Conclusion 

 

In the shadow of the Shoah and amid concerns for Israel’s survival and supe-

riority during its tumultuous beginnings, the Eckardts and Littell—alongside 

several others—dedicated much of their lives toward the unprecedented work of 

revising a history of theological degradation of Jews and Jewish practice. In so 

doing, they coined the new umbrella category of “supersessionism” (and “super-

sessionist”) under which to group historic and contemporary Christian views they 

felt unworthy of the name of Christ. Never before had this category functioned as 

the chief heuristic device under which to assess historic and contemporary Chris-

tian approaches to Jews and Jewish concerns. Yet, in this desire to overcome the 

past, to close the door on “traditional” Christian views, and to throw their theolog-

ical weight behind Israel’s military superiority, they opened other doors toward 

“supersessionist” views of Arabs and Orthodox Christians.  

The place that “supersessionism” now holds in theological literature on Jew-

ish-Christian relations is far more nuanced, and the category continues to serve well 

as Christians seek to come to terms with historically harmful teachings and ongoing 

susceptibility to antisemitism. However, while the concept has functioned well as 

a means for Western-based Christians to revise and repudiate past teaching in order 

to make more theological space for Jews and Jewish concerns, it has also served as 

a means of excluding or delegitimating Christians outside of the West, who do not 

wish to “arrange,” as the Palestinian Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac has said, their 

“thinking in a way to fit the paradigm of Western theology.”145 Though the term 

remains Western in origin and primarily Western in its usage, and though Orthodox 

and Arab Christians in general still have never formed major components of the 

mainstreams of Christian-Jewish relations, the concept often nonetheless functions 

as a sort of “gateway” for their entry into Christian-Jewish relations. Even while 

scholars sometimes recognize that Orthodox Christianity’s historical relationship 

with and contemporary approach to “supersessionism” might be “different,”146 the 

expectation that Orthodox and other Arab Christians can and should operate or be 

assessed under this umbrella remains common.  

                                                            
145 Munther Isaac, “Challenging the Empire: Theology of Justice in Palestine,” in Christian Theology 

in the Palestinian Context, ed. Rafiq Khoury and Rainer Zimmer-Winkel (Berlin: AphorismA, 2019), 
253–64, here 257.  
146 Meyer, “Structures of Violence,” 3. See also Harold Smith, “Supersession and Continuance: The 
Orthodox Church’s Perspective on Supersessionism,” JES 49 (2014): 247–74. 



             

              25                                          Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 16, no. 1 (2021) 
 

                 

In light of its highly politicized origins among Western theologians who had 

significantly low regard for Orthodox and other Arabs, the manner in which pro-

ponents of Jewish-Christian relations employ the term vis-à-vis the theologies and 

concerns of Orthodox and other Arab Christians needs careful consideration. To 

spotlight “supersessionism” in such a way that non-theological concerns and reali-

ties are diminished or dismissed,147 or to portray it as the chief, even exclusive, 

reason why various Arab Christians, particularly the Orthodox, criticize or chal-

lenge the State of Israel or hesitate to join Jewish-Christian dialogue by its 

established standards,148 at best, misleads, and, at worst, excuses its own kind of 

“supersession”—and more sharply so if asserted by scholars and religious leaders 

with no ongoing experience of daily life in the lands controlled by Israel since 

1967.149 The problem, in this case, has not been the empty Arab or Orthodox seat 

at the table of Jewish-Christian relations as much as it has been the manner in which 

the table itself has often been set. 

 

 

                                                            
147 Cf. Kalman J. Kaplan and Paul Cantz, “Israel: ‘Occupier’ or ‘Occupied’? The Psycho-Political Pro-

jection of Christian and Post-Christian Supersessionism,” Israel Affairs 20 (2014): 40-61. Related 

examples of categorizing Israel’s Christian critics as proponents of “supersessionism” or “replacement 

theology,” and so softening the potency of their criticisms, abound in both popular and scholarly liter-
ature. A particularly acute example is Andrew D. Robinson, Israel Betrayed, 2 vols. (San Antonio: 

Ariel Ministries, 2018), with the two volumes tellingly titled, “The History of Replacement Theology” 
and “The Rise of Christian Palestinianism.” 
148 Cf. Petra Heldt. “A Brief History of Dialogue between Orthodox Christians and Jews,” in Orthodox 

Christians and Jews on Continuity and Renewal: The Third Academic Meeting between Orthodox 
Christians and Jews (Immanuel 26/27), ed. Malcolm Lowe (Jerusalem: Ecumenical Theological Re-
search Fraternity in Israel, 1994), 211-224, here 212.  
149 For a critique of Western scholarly tendencies to accentuate anti-Jewish motifs among certain Pal-

estinian theologians while downplaying or ignoring entirely their explicit critiques of “anti-Judaism” 

and antisemitism, see Michael J. Sandford, “Is Jesus Palestinian? Palestinian Christian Perspectives on 
Judaism, Ethnicity and the New Testament,” Holy Land Studies 13 (2014): 123-38.