Jewish leaders meet on Christianization

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A summit of Jewish leaders meeting to ascertain whether the religious right plans to "Christianize" the nation drew about a dozen participants yesterday but no consensus was reached.

The private breakfast meeting, reported in The Washington Times on Monday, was held at the Anti-Defamation League's office in Manhattan.

Participants included ADL national Director Abraham Foxman; Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reformed Judaism; Nathan Diament of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; Marc Stern, the assistant executive director of the American Jewish Congress; Steven Gutow of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs; John Ruskay of the UJA-Federation of New York and several staff.

Mr. Foxman called the meeting after giving a series of speeches charging evangelical Christian groups with aiming to impose their faith on public policy.

"He wanted to know if others felt his assessment was right," Mr. Diament said. "Some agreed and others were skeptical.

"We discussed the list of leaders in the evangelical community who Mr. Foxman named -- and those he did not name -- many of whom my organization has worked with. I urged Mr. Foxman to sit down and speak with some of these leaders face-to-face because there are evangelicals who are more moderate and are happy to work in a cooperative fashion."

ADL spokeswoman Myrna Shinbaum said her group has had discussions with former Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed, televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and with the National Association of Evangelicals.

Focus on the Family, however, was not on that list. Its vice president, Paul Hetrick, told The Times on Friday that Mr. Foxman was welcome to visit its Colorado Springs, Colo., headquarters.

The ADL's brief statement about Monday's meeting noted several Jewish leaders were missing because of schedule conflicts, that no strategy was crafted and more meetings are planned.

"It was not a 'damn the evangelicals and full speed ahead' sort of meeting," Mr. Stern said. "Everyone was agreed we're not dealing with a monolithic evangelical community. Some of what's said there is for PR purposes and doesn't necessarily translate into political action."

The Jewish leaders agreed that "there are elements of the evangelical community that, if unchecked and the trends continue, raise disturbing issues for the Jewish community," he said.

He cited the recent fracas over overt Christian practices at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs as an example of what concerns Jews.

"There's a tone deafness in [the evangelical] community about religious freedom," he said. "There seems to be among them a lack of awareness as to how they're crowding out others.

"Abe's not saying there's an imminent pogrom from evangelicals; everyone agrees on that," he said. "It was intended to see if there's enough common ground to go further. I think the answer is yes."