By Luke Moon, Op-ed contributor
For years, no one had any problem with the term Judeo-Christian. Perhaps that was because for the last 80 years or so the antagonism toward the “Judeo” part of that term was banished to the edges of mainstream society. Sadly, in recent years the antagonism has rushed back into the mainstream and with it a discussion over the term Judeo-Christian.
Controversy was sparked by a post on X by Christian apologist and commentator, Wes Huff. Wes wrote,
“So much noise online regarding the term ‘judeo-Christian.’ Guys — in academia it’s simply the term that describes the combined corpus of Old and New Testaments. The Jewish heritage of the Hebrew scriptures combined with the New Testament. That’s it. I know you want there to be some conspiracy but there isn’t, that’s the way we’re using it. It has nothing to do with geo-politics or a one world order.”
The general response fell into two camps. First, there were those who affirmed the unique place that the Jews hold in God’s redemptive plan for the world. They offered a myriad of verses that speak of the blessings that come to Gentiles through the Jews. The second camp basically rejected the idea that there is anything special about the Jews. Even the Old Testament is decoupled from anything to do with “Jews.” The author of a preeminent book of Christian Nationalism, Stephen Wolfe, framed it like this: “If everything properly ‘Judeo’ is already found in ‘Christian,’ and ‘Christian’ contains additional content beyond ‘Judeo,’ then why not just say ‘Christian’? Why say ‘Judeo’ at all?”
It is the second camp that seems to be utterly offended by including any reference to Jews. This is the maximalist reading of the Old Testament, in which every major biblical character is a Christian, whether they knew it or not. It seems not too distinct from how Muslims claim Jesus as a devout Muslim. Suppressionism is rubbish regardless of whether it’s Christians or Muslims who promote it.
Wes Huff is also missing the point a bit too. The term Judeo-Christian is incredibly relevant to geopolitics. Western Civilization is built upon the ideas derived from Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. The nation-building part of the bible is not the New Testament; it’s the Hebrew Bible. With the exception of Matthew 22:21, Romans 13, and 1 Peter 2:13-14, and a handful of other verses, the bulk of the New Testament is about our relationship with God through Jesus and our relationships with those around us.
There is a reason so much of the great political philosophy of the Enlightenment comes after the Gutenberg press made the whole bible accessible to the average person. Suddenly everyone could read the Old and New Testaments for themselves. They could judge their rulers as the Prophets did. They could see how God laid out his blueprint for human flourishing.
Os Guinness puts the civilizational point plainly: “We owe a lot to the Greeks and much to the Romans, but our Western civilization is essentially a Christian civilization rooted in Judaism.” That is why “Judeo-Christian” matters politically: not because Judaism and Christianity are interchangeable theologies, but because the West’s ideas of covenant, law, liberty, prophetic judgment, and ordered freedom emerged from a biblical inheritance that was decisively opened to ordinary people through the Reformation.
This was not merely a Protestant return to “the Bible” in some generic sense. As political theorist Eric Nelson argues, early modern Christian scholars came to see the Hebrew Bible “as a political constitution designed by God for the children of Israel,” while “newly available rabbinic materials became authoritative guides to the institutions and practices of the perfect republic.” That political philosophers like Milton, Harrington, and Hobbes were not simply inventing modern politics out of secular reason but wrestling with Jewish sources too. They were wrestling with ideas about kingship, law, property, toleration, and the commonwealth because the Rabbis and Jewish sages had been wrestling with those ideas for centuries too.
The American founders themselves understood Exodus as political language. Benjamin Franklin proposed that the Great Seal of the United States depict “Moses lifting up his wand, and dividing the Red Sea, and Pharaoh, in his chariot overwhelmed with the waters,” under the motto, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” The point was not interfaith sentimentality. It was a political imagination formed by the Hebrew Bible: liberation from bondage, judgment on tyranny, and the moral limits of political power.
That political imagination of the well-read chattering class three hundred years ago seems more appreciative of the contribution of the Jews than the social media-consuming chattering class today. It’s likely the former would not have been threatened by the term Judeo-Christian. They would not have seen it as syncretism, but rather an acknowledgement and appreciation for the Jewish contribution to Western Civilization.
Luke Moon is the Founder of Generation Zion, co-chair of the Conference of Christian Presidents for Israel, and Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.