The ambivalent image of jews in the minds of christian fundamentalists

This paper discusses the varied ways Christian fundamentalists think about Jews and Israel in their theology and in their daily lives. Topics include the continuing significance for fundamentalists of Jewish responsibilities for the death of Jesus, the place of the Holocaust imagery and especially the importance of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the instrumental role fundamentalists believe Jews play in the end- time story leading up to the return of Jesus to Mount of Olives and the making of a new Jerusalem and the beginning of the millennium. The paper suggests that in these ambivalent images lies much social distress in the form of anti- semitism, distortion of our Middle East policy, and the erosion of efforts to create a human ecumenism.An earlier version of this paper appeared in translation as Das zweitdeutige Bild des Juden in Bewusstsein christlicher Fundamentalisten, inBrennpunkte des gegenwartigen Antisemitismus, a book published by the Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, Free University of Berlin.