Down here in rural southeast (or swamp-east) Arkansas, we don’t see many Jews. Jews were among the early settlers of the Delta, but have been declining in numbers for 150 years. You can find synagogues in towns like Helena, but most no longer hold services since it a minimum of 10 Jews is needed for components of the Shabbat service.
The average resident has little knowledge of Jewish religion. The first time Jews came up in a conversation here was when I was asked: ”Are all Jews atheists?” This otherwise well-educated accountant had met a few Jews in her small town of Clarendon. And they were all atheists.
She would have been puzzled to hear to use of the term “Judeo-Christian.” Since being Christian to her meant being a believer and being Jewish did not. But even those of us who know more observant Jews should looks askance at the term. Since the Christian Bible includes all the texts in the Jewish scripture, “Judeo-Christian” is at best redundant.
Given some texts in the New Testament, Jews are definitely not to be included as following the same path as Christians.
Thessalonian 4:14. For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last
Matthew 27:24-25. So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”
Can’t be much clearer than that. Christianity has washed its hands of the Jewish predilection for adherence to a set of medieval rules for diet and conduct as a way of pleasing God.
You might say: but both religions worship the same God. Similarly, Muslims workshop the same God of Abraham worshipped by Jews. So why purposely exclude Muslims? Why not Judeo-Muslim-Christianity? Maybe because the inclusion of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the Christian triune God make it a little different from the Jewish and Moslems.
Besides, their were other monotheistic religions before Judaism. The Zoroastrians worshipped one God and thought so much of Jesus that their Wise Men, the Magi, were his first foreign visitors. So why not Judeo=Muslim-Zoroastrianist-Christian?
I think I’ll just stick with Christian and drop that Judeo-Christian hokum.
Resilience 