The war on America’s Judeo-Christian roots threatens everything we share
A pastor confronts rising antisemitism and what he calls the right-wing version of the 1619 Project that erases Judaism from Christianity's origins.
The United States is a Judeo-Christian nation. That is not sentiment; it is history. Christianity does not exist without Judaism. The New Testament rests on the foundation of the Old. Jesus Christ was born a Jew, taught from the Hebrew Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament), and declared, as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, that He came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, not abolish them.
Lately, though, I have watched that history get twisted, and it has dismayed me as a pastor. So I was glad to see a rare X post from Dr. Jordan Peterson, who has been ill of late. He wrote:
"With regard to ‘Judeo Christian’: The 10 Commandments are Jewish. The great stories of the Old Testament are Jewish. The Jews developed the idea of subsidiarity as the alternative to tyranny and slavery. The Jews established the cultural preconditions for the rise of universal literacy. The fate of Israel at the hands of the Islamists is the fate of the West. This rising tide of anti-semitism sickens me. Those of you engaging in it for your oh-so-moral reasons, you're despicable. And remember, you proud ‘Christians’ objecting in all your purity to the term: Christ Himself was a Jew."
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Every word is true. And almost on cue, someone proved his point. Jack Posobiec, senior editor at Human Events, responded to Peterson’s post: "This is not what Christians believe." Another poster echoed Posobiec’s centering of Christianity: "Abraham was Christian, Moses was Christian, David was Christian." Posobiec agreed and added, "Adam and Noah were Christian."
That is not a correction. That is the erasure of Jews and Christianity’s origins dressed up as false piety.
Someone online rightly called this "the right-wing version of the 1619 Project." The comparison is sharp. The 1619 Project tried to make slavery America’s founding truth instead of the principles of liberty articulated in 1776. What we are seeing now is the same tactic applied to Scripture: erase the Jews, center only the Christians, and call it faithfulness. It is intellectual dishonesty and spiritual malpractice. It strips Christianity of the very inheritance that gives it meaning.
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I reject this revisionism from any direction. America’s founding documents draw directly from biblical truth. "All men are created equal" and "endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights" — that principle comes from the reality that every human bears the image of God.
The rule of law, human dignity, and justice tempered by mercy all flow from the Judeo-Christian revelation that the Jewish people preserved for millennia and that was fulfilled in Christ. Cut that root, and neither Christianity nor the American experiment has an anchor left.
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This is not an academic argument. It is a discipleship problem. Lying to our children about these origins does not strengthen them; it divides and weakens them. That is why, through Project H.O.O.D. on Chicago’s South Side, we are building the Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center: rigorous job training, education, financial literacy, and, above all, the uncompromised truth of both Testaments of Scripture alongside honest American principles. Our young people will learn the full story: sins confronted, founding ideals upheld, and the God-given capacity for agency and achievement.
We are in a battle for the soul of this nation. Revisionism from any side weakens us. Peterson is also right that the rising antisemitism around us is vile and must be confronted without apology. The Black church and the Jewish people share a history of standing against oppression. We stand on that bond together now.
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There is no room for rewriting the past to serve agendas or social-media clicks. We do not need new idols. We need honesty about our faith and our founding. That is the only path to strength, unity, and restoration. America’s principles were never meant for one tribe; they belong to every citizen willing to live under truth. This nation was built on Judeo-Christian bedrock, and I intend to defend it.