Modern Jewish and modern Christian thought have developed in close interaction, mutually challenging one another's understandings not just of revelation and religious practice but of the nature of community and national identity. With an eye toward the AAR's 2023 theme of La Labor de Nuestras Manos and the need for revisiting public understandings of religion, this session reflects on points of dialogue and divergence in the Jewish and Protestant Enlightenments and the emerging brands of Christian and European nationalism. It explores Friedrich Schleiermacher’s complicated relationship to modern Judaism and Jewish emancipation, the anti-Judaism embedded in modern liberal theology from J. S. Semler to Schleiermacher and others, and Hannah Arendt’s discerning analysis of the role of antisemitism in the rise of modern European nationalisms. These papers highlight the relevance of these interactions between modern Jewish and Christian thought for understanding the stubborn persistence of Christian nationalism and antisemitism in contemporary politics.
This paper offers an overview of the concept of religion developed by one of its most important, and mostly forgotten modern innovators, Johann Salomo Semler. Semler, a theologian at the University of Halle and central thinker of the theological Aufklärung in the second half of the eighteenth century, developed a liberal theology––a term he coined––aimed at bringing theology in better harmony with contemporary philosophy while protecting Christianity from the creep of naturalism. Yet Semler’s conception of Christianity and religion depended on anti-Judaism, one which freed Christianity from dogmatic and historical ballast. Semler’s conception of religion and his larger theology, including his anti-Judaism, would strongly influence Schleiermacher’s own at the end of the century. After considering Semler’s conception of religion and its influence on Schleiermacher, this paper asks how this history helps contextualize the concept of religion and its relation to other, non-Christian traditions, above all Judaism.
This paper engages with Friedrich Schleiermacher's argument for the conditional emancipation of Jews, as it is laid out in "Letters on the Occasion of the Political-Theological Task, and the Open Letter of Jewish Householders." It focuses on the conditions Schleiermacher places on Jewish emancipation: the renunciation of messianism and subordination of Jewish law to German law. Focusing on these conditions, this paper asks: Is the microscope under which Schleiermacher places Judaism so friendly after all? Attention to the conditions Schleiermacher places to Jewish emancipation, I will argue, betrays an anxiety over forms of religious life that trouble his normative idea of religion and its relation to the nation state. Turning briefly to Hermann Cohen's idea of a messianic humanity, and its critical relation to the violent history of nation-states, the paper will conclude by gesturing towards a theology of community that troubles nationalistic prescriptions for or rejection of different and otherwise religious life.
In this paper, I will develop Hannah Arendt's argument about the role of antisemitism in the formation of 19th century European nationalism, particulary as regards what she terms "the pan movements" (eg. pan-Slavic). There, Arendt repeatedly makes the case that nationalism of this ilk is predicated on the traditional theological doctrine of the election of Israel--that is, that Jews are "the chosen people." The remainder of the paper will spell out the significance of this argument for our understanding of the modern (inter)-relationship of Judaism and Christianity. On Arendt's view, secular Christan nationalisms are a kind of Christian reversion to Judaism. But, this reversion is not to a monotheistic Judaism, but to Christian anti-Judaism's erstwhile portrayal of tribalistic and selfish Judaism. The final part of my paper will conclude with a reflection on the ongoing distinctiveness of Jewish and Christian secular nationalisms.