The current American use of "Judeo-Christian" — to refer to a value system common to Jews and Christians — first appeared in print on 11 July 1939 in a book review by the English writer
George Orwell, with the phrase "… incapable of acting
meanly, a thing that carries no weight the Judaeo-Christian scheme of morals". Orwell repeated the term in his 1941 essay: "It was the idea of human equality—the "Jewish" or "Judeo-Christian" idea of equality—that
Hitler came into the world to destroy", reflecting the Nazis'
Positive Christianity concept to purge faith of its "Jewish" elements. Orwell's usage of the term followed at least a decade of efforts by Christian and Jewish leaders, through such groups as the U.S.
National Conference of Christians and Jews (founded in 1927), to emphasize common ground. The term continued to gain currency in the 1940s. In part, it was a way of countering
antisemitism, with the idea that the foundation of morals and law in the United States was a shared one between Jews and Christians. Orwell was not the first to publicly speak about the moral commonality of Christian and Jewish traditions. On May 19, 1939,
Albert Einstein, in a speech at Princeton Theological Seminary, explaining the importance of moral principles for modern science, emphasized: "The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition." And back in 1884, three years after a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia,
Vladimir Solovyov (Soloviev), a prominent Russian philosopher and Christian writer, wrote in his essay "The Jews and the Christian Question": "Our religion begins with a personal relationship between God and man in the ancient covenant of Abraham and Moses, and is confirmed in the closest personal unity of God and man in the New Testament of Jesus Christ, in which both natures exist inseparably, but unmerged as well. These two covenants are not two different religions, but only two stages of one and the same Divine-human religion, or speaking in the language of the German school, two moments of one and the same God-human process. This single and true Divine-human Judeo-Christian religion proceeds by a direct and magisterial path amid the two extreme errors of paganism, in which first man is absorbed by Divinity (in India), and then Divinity itself is transformed into a shadow of man (in Greece and Rome)."
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 The
first inaugural address of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), in 1933, the famous speech in which FDR declared that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself", had numerous religious references, which was widely commented upon at the time. Although it did not use the term "Judeo-Christian", it has come to be seen by scholars as in tune with the emerging view of a Judeo-Christian tradition. Historian Mary Stuckey emphasizes "Roosevelt's use of the shared values grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition" as a way to unify the American nation, and justify his own role as its chief policymaker. In the speech, FDR criticized the bankers and promised a reform in an echo of the gospels: "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." Houck and Nocasian, examining the flood of responses to the First Inaugural, and commenting on this passage, argue: The nation's overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian response to the address thus had both textual and extratextual warrants. For those inclined to see the Divine Hand of Providence at work, Roosevelt's miraculous escape [from assassination] in Miami was a sign—perhaps The Sign—that God had sent another Washington or Lincoln at the appointed hour. ... Many others could not resist the subject position that Roosevelt ... had cultivated throughout the address—that of savior. After all, it was Christ who had expelled the moneychangers from the Temple. ... [Many listeners saw] a composite sign that their new president had a godly mandate to lead. Gary Scott Smith stresses that Roosevelt believed his
welfare programs were "wholly in accord with the social teachings of Christianity". He saw the achievement of social justice through government action as morally superior to the old
laissez-faire approach. He proclaimed, "The thing we are seeking is justice," as guided by the precept of "Do unto your neighbor as you would be done by." Roosevelt saw the moral issue as religiosity versus anti-religion. According to Smith, "He pleaded with Protestants, Catholics, and Jews to transcend their sectarian creeds and 'unite in good works' whenever they could 'find common cause.'" Atalia Omer and Jason A. Springs point to Roosevelt's
1939 State of the Union Address, which called upon Americans to "defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on with which their churches, their governments and their very civilization are founded". They state that, "This familiar rhetoric invoked a conception of the sanctity of the United States' Judeo-Christian values as a basis for war." Timothy Wyatt notes that in the coming of World War II Roosevelt's isolationist opponents said he was calling for a "holy war". Wyatt says: Often in his Fireside Chats or speeches to the houses of Congress, FDR argued for the entrance of America into the war by using both blatant and subtle religious rhetoric. Roosevelt portrayed the conflict in the light of
good versus evil, the religious against the irreligious. In doing so, he pitted the Christian ideals of democracy against the atheism of National Socialism.
Lyndon B. Johnson in June 1964 Biographer Randall B. Woods has argued that President
Lyndon B. Johnson effectively used appeals to the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition to garner support for the civil rights law of 1965. Woods writes that Johnson undermined the
Southern Caucus against the bill: LBJ wrapped white America in a moral straight jacket. How could individuals who fervently, continuously, and overwhelmingly identified themselves with a merciful and just God continue to condone racial discrimination, police brutality, and segregation? Where in the Judeo-Christian ethic was there justification for killing young girls in a church in Alabama, denying an equal education to black children, barring fathers and mothers from competing for jobs that would feed and clothe their families? Was Jim Crow to be America's response to "Godless Communism"? Woods went on to assess the role of Judeo-Christian ethics among the nation's political elite: Johnson's decision to define civil rights as a moral issue, and to wield the nation's self-professed Judeo-Christian ethic as a sword in its behalf, constituted something of a watershed in twentieth-century political history. All presidents were fond of invoking the deity, and some conservatives like Dwight Eisenhower had flirted with employing Judeo-Christian teachings to justify their actions, but modern-day liberals, both politicians and the intellectuals who challenged and nourished them, had shunned spiritual witness. Most liberal intellectuals were secular humanists. Academics in particular had historically been deeply distrustful of organized religion, which they identified with small-mindedness, bigotry, and anti-intellectualism. Like his role model, FDR, Johnson equated liberal values with religious values, insisting freedom and social justice served the ends of both god and man. And he was not loath to say so. Woods notes that Johnson's religiosity ran deep: "At 15 he joined the Disciples of Christ, or Christian, church and would forever believe that it was the duty of the rich to care for the poor, the strong to assist the weak, and the educated to speak for the inarticulate." ==History==