Location
The international headquarters of the ICCJ are located in Heppenheim (Germany), in the house where the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber lived until Nazi persecution forced him to flee Germany.
The International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ) is an umbrella organization of 38 national groups in 32 countries worldwide engaged in the Christian-Jewish dialogue. [1]
Founded as a reaction to the Holocaust, many groups of theologians, historians and educators dedicated their efforts to seek Christian–Jewish reconciliation.
The impetus for the founding of the organisation traces back to the first half of the 20th century, with two significant organisations in the Anglosphere; the American National Conference of Christians and Jews and the British Council of Christians and Jews. The American organisation had been founded by Everett R. Clinchy (a member of the Presbyterian Church in the United States) following the sectarian unrest in the 1920s, instigated by the second Ku Klux Klan of Hiram Wesley Evans and similar groups, against the run of Catholic Democrat, Al Smith, for the Presidency of the United States in 1928. [2] Clinchy sought to create a civic American interreligious organisation arguing for religious toleration, focusing on the three main American religious groups; Protestant, Catholic and Jew. [2] This effort had been immediately preceded in the United States by the interreligious Committee of Goodwill, founded by the ecumenical Federal Council of Churches and B'nai B'rith, a Jewish fraternal organisation. [2]
The British organisation, however, traces its ideological origins to James Parker, an Anglican cleric who authored two major works; The Jew and His Neighbour (1929) and The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (1934). Parker was staunchly Judeophile, postulated a view of history which criticised Christian treatment of Jews and strongly opposed any missionary activity of Christians to convert adherents of Rabbinic Judaism (a position which he set him apart from almost all other Christians at the time). This laid the foundation for the creation of the Council of Christians and Jews primarily by William Temple, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury and Joseph Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom towards the end of the Second World War in 1942. The Catholic Church was also represented by Cardinal Arthur Hinsley from 1942, but was suspicious of supposed religious indifferentism and would pull out in 1954 (for which the Church was attacked by the British media) before rejoining during the Pontificate of Pope John XXIII.
The First Conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews was held in Oxford in August 1946, in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust, as well as at the onset of the Cold War and was themed "Freedom, Justice, Responsibility". Some of the most prominent figures present were Geoffrey Fisher, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rufus Isaacs, Rab Butler, Rabbi Leo Baeck, Alan Paton, Hermann Maas and others. Those in attendance came from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the British Mandate of Palestine, South Africa, Sweden and Switzerland. Most of the participants were either Protestant or Jewish. They endeavoured for there to be "an emergency conference to deal specifically with the problem of antisemitism in Europe", which "should be convened at the earliest possible moment."
The aforementioned conference would manifest as the Seelisberg Conference of 1947, organised under the joint auspices of the American and British organisations. A French-based chapter was founded in 1948 as the Amitié judéo-chrétienne de France and a Germany-based chapter was founded in 1949 as the Deutscher Koordinierungsrat der Gesellschaften für Christlich-Jüdische Zusammenarbeit .
According to the Mission Statement of the ICCJ, [3] the group:
The international headquarters of the ICCJ are located in Heppenheim (Germany), in the house where the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber lived until Nazi persecution forced him to flee Germany.
In 1947 the ICCJ published a document after the Seelisberg Conference, giving 10 points in recommendation.
In 1993 ICCJ published "Jews and Christians in Search of a Common Religious Basis for Contributing Towards a Better World." This document "contains both separate Jewish perspectives and Christian perspectives concerning mutual communication and cooperation as well as a joint view of a common religious basis for Jews and Christians to work together for a better world..." [4]
The ICCJ runs a website, Jewish-Christian Relations, "which is devoted to fostering mutual respect and understanding between Christians and Jews around the world." [5]
In more recent years the ICCJ and its members increasingly engaged in the Abrahamic dialogue: the encounter between Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Nostra aetate is the incipit of the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council. Passed by a vote of 2,221 to 88 of the assembled bishops, this declaration was promulgated on 28 October 1965 by Pope Paul VI.
Religious pluralism is a set of religious world views that hold that one's religion is not the sole and exclusive source of truth, and thus recognizes that some level of truth and value exists in other religions. As such, religious pluralism goes beyond religious tolerance, which is the condition of peaceful existence between adherents of different religions or religious denominations.
Christian−Jewish reconciliation refers to the efforts that are being made to improve understanding and acceptance between Christians and Jews. There has been significant progress in reconciliation in recent years, in particular by the Catholic Church, but also by other Christian groups.
Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels. It is distinct from syncretism or alternative religion, in that dialogue often involves promoting understanding between different religions or beliefs to increase acceptance of others, rather than to synthesize new beliefs.
The Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, previously named Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID), is a dicastery of the Roman Curia, erected by Pope Paul VI on 19 May 1964 as the Secretariat for Non-Christians, and renamed by Pope John Paul II on 28 June 1988.
The Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ) is a voluntary organisation in the United Kingdom. It is composed of Christians and Jews working together to counter anti-semitism and other forms of intolerance in Britain. Their patron was Queen Elizabeth II.
David Shlomo Rosen KSG CBE is the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland (1979–1985) and currently serves as the American Jewish Committee's International Director of Interreligious Affairs. From 2005 until 2009 he headed the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations (IJCIC), the broad-based coalition of Jewish organizations and denominations that represents World Jewry in its relations with other world religions.
Edward H. Flannery was an American priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, and the author of The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, first published in 1965.
Marc H. Tanenbaum (1925–1992) was a human rights and social justice activist and rabbi. He was known for building bridges with other faith communities to advance mutual understanding and co-operation and to eliminate entrenched stereotypes, particularly ones rooted in religious teachings.
Rabbi León Klenicki was an advocate for interfaith relations, particularly between Jews and Catholics. He served as interfaith director of the Anti-Defamation League. He also served as director of the Latin American office of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.
The Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews is a pontifical commission in the Roman Curia tasked with maintaining positive theological ties with Jews and Judaism. Established on 22 October 1974, it works alongside the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
The relations between Pope Benedict XVI and Judaism remained fairly good, although concerns were raised by Jewish leaders over the political impact of Traditionalists in the Church during the papacy of Benedict.
The Seelisberg Conference, officially the International Emergency Conference on Anti-Semitism took place at Seelisberg in Central Switzerland from July 30 through August 5, 1947. The Conference was the Second Conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ).
The Eastern Orthodox Church and Rabbinic Judaism are thought to have had better relations historically than Judaism and either Catholic or Protestant Christianity.
Laura Naomi Janner-Klausner is a British rabbi and an inclusion and development coach who served as the inaugural Senior Rabbi to Reform Judaism from 2011 until 2020. Janner-Klausner grew up in London before studying theology at the University of Cambridge and moving to Israel in 1985, living in Jerusalem for 15 years. She returned to Britain in 1999 and was ordained at Leo Baeck College, serving as rabbi at Alyth Synagogue until 2011. She has been serving as Rabbi at Bromley Reform Synagogue in south-east London since April 2022.
The John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue is an academic center that serves to build bridges between religious traditions, particularly between Catholic Christian and Jewish pastoral and academic leaders. The Center is a partnership between the Russell Berrie Foundation and the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). It operates as part of the Section for Ecumenism and Dialogue in the Theology Faculty of the Angelicum in Rome.
Danny Rich is a Labour councillor in the London Borough of Barnet. He was, until 2020, the Senior Rabbi and Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism in the United Kingdom.
The Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI) was founded in 1991 to further understanding and communication between members of different faith communities and to build foundations for lasting fellowship.
"Our mission is to harness the teachings and values of the three Abrahamic faiths and transform religion's role from a force of division and extremism into a source of reconciliation, coexistence and understanding for the leaders and followers of these religions in Israel and in our region."
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