Evangelists Defend Trying to Convert Jews

WHEATON, Ill.--The World Evangelical Alliance is taking issue with an August report from U.S. Catholic bishops that opposes efforts to target Jews for conversion.

The evangelical organization, an alliance of 120 national and regional church fellowships and 75 nondenominational ministries, has reaffirmed and reissued a declaration defending Jewish evangelism that was written in 1989 by 16 theologians from nine nations.

One of them, the Rev. J.I. Packer, an Anglican teaching at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, endorsed the reaffirmation. “Sharing Jesus Christ with our Jewish friends is as important a task as it ever was,” he said.

The Catholic bishops said deepened appreciation of God’s unbroken covenant with the Jewish people means “campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer acceptable in the Catholic Church.”

But the evangelical paper defends such targeted evangelism, and denies that Israel’s covenant relationship by itself brings salvation or that “any person can enjoy God’s favor apart from the mediation of Jesus Christ.”