Council of Christians and Jews

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 is Queen Elizabeth II.

The CCJ was founded, in 1942, by Chief Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz and Archbishop William Temple during a time of all-out warfare and Nazi persecution of Jews. In late 1954, and reflecting the theology of the era, the Vatican instructed the head of English Catholics to resign from the CCJ due to its perceived indifferentism, with Catholics not returning until the reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council.

Prior to the foundation of the Council of Christians and Jews a number of initiatives had already taken place. The London Society for the Study of Religions,founded in 1904, included Jews in its membership. In 1924 the Presbyterian Church of England General Assembly agreed to form a sub committee to discuss the lack of understanding between Jews and Christians. The committee wished to abandon proselytising and instead promote cooperative methods of action.

In 1925 Herbert Lowe, a Jewish Cambridge scholar, addressed the General Assembly for the first time.

In 1924 the Social Service Committee of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue convened a meeting for Jews and Christians to confer together on the basis of their common ideals and with mutual respect for differences of belief'. From this developed the Society of Jews and Christians in 1927 that provided a platform for a number of notable speakers. The inter war years was marked by a reappraisal by Christian scholars of Jewish religion. In 1930 James Parkes published 'The Jew and his neighbour', setting out the causes of anti-Semitism and its Christian roots.Parkes would later be placed on Hitler's list of those he wanted killed.

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