Progressive Supersessionism
On the theological judgments underlying antisemitism and progressivism
Some months ago, I heard a sermon that was not recognizably Christian, and I was reminded that I am still clinging to a definition of Christian that, for many in my faith community, no longer has any relevance because it has been replaced with a new, better definition. And then it hit me: I’ve seen this dynamic before!
In the ancient church, Christians did something similar with the Jews. Not content to say that, through Jesus, God was now bringing gentiles into fellowship with Jews to worship the God of Israel, gentile Christians began to say instead, “God has replaced the Jews with us, and we are now his people.” While our society is now almost fully post-Christian, this theological judgment—what is termed “supersessionism”—still operates in our progressive culture and, I believe, is powerfully at work in liberal Protestant churches like my own.
The result of this “aha!” moment about contemporary supersessionism is an essay I wrote, which is now available in the October 2024 edition of First Things. Below is an excerpt, followed by a link to read the whole thing.
Leftist attacks on Zionism, which in many quarters have devolved into overt anti-Semitism, seem strange alongside the left’s cultural agenda of diversity and inclusion. But perhaps the contradiction is only apparent.
Today’s constant celebrations of diversity are meant to obscure a drive for total ideological homogeneity. The new guardians of our culture hide their agenda, even from themselves, because they cannot admit that they are exercising power—for in the moral rules they’ve laid down, exercising power is synonymous with oppression. Their status therefore requires them to conceal their power, and their talk of diversity works as camouflage. The ideologically defeated have a place in the new order in principle (“all are welcome here”), but not in fact. And when they express frustration about this fact, the powerful accuse them of refusing to cede power, thus ensuring that those who have driven them out appear to have clean hands. By pretending that the old regime still holds power, and creating an environment of permanent protest against it, those in power make it impossible to acknowledge openly that there has been a regime change.
But the metaphor of regime change goes only so far in making sense of today’s dominant culture and, by extension, its religion. In its place, I suggest the theological concept of supersessionism.
In biblical religion, one of the animating paradoxes is the belief that YHWH, the God of Israel, is also the God of all creation and therefore the God of all people. The Lord’s election of Israel and identification of himself as the God of Israel is the way he exercises his rule over all nations. The history of God’s dealings with Israel does not render obsolete or meaningless the histories of other nations; rather, the history of God’s relationship with Israel is somehow mysteriously also the history of God’s dealings with the other nations. Israel is God’s chosen nation, and yet every other nation is, in Saint Paul’s words, “without excuse.”
People of faith have often experienced this paradox as an intolerable contradiction. The Bible recounts, for example, ancient Israel’s temptation to reduce YHWH to a tribal deity. For Christians, the temptation has been to treat God’s election of Israel and God’s reign over all nations as sequentially rather than paradoxically related: that God rules over Israel until he rules over all nations in and through the mission of the Church, which replaces Israel, and the Lord leaves Israel behind. In this view, the Church of the nations supersedes Israel, and there is no longer a place for Israel as God’s elect.
Ironically, the attempt to smooth out the biblical paradox just creates another intolerable contradiction. For by rejecting Israel, the supersessionist denies that God is the God of all people. God is permitted to be the God of all people, just as long as he is not the God of those people. In order to avoid facing this contradiction, the supersessionist blames Israel: They cling to their special status, refusing to be one of us. Of course they have a place here, were they only willing to let go of their claim to be God’s covenant people.