"Judeo-Christian civilization" is a stupid and ideologically manipulative category
How the problematic idea of the "Judeo-Christian tradition" was projected onto civilizational struggle
The term “Judeo-Christian tradition” can be dated back to the 19th century, and is used for any number of purposes. The core contention of the term is that Christian tradition is deeply rooted in that of the Jews who wrote the Old Testament. Thus, a Nietzschean might criticize Christianity as a kind of knock-off rehashing of Jewish slave morality, or an antisemite might similarly criticize Christianity as an imposition of Jewish values on Europeans (many Nazi Pagans adopted occult beliefs for this reason). Alternatively, many Christian theologians and political figures used the concept to advocate for unity between Jews and Christians, and against antisemitism. Interestingly, it originated as a concept from 19th century German theologian Baur to advance the idea that Protestantism was the final (therefore best) version of Jewish religion, as opposed not only to Judaism but Catholicism. The concept is thus worthy of critique, and Jews and Christians alike can find quibbles with it, yet there is also obviously a lot of truth to the claim that Christianity emerges out of the Jewish religion.
Yet the concept spawned another, far worse concept; the notion of “Judeo-Christian Civilization”. This concept suggests that Western civilization as a whole is defined both by its Jewish and Christian roots, as opposed to other civilizations across the globe. These other civilizations generally include the Islamic, the Confucian, the Indian or Hindu, the African, and the Native American. Thus, “Judeo-Christian” Western civilization stands against these others which are rooted in very different values.
First, we can ask the question of what we even mean by a “civilization.” The term is inherently vague but usually refers to a kind of broader set of values, practices, beliefs, etc. that extend beyond any particular nation-state and rather define a community of nations. For instance, China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are all very different countries but adopted similar ideas about governance and society from Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Buddha among others. These similar ideas about governance, ethics, economics, and politics created commonalities between these countries despite their differences. Thus, they share a common “civilization” rooted in the historical development of traditions distinct to them. We can see this reflected in their architectural styles, military formations, economic systems, political hierarchies, and so on.
Of course, the term is so vague it lends itself to radically different interpretations. Perhaps the most well known is Samuel Huntington’s civilizational taxonomy, which importantly is not really rooted in the concept of “Judeo-Christian civilization”. Huntington sees Western Europe as a “Western” civilization, the Slavic east as an “Orthodox” civilization, and Latin America as a civilization distinct from the rest of the West. He also distinguishes Japan from the rest of East Asia, despite the influence of Confucius on this society. China, Vietnam, and Korea are referred to as a “Sinic” civilization, while Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka are a part of the “Buddhist” one.
Samuel Huntington’s civilizational taxonomy is not above criticism. Why is Latin America separate from “The West”? Why is Orthodox civilization separate from “The West”? Why is secular, modern, and Republican Turkey a part of the “Islamic” world and not the “Western” world? Much of this division plays into the Cold War prejudices of the West, pitting Western Europe and America against a hostile China and Eastern Europe (despite the fact that his famous essay on the topic was written after the Cold War was over). Ultimately, where we draw these lines are always arbitrary, and all of these civilizations are a real mix. Native Americans deeply influenced the culture of all Latin American countries, but not equally. Where Mexico is deeply influenced by its indigenous Aztec heritage, for instance, countries like Uruguay and Argentina lack the major historical indigenous civilizations of others (excepting Mapuche and Guarani populations in the North and East of Argentina). I’d argue that the whole concept is inherently problematic.
Yet Huntington’s taxonomy is ultimately more justified than the “Judeo-Christian” category.
First, this category centers the “Western” tradition on Judaism and Christianity while ignoring the massive influence of Pagan Greeks and Romans. Pagan philosophers like Aristotle and Plato are at least as influential on Western thinking as Moses and Paul, and the Roman Empire’s political system was responsible for uniting most of this “West” into a common Latin-speaking area (even as late as the 1600s, centuries after Latin stopped being a popular language, it remained the language of intellectual discourse as French, German, English, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish intellectuals could all communicate to one another in Latin).
Second, it conveniently papers over nearly 2,000 years of virulent antisemitism in the West between the levelling of the Second Temple by the Roman Empire and the end of the holocaust. While antisemitism has become taboo in mainstream politics since the defeat of the Nazis (usually, not always), this is really only a recent phenomenon. During the Crusades, the Crusaders (the Vanguard of so-called “Judeo-Christian civilization in its struggle against the Arabs) repeatedly terrorized and butchered unarmed Jews. The Arabs had large well-armed armies that could back, but small Jewish communities made for easy targets for heavily armed Catholic religious fanatics. Thus, for Catholics looking for non-Catholics to pillage, the Jews were tempting targets. The most famous of these massacres was the attack on Jerusalem’s large Jewish minority in the culmination of the First Crusade. Through its belief in blood libel and differential laws for Jews and non-Jews, the Catholic Church and the states of Europe often encouraged and exacerbated this long-standing bigotry.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the category is clearly intended to exclude Islam and the Islamic world. This is odd because Islam is as much rooted in Jewish belief as Christianity is and was also heavily influenced by Arab Christianity. All the major Jewish prophets are revered in Islam, as is Jesus. Islamic Shariah law mandates the protection of Jewish and Christian minorities too, though many Muslim rulers failed to live up to that rule. It is intellectually dishonest to suggest that Judaism was somehow more influential and important to the Christian world than the Islamic. The most important Jewish Medieval philosopher is Rabbi Maimonides. Maimonides had been expelled by the fundamentalist Almohad Moors, but did not move to Catholic Europe but elsewhere in the Islamic world. Later, he would live in Egypt and was a doctor to the Muslim Viziers and Kings. In fact, there was always a large Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish population in the Islamic world (as well as a large Christian minority)
Moreover, Western civilization was deeply influenced by Islam. The Islamic philosophers Al Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd influenced the 13th century Catholic church and were responsible for returning Aristotle to the West. In fact, these philosophers were so influential in the Catholic world that they received Latin names - Alfarabus, Avicenna, and Averroes. The Catholics had, by then, lost translations of Aristotle’s philosophy and it was only via the Arab world that Aristotle returned to Western Europe. Aquinas was a critical reader of Islamic and Aristotelian philosophy, taking up ideas from the Pagan and Muslim thinkers where they were compatible with Catholicism while modifying or rejecting them where they weren’t. Aquinas’s thinking would go on to shape much of the Western thinking, both through the Catholic church and the later Enlightenment-era criticism of his neo-Aristotelianism.
Of course, Europe maintained cultural and economic links to the Islamic world throughout the centuries. Despite their continual conflicts, Muslims and Catholics were always moving between one another’s nations to trade. In addition, Jewish people frequently moved between both (especially when Catholic Spain exiled its Sephardic Jewish population, leading many to Holland but others to the Islamic world). As much as they fought, they often lived together in the same kingdoms.
Why exclude the Islamic world from our civilization category? No doubt, some of this was simply due to the orientalist prejudice about the Islamic world which had been fortified by the decay and eventual collapse of the Ottoman empire.
Another part of this was to justify a neo-colonial relationship when Europe and America was meddling in North Africa and the Middle East. By viewing these countries as inherently backwards, theocratic, and uncivilized, the Europeans had a story to tell themselves as to why they had to dispossess the Muslims of their wealth and autonomy. It also gave them a green light to support the most regressive forces in the Arab world like the various autocratic Maliks (Kings) and Emirs. After all, if the Islamic civilization is just backwards, then we are justified in aligning ourselves with the most backwards leaders against Communists, Arab and Persian nationalists, and other forces hostile to Western economic interests. We’re just helping the natural leaders of these civilizations against the pesky rabble-rousers who want to change things by modernizing these countries.
Another purpose is geopolitical, as Zionist leaders wanted the Christian world to support them against Muslim Arab states and as Christians wanted a secure ideologically-aligned ally in the Middle East. Through the construct of Judeo-Christian civilization, both Christian and Jewish Zionists were able to justify a kind of perpetual struggle with the Arab world. They (the Arabs) are just a different civilization than us (the Jews and Christians), and therefore must be opposed. Consider this passage from Warren Zev Harvey’s study of the “Judeo-Christian” concept and the words of David Ben-Gurion:
While the notion of a “Judeo-Christian tradition” is wholly alien to internal Israeli discourse, representatives of Israel, when addressing Christians, regularly appeal to the common religious tradition of Jews and Christians. Cf., e.g., David Ben-Gurion’s letter to President Charles de Gaulle of France (6 December 1967), who was a devout Catholic: “[T]he entire…Christian world considered Palestine…to be a single country, which the Jewish people had hoped would someday belong to it again, as was promised by the Bible and the Prophets… [F]or thousands of years we believed in the vision of our prophets… When a British royal commission [= the Peel Commission] came to Jerusalem at the end of 1936 to weigh the future of the Mandate, I said to it, ‘Our Mandate is the Bible.’”
Thus, the concept of “Judeo-Christian” became a convenient cudgel against Palestinians, despite the presence of a large Christian minority among the Palestinians! This facilitated strong links between American evangelicals and the Israeli right, who work tirelessly together to justify deeply Islamophobic politics.
In countries like Lebanon, too, it became easier to justify supporting murderous Christian militias who were targeting Muslim populations (this isn’t to say that Lebanese Muslims didn’t have their own murderous militias during the Civil War, but certain atrocities meted out by the Christian Falange like Sabra and Shatila are truly beyond the pale). The Christian Falange were on “our” side of the civilizational dividing line however many slaughters they meted out against their communal rivals.
Lastly, it allows the far-right in Europe (and to a lesser extent America) to pivot from the antisemitic demonization of Jews to the demonization of Muslims. Despite the widespread prevalence of antisemitism, it remains a taboo position for most politicians. Thus, scapegoating the Jewish minority is harder than its ever been for rightwing politicians like Nigel Farage or Gert Wilders (in fact, much of the far-right in Europe today professes admiration for Jews while also still demonizing secular, leftwing Jewish intellectuals who oppose their racism, albeit as “secularists,” “communists,” etc). Yet Muslim migration to Europe has created a new minority for the far-right to blame for society’s problems. We can’t have good welfare, affordable housing, and free schools because there are just too many Muslims now!
This is facilitated by the idea that Muslims are essentially a civilizational other. However many links the West has had to the Islamic world, however much cultural exchange there has been, and however many Muslims and Christians have lived peacefully together for generations, the Islamic world remains essentially “other” in this view. Of course, ideological hardliners in the Islamic community haven’t helped things. Some Muslim immigrants to the West really have been Sunni fundamentalists who hate Christians, Jews, secular people, and other religious minorities. Yet as always, these hardliners are always just the most loud and obnoxious part of the population and not representative of the whole. We understand that it is antisemitic to associate Jewish people as a whole with the most violent settler extremists of the West Bank, or anti-Christian to associate Christians as a whole with Jim Jones. Yet Muslims do not have the privilege of being viewed as real individuals with a diverse plurality of views. Rather, the fanatics play into the racism of the xenophobes who demonize their faith, and by extension all Muslims who move to the West.
Thus, the concept of “Judeo-Christian” civilization becomes an ideological weapon for the European, American, and Israeli Imperialist rightwing to use against Muslims. Consider the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu:
When an incredulous Rochebin asked whether one could compare, as Netanyahu just had, the Allied landing at Normandy in 1944 to the Israeli invasion of Gaza 80 years later, Netanyahu, apologizing for his faulty French, declared, “Notre victoire, c’est votre victoire ! C’est la victoire de la civilisation judéo-chrétienne contre la barbarie. C’est la victoire de la France !” In English, this translates to: “Our victory is your victory! It’s the victory of Judeo-Christian civilization over barbarism. It’s the victory of France!”
What is the ideological function of so-called “Judeo-Christian civilization” then? Simply put, it is to artificially forge a shared identity for Protestant and Jewish Western people against the Islamic world. It is to create space for a vile, reactionary form of identity politics which makes immigration from the Islamic world into a “demographic threat”. And it is a tool to create demographic barriers between the Western and Islamic world to impede good-faith dialogue and cooperation between Jews and Christians on one hand and Muslims on the other. The concept has no honest roots in intellectual history, or the history of the Islamic and European worlds.