Do Christians still harbor antisemitic beliefs? 

Recent criticism of the Antisemitism Awareness Act by some in the far-right, while baseless, nonetheless highlights a fascinating and important shift in public opinion toward a centuries-old antisemitic slander. 

An objection to the Antisemitism Awareness Act (H.R. 6090, recently passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate) is that the legislation could lead to Bible censorship because of New Testament passages describing Jesus being turned over to the Jews to be crucified. 

The idea that Jews are to blame for the crucifixion of Jesus was commonly taught even into the 20th century. But these attitudes began to change after the Holocaust and the annihilation of 6 million European Jews. One dramatic reversal of centuries-long maltreatment of the Jewish people was with the 1965 Catholic declaration Nostra Aetate, which instructed Catholics that “Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures.” 

Over time, many Protestant churches rewrote their texts to remove antisemitic language. As a result of these developments, in the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, American Jews enjoyed greater inclusion in American society than ever before, while more Christian Americans started celebrating Jewish rituals like the Sabbath and Passover. 

With antisemitism now being openly celebrated (and, in some cases, nurtured) on some American college campuses and Congress debating fresh antisemitism legislation, it is timely to examine to what extent the religious teachings that brought about these positive developments in the last 70 years still resonate with America’s Christians. And it is equally important to understand whether and to what extent American Christians, as broadly defined, still embrace the old antisemitic Christian views. 

For the past seven years, we have administered annual surveys to gauge the opinions of American Christians toward Jews, Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our most recent survey of a representative sample of 2,000 self-identifying mainline Protestants (e.g., Presbyterians, Methodists), evangelical and born-again Christians (e.g., Pentecostals, Baptists) and Roman Catholics in the United States was conducted in March 2024, amid the war in Gaza. Our scientific, methodologically rigorous survey provides a representative picture of the views of more than 180 million Americans who identify with these three major religious movements. 

From the early church fathers through medieval times and even until our modern days, it was commonly understood by many Christians that Jews were “Christ killers.” To gauge contemporary attitudes toward this issue, we asked, “Who bears the blame for the crucifixion of Jesus?” Only 8 percent of the respondents blame Jews for the crucifixion. This means that the intense effort by American Christians to lift the blame from Jews has worked, and that only a small minority of American Christians still hold this antisemitic libel.  

Twenty percent responded that “Roman soldiers/Pontius Pilate” were to blame, grounding their answer in the historical record. Sixty-two percent chose spiritual options: 30 percent blamed “the sins of humanity,” which is the official opinion of the Roman Catholic Church; 32 percent chose “No one is to blame; it was God’s plan,” which aligns with the evangelical theological teachings. Ten percent did not know how to respond. 

We asked our respondents if they saw the biblical promises God made to the Jewish people continuing in some way. Less than 3 percent of the surveyed Christians said that Jews are cursed by God because they crucified Jesus. Thus, only a tiny minority of American Christians still hold this antisemitic, punitive belief.  

Twenty-three percent said that “God’s covenant with Jews has not been replaced entirely but rather fulfilled in Christ.” This response was most common among evangelicals (30 percent) and least embraced by the Catholics (17 percent); 23.5 percent of mainline Protestants agreed with this position. Thirty-two percent of the sample chose “Jews enjoy special and ongoing relations with God.” The view was most prominently shared by Catholics (34 percent) and mainline Protestants (33 percent), while 30 percent of evangelical Protestants agreed with this position.  

Among all groups, the most prevalent response was “I don’t know,” with 39 percent of the sample choosing this response. It is likely that some respondents find these theological questions a bit too complicated. 

From a Jewish perspective, “replacement theology” (otherwise known as “supersessionism”) is viewed as offensive and upsetting because it no longer includes Jewish people as inheritors of God’s promises, as these promises have been spiritually transferred to the Christian church. That about 26 percent of all American Christians still hold this opinion is disturbing. However, it is also encouraging that after almost 2,000 years of hostilities, these old views that once dominated the Christian mindset have so quickly been reduced to a minority. 

Christian leaders historically taught their congregants to view Jews with contempt. This new survey shows that the attitudes of American Christians toward Jews reveal a reduction of that traditional hostility. 

With antisemitism on the rise again, our survey demonstrates the imperative for church leaders, Protestant and Catholic alike, to continue to teach that God still has a plan for the Jewish people. Now is the time to educate congregants, especially young people, about eliminating lingering religious biases. 

Motti Inbari is a Jewish studies professor at UNC Pembroke, and Kirill Bumin is associate dean of the Metropolitan College and director of the summer term at Boston University. They are the authors of the recently published “Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Opinion on Israel.”