Mission to Jews

"Till the conversion of the Jews" denotes a vague and distant future.*

But an important Protestant voice last week suggested that the time might be closer at hand than it seems. The voice: the Rev. Dr. H. Conrad Hoyer of Chicago, who is soon to be associate secretary of the National Council of Churches' Division of Home Missions. Dr. Hoyer was speaking in Atlantic City last week at the annual meeting of the National Lutheran Council (representing eight church bodies and more than 5,000,000 U.S. churchgoers).

Reported Hoyer: at a "theological consultation" of "the church and Judaism" held last year by delegates from Lutheran and other Protestant bodies, it was decided that the time is "right" for an intensive effort toward the "evangelization of the Jews." This, he said, is a Christian duty--as "instruments of the Holy Spir't, we must persistently evangelize." If the laborers in this vineyard are few, "this is true only because we have segregated Jewish people from the rest of the people in our mission thinking."

On a trip to Israel last summer, said Lutheran Hoyer, "we pointed out that as far as the Christian Church is concerned, we have no alternative but to bring the Gospel to the Jewish people and to all others; to neglect them or to leave them out is to discriminate against them. We were pleased to note that, when thus presented, this position was graciously accepted in every case."

*As in Andrew Marvell's (1621-78) "To His Coy Mistress": Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime . . . And you should if you please refuse Till the conversion of the Jews.

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