Talk:Judeo-Christian ethics

Requested move 6 June 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: No consensus. (closed by a page mover)  Omni Flames ( talk ) 07:08, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Judeo-Christian ethics → Judeo-Christian values – Per WP:COMMONNAME (see this Google NGram) and to better match content. Jujutsuan (talk &#124; contribs) 00:22, 6 June 2016 (UTC) --Relisting. &mdash; Music1201  talk  03:58, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The term is used here in a specific narrow sense as stated in the first sentences [The concept of Judeo-Christian values in an ethical (rather than theological or liturgical) sense]. "Judeo-Christian values" covers quite a few different topics such as those covered at Judeo-Christian. Rjensen (talk) 05:36, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Then doesn't the lead do the disambiguating? Even you just admitted that it's primarily about values, in an ethical sense or context.  That's not precisely the same as ethics.   Jujutsuan  ( Please notify with &#123;&#123;re&#125;&#125; &#124; talk &#x7C; contribs) 05:43, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * the proposed alternative covers far more topics across Europe & the US--topics already covered in Judeo-Christian. This article has a narrow focus on American use of the "Judeo-Christian" phrase in politics and civil religion. Rjensen (talk) 05:54, 13 June 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Roosevelt
I removed the section on FDR's First Inaugural Address in 1933. As the article actually stated, FDR did not use the term "Judeo-Christian" in the address, and Judeo-Christian ethics was not a theme of the address. In fact, the word "ethics" appears only once in the address, in relation to a call by FDR for material wealth not being regarding as standard of success. The quote that was included is from an article written in 2003 about the address by Houck and Nocasian, two professors of rhetoric. That article uses the term "Judeo-Christian ethics" to characterize the response to FDR Address. Person54 (talk) 14:32, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep scholarly studies that emphasize the concept in depth for two major US presidents--it's the scholars who use the term and legitimize its connection. Rjensen (talk) 14:38, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The quotes only prove that Houck and Nocasian in 2003 writing about an FDR speech in 1933, and Woods in 2007 writing about LBJ in 1964, used the term Judeo-Christian. The H+N quote is about the response to FDR's speech. Read the actual FDR Inaugural Address, and you will find no trace of the concept of "Judeo-Christian" ethics. It seems like Wikipedia should require more than a quote from two undistinguisehd Rhetoric professors writing about an FDR speech seventy years later and using a term which was current in 2003 but nowhere to be found in the actual FDR speech, to make FDR a poster boy for "Judeo-Christian" ethics. Ditto, Wood on LBJ, forty years later, and Wood didn't even use "Judeo-Christian" but "Judeo-Christian-Islamic".
 * You're wrong about Woods: he said Johnson's decision to define civil rights as a moral issue, and to wield the nation's self-professed Judeo-Christian ethic as a sword in its behalf...  I added cites from three additional established scholars. They all find the concept in Roosevelt's rhetoric, even if you are unable to see it. Is it possible that all these scholars are wrong and the journal editors and publishers never spotted their fallacies, or is it more likely you have not followed the scholarship on American religion? Rjensen (talk) 15:05, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The point is not whether any U.S. Presidents were Christians, whether religious ideas appear in their speeches, and whether the Presidents in question have ever appealed to the religious sentiments of their audiences. This is an article about the concept of "Judeo-Christian ethics". By your logic any appeal to religion by an American politician counts as evidence that the concept is inherent in that figure's thinking. Even a mention of "churches" apparently is evidence of FDR's appeal to Judeo Christian ethics. That is absurd. The article states that the term was first used by Orwell in 1939. But, no matter, it was inherent in Roosevelt's thinking, according to you, in 1933, and all we need to establish this is the word of two speech professors, writing in 2003, plus an FDR quote about "churches". Person54 (talk) 15:13, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Our job as Wikipedia editors is to report what the reliable sources – the scholarly books and journal articles-- have to say about the topic. You don't cite any sources except your private views.  As for Roosevelt, we have five scholars who agree that he was using the concept of Judeo-Christian ethics in the 1930s in his major speeches, and that his audiences were responding to exactly that Judeo-Christian-ethic theme. the phrase itself was coined by Orwell in 1939 -- Orwell was very good at finding the right words to express what people were thinking. (eg he coined ""Big Brother" &  "cold war")  Rjensen (talk) 15:25, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to find any scholarly opinion to the effect that the quotes used as evidence in a Wikipedia article don't establish what they are claimed to establish because as a rule, scholars don't comment on Wikipedia articles. The argument you, and the current form of the article, are making amounts to the following Accordingly, the 1933 Inaugural Address (the "only thing we have to fear is fear itself" speech) is recast as an assertion of Judeo-Christian values, and the response was "overwhelmingly" a "Judeo-Christian" one, the speech professors say. So, even though nobody ever used that term until 1939, FDR was talking about Judeo-Christian values "implicitly" in speeches which seem to be about other matters, such as fortitude in the face of the Great Depression. I say, Nonsense. Person54 (talk) 16:52, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
 * (1) Ecumenism and the valuation of "faith" in itself were ideas which were "in the air" during the thirties in the U.S.
 * (2) FDR shows evidence in his speeches of being in accord with these ideas.
 * (3) When the term "Judeo-Christian "ethics"  was finally invented in 1939 by Orwell, it referred to the Jewish/Catholic/Protestant ecumenism and an inclusive attitude towards all people of "faith", which had supposedly arisen during the thirties, even though it is just the same  American civil religion which had been around for a century.
 * (4) Therefore, FDR was prospectively a supporter of the notion that "Judeo-Christian ethics" were the foundation of American values, even before the term was ever used and despite the fact that he did not ever use the term himself. (Or if he did, it was after 1939, and we don't have those quotes in the article).
 * You're making all that up without reading his speeches or the cited scholarly studies. FDR's first inaugural warns about fear, yes but then goes on to say "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple  --(it was a Jewish temple) --historians call that an appeal to Judeo-Christian values.  Historians have emphasized that FDR based his policies on his deep religious values. See 1) "The Faith of  Franklin Roosevelt" Presidential Studies Quarterly. Sep 1989) 2) "Franklin D. Roosevelt and His Protestant Constituency" in Journal of Church and State 1993 ; 3) "The moneychangers of the temple: FDR, American civil religion, and the new deal." Presidential Studies Quarterly (1996): 678-693.  There's a useful essay you should read that says "Often in his Fireside Chats or speeches to the houses of Congress, FDR argued for the entrance of America into the war by using both blatant and subtle religious rhetoric. Roosevelt portrayed the conflict in the light of good versus evil, the religious against the irreligious.  In doing so, he pitted the Christian ideals of democracy against the atheism of National Socialism."   The isolationists angrily said he was calling for a "holy war." see "America’s Holy War: FDR, Civil Religion, and the Prelude to War" by Timothy Wyatt at http://mtsjournal.memphisseminary.edu/vol-50-1/america-s-holy-war-fdr-civil-religion-and-the-prelude-to-war-by-timothy-wyatt

When it comes to FDR and LBJ, it is you and the scholars whose quotes you are dragging into the article who are making things up. There is no record that FDR ever used the term "Judeo-Christian", which is what this article is about, not the American civic religion. If you want to argue that there was an American civic religion which valued "religion", "faith", and some kind of America-blessing, interdenominational "God", you won't get any argument from me. Many Presidents, like other politicians, starting with Washington (an Episcopalian and probably a closet Deist) regularly brought the civil religion into their speeches. You also won't get any argument from me that FDR and LBJ were sincere Protestant Christians who supported the civic religion and used religious language and references in their speeches. So it has been with most American politicians. Piling on quotes about "moneychangers" is unnecessary and pointless.

What does this have to do with the "Judeo-Christian" concept? At some point (the article does not say), "membership" in the American civic religion was expanded, first to include Catholics, and then Jews. FDR gave speeches to groups advancing Christian/Jewish ties, and if the article wanted to have FDR quotes showing his accord with "inter-faith" sentiments during his Presidency, they wouldn't be hard to find. If "Judeo-Christian" is just a way to make the American civic religion inclusive, then FDR probably would have been down with it, at least as regards Catholics and Jews. (Though he did tell a friend once that America is a Protestant country and that the Catholics and Jews were here under sufferance. Since the friend was a Catholic, he might have been joking.)

But is that all "Judeo-Christian" means? Perhaps not. A few decades later when some were attempting to draw the "inter-faith" circle of civic religion even wider, to include Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and (eventually, with Obama) "nonbelievers", the loudest advocates of "Judeo-Christian values" protested strongly, showing that in their minds the American civic religion was founded on the faith of Christians and Jews (as some kind of proto-Christians) and that was it.

As the article intimates, the term "Judeo-Christian" is now a shibboleth of the religious right, a means for excluding people and supporting the cultural and political dominance of the Christian majority (with Judaism accepted as a satellite). For them it is not a historical stage to wider inclusiveness, now realized to have not been wide enough. As far as they are concerned, "Judeo-Christian" is all the more inclusiveness there is going to be.

That is the current situation, but are we sure that the term wasn't always such and that dragging in FDR, Eisenhower, and LBJ as supporters of "Judeo-Christian values" isn't propaganda? Eisenhower, for one, was at pains after the speech quoted in the article to make clear that he was not excluding other religions. The article itself gives us no insight on what FDR might have thought about this, if he ever thought about it. (He was not a deep religious thinker.) Since he never spoke about the concept of "Judeo-Christian" values, he never had to clarify whether he was or wasn't excluding anybody. It is highly misleading to impute opinions about the concept to him, and to recruit him as a supporter of anything more than the American civic religion. Person54 (talk) 12:44, 29 April 2017 (UTC)


 * you're wrong in thinking this article is about the "term" (coined in 1939)-- it is about the "concept" that came together in American rhetoric in the 1930s and 1940s in bipartisan fashion. Orwell read very closely and he coined the concept into a term that was quickly adopted for the concept. FDR was a key player in telling Americans they should rally in 1933 against enemies of J-C ethics.  He used "Christian" a lot and explicitly included Jewish references, like the holy temple. Bankers were his enemies in 1933-- escalating to Nazis in 1940-41.  Republicans and the political right in 1940-41 attacked him for it--ridiculing his "holy war."  You seem to say FDR was not very religious--you made that up just now and it's not true. Twenty years ago Professor Ronald  Issetti (Presidential Studies Quarterly Summer, 1996) asserted, "Few presidents have employed biblical symbols, religious language, and moral injunctions in their public addresses more often than Roosevelt did." -In James McG Burns' famous biography of FDR in 1956 he concluded: "probably no American politician has given so many speeches that were essentially sermons rather than statements of policy." [Burns, The Lion and the Fox (1956), p. 476.] We have numerous cited scholars associating FDR with the concept in 1933-41. You seem to think they are all wrong. But you really should read some of these articles and books before coming to that conclusion--start with Timothy Wyatt at  http://mtsjournal.memphisseminary.edu/vol-50-1/america-s-holy-war-fdr-civil-religion-and-the-prelude-to-war-by-timothy-wyatt . Also read some of FDR's big speeches.  Rjensen (talk) 13:32, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I didn't say that FDR wasn't very religious. He was a member of the Hyde Park Episcopal Church his entire life, and was a deacon or something. I said he wasn't a very deep religious thinker, which he wasn't. Not the same. Don't put words in my mouth. (Actually, for the period including FDR's lifetime, I would guess that there is probably a negative correlation between being a "deep religious thinker" and being "very religious"; but that is just a guess.) Person54 (talk) 13:41, 29 April 2017 (UTC)
 * FDR's public rhetoric was deeply religious. FDR's inaugural message in 1937  (as Issetti notes) includes even more Biblical language based on Jewish & Christian themes. eg: 1) "to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it"  2) "Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there."  3) "Shall we call this the promised land?" 4) "Today we reconsecrate our country ; 5) " seeking Divine guidance to help us each and every one to give light to them that sit in darkness and to guide our feet into the way of peace." [quoting Luke 1:78-79] ;  6) "By their fruits ye shall know them." [quoting Matthew 7:16-20] and 7) "In the place of the palace of privilege, we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity."  Is that not what civil religion looks like.  Rjensen (talk) 13:51, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I guess I am too long-winded for you to read what I am writing. I said FDR was not a "deep religious thinker". You give more quotes to show that he was "deeply religious" in his public rhetoric. There is no contradiction between these things. If we trust Oliver Wendell Holmes, FDR actually was not a deep thinker in general, Holmes having famously remarked of him: "second-class intellect, first-class temperament". Person54 (talk) 14:01, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Judeo-Christian vs Judeo-Christian ethics
At the top of this article, there is this:

At the top of Judeo-Christian, we find:

Whatever the intentions were when this article was "spun out" of the other one in May 2016, it is hard to see how they are on sufficiently different topics to warrant separate articles now. Pulling this article out of the other one has made both articles weaker, verging on incoherence. Person54 (talk) 11:30, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * religious historians in many languages have studied how Jews and Christians have interacted in society, persecution, and politics. They still do interact but this article is not at all about historical interaction of two groups, it's about a theme in American civil religion. Rjensen (talk) 13:48, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

You miss the point again. This article is about a theme in American civil religion. But the other article is about that as well, and "Judeo-Christian" seems like a better title for that topic than "Judeo-Christian ethics". (Where are the "ethics" in this article?) Remove the material in the other article which is basically about how "Judeo-Christian" became a theme of American civil religion, and you have only a couple of paragraphs left. And this article, which you say is supposed to be about an aspect of American civil religion, would be improved by having the background in the other article. When you split this article out of the other, you unilaterally declared the other article to be about the relations between Judaism and Christianity, even though it was not about that, neither at the time or subsequently. To make matters worse, there was already another article on Wikipedia on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, entitled (strangely enough), Judaism and Christianity. Wikipedia doesn't need three articles on "Judaism and Christianity", "Judeo-Christian", and "Judeo-Christian ethics", especially when the latter (this article) doesn't seem to have anything to do with ethics. Wikipedia needs two of those article, not all three. The only way that three can be justified is if this article were to cover the topic implied by its title, namely the overlap or common ground between Jewish and Christian ethics. Even then, a better title would be "Jewish and Christian ethics", since the adjective "Judeo-Christian" carries a lot of baggage in the context of the American civil religion. As a matter of process, you did the split without discussing it on the Talk page first, and even when there were objections, you ignored them. Nobody wanted an edit-war, and you got away with it. But one way or the other, this article is the one which should be merged back, and it would be good if you would concede that you were mistaken in "splitting it out" and let that happen. Person54 (talk) 17:48, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Always something new to complain about --but again zero reliable sources. You're making it all up, and you are not trying to report what the reliable sources actually say. I challenge you to name the RS that you are supposedly using. Rjensen (talk) 07:42, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

This is the Talk page. I'm making arguments about the structure of the Wikipedia and what it should be. The "Reliable Sources" are the three articles in question, their histories, and the Talk pages. Person54 (talk) 10:46, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Restructure
I restructured the article to bring together related material and make it flow better. I want to emphasize that I didn't drop any material, remove any citations, change the "gist" of anything. I just moved things around. At least, I did not intend to do so, although I still have misgivings about some sections. (To me, the sections on FDR and LBJ still seem disproportionately long, and I would be happier if FDR, Ike, and LBJ were just mentioned, more briefly, in the appropriate subsections of "History".)

In the course of doing this, I did discover that several paragraphs in the article were near-duplicates. Probably at some point they were actual duplicates produced by some kind of editing glitch, and they had diverged slightly. I fixed this.

I also brought across some more material which was still in the Judeo-Christian article which was related, in order to improve this article, make the other one more coherent, and to differentiate, if possible, the two articles. The other article now is more on "theological" or "scriptural" aspects of the view that Jewish and Christian beliefs overlap. In line with what I said above, I cannot say that this differentiation attempt was fully successful, and probably the other article should be merged somewhere. Person54 (talk) 19:49, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Ten Commandments
Both the image and chunk of the article are related to the government posting of the Ten Commandments. While the Commandments themselves may be part of both Jewish and Christian holy texts, the government posting of them is not a shared value. (Here, for example, is the Anti-Defamation League coming out explicitly against the practice, or "Several Jewish groups have weighed in on the cases, with most opposing displays that they feel endorse Judeo-Christian values".) It is misleading to include this material in this article, as it implies that it is a shared value. I am avoiding direct editing of articles at this time, but I hope that others can review these concerns and act appropriately. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 01:46, 14 May 2023 (UTC)


 * With zero objection in over half a year to this suggestion, I have implemented it. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:02, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

First Orwell usage
An editor just tried to alter the date and source of Orwell's first use of the term. While our current linking does have some problems, here is a citeable source on the 1939 usage. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 06:32, 11 December 2023 (UTC)