They are humans and our fellow citizens!

Abstract

This article thematizes how Jews are portrayed in the Danish theologian Balthasar Münter’s sermons. Münter served as a preacher in German St. Petri congregation in Copenhagen between 1765 and 1793, and left a great number of texts to posterity. Previous scholarship has argued that in one of his sermons, Münter seems to take a more positive view of the Jews than what was common in his day. This sermon was used to defend the rights of Jews in the Jewish Literary Feud in 1813. However, in this article I will argue that Münter’s positive attitude is shaped by his theological views and can be seen as a consequence of certain characteristics of enlightenment theology, rather than a genuine expression of tolerance towards religious minorities. In the article, I will argue that Münter demonstrated the same antisemitic attitudes that characterize the texts of his contemporaries, such as the well-known court preacher Christian Bastholm. Bastholm, who wrote a three-volume work on the Jews and who mentioned the Jews and Judaism in a number of contexts, refers to the Jews as an evil people who killed their prophets and stoned their sages. Nevertheless, Münter’s openness points to fundamental characteristics of protestant theology.

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Notes

1 Amdisen, Til nytte og fornøjelse.

2 Lausten, Oplysning i kirke, 157.

3 The Jewish Literary Feud has been described as a fierce clash of pamphlets with extensive tracts for and against Jews and their civil rights in Denmark. See Ulvund, Religious Otherness, x.

4 The question of a distinction between a theological anti-Judaism and a modern, racial antisemitism, has puzzled historical scholars and caused massive debates. While some have argued in favour of this distinction, others have rejected a sharp distinction between the two terms. Rather, they have argued, they could both be seen as expressions of an indigenous discourse and could therefore be allowed to float freely. However, “antisemitism” is often connected with Wilhelm Marr and his 1879 use of the expression to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns in Europe at that time. Since the present article thematises late eighteenth-century attitudes, the expressions “anti-Jewish” and “anti-Judaism” will be used in this text.

5 See Den Jødiske Historie, 1–2.

6 Eriksen, Harket, and Lorentz, Jødehat, 213–14.

7 Roos, Enlightened preaching. Münter’s view of Jews is not thematised in this book.

8 Lausten, Oplysning i kirke, 143 ff.

9 Niewöhner, “Entdecktes Judentum,” 167–80.

10 Lausten, Oplysning i kirke, 379 ff.

11 Eriksen, Harket, and Lorentz, Jødehat, 213–14.

12 Ibid.

13 Lausten, Tolerance and Enlightenment.

14 Salomon and Fischer, Mindeskrift, 31–2.

15 Lausten, Tolerance and Enlightenment.

16 Ibid.

17 Hartvig, Jøderne i Danmark, 288–91.

18 Bech, Storhandelens By, 338.

19 Falk, “De sefardiske slægter.”

20 Salomon and Fischer, Mindeskrift, 34.

21 Katz, “A State within a State,” 124–53.

22 Full title: Moses og Jesus eller om Jødernes og de Christnes moralske og intellektuelle forhold, en historisk-politisk Afhandling, oversat med en Forerindring af Thomas Tharup. Ridder af Dannebrogen.

23 Münter’s Oeffentliche Vorträge (1785–1793) is presented as a lectio continua, i.e. a chronological review of the gospels.

24 Roos, Enlightened Preaching.

25 Münter, Am 25. Sonntag, 501.

26 Ibid., 508–9.

27 Ibid., 510.

28 Münter, Oeffentliche Vorträge, vol. 1, 191.

29 See for instance ibid., vol. 4, 133.

30 See for instance Münter, Predigten, vol. 7, 105 ff.

31 Ibid.

32 See Lausten, Oplysning i kirke, 160 ff.

33 See for instance Münter, Predigten, vol. 3, 385–409 and his sermon on the same pericope in Predigten, vol. 6.

34 Münter, Predigten, vol. 6, 435.

35 See for instance ibid., Oeffentliche Vorträge, vol. 2, 108–9.

36 Eriksen, Harket, and Lorentz, Jødehat, 214.

37 Beutel, Kirchengeschichte, 112–15.

38 Semler, Versuch, 642–96.

39 Semler, Ueber historische.

40 Roos, Enlightened Preaching.