The Center for Jewish Christian Understanding
Marginalia Review of Books
Rev. Tim O’Leary, Co-Founder, Director of Dialogue and Development
Alexandra Barylski, Executive Editor and Co-Founder
Dr. Samuel Loncar, Editor-in-Chief, Founder, and Director
The Center for Jewish Christian Understanding
“People in the West, even those who may imagine that they have emancipated themselves from Christian belief, in fact, are shot through with Christian assumptions about almost everything. . . All of us in the West are a goldfish, and the water that we swim in is Christianity, by which I don’t necessarily mean the confessional form of the faith, but, rather, considered as an entire civilization.”
-Tom Holland, award-winning historian and broadcaster,
author of Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Changed the World
The Center for Jewish Christian Understanding is a think tank and research project grounded in original research on the theological roots of modern antisemitism. Its vision is a world in which antisemitism is impossible, because its causes have been understood and acknowledged, and are widely known, informing academics, journalists, and the public.
Samuel Loncar
(Founder of The Center & Editor-in-Chief, Marginalia Review of Books)
Christianity’s Shadow Founder:
Marcion, Anti-Judaism, and the Birth of Liberal Protestantism
Samuel Loncar
(Founder of The Center & Editor-in-Chief, Marginalia Review of Books)
featured in Mosaic Magazine and The Browser
Vision
Our vision is to bring about a radically new understanding of the Jewish Christian relationship which creates the foundations of a world where antisemitism is impossible, because it is understood.
Mission
Our mission is to act as an educational hub between a variety of organizations and scholars studying the profound and complex history of Jewish Christian relations.
Through education, scholarship, and dialogue, we are bringing to light the historical complexities of the Jewish Christian relationship and aim to expose the root cause of modern antisemitism—a strain of Christian theology that has distorted its own history and created a cultural theology of violence and hatred, and is rising again.
Why Us
Marginalia has over 100,000 readers and our publications are assigned in universities and classrooms around the world, have been read at Google, assigned to White House Staffers and members of European Parliament, and have been featured in The Browser, Arts & Letters, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
The Center for Jewish Christian Understanding will bring over 8 years of publications and new material to a wide audience seeking the intellectual, religious, and ethical resources they need to facilitate Jewish-Christian understanding. We’ve published the leading scholars in this area, including Daniel Boyarin, Paula Fredriksen, Rowan Williams, Susannah Heschel, Paul Franks, and others.
In this season of liberation where Jews around the world will celebrate the exodus from Egypt
during Pesach, we are raising $50,000 to launch the Center and make it operational,
and thus begin to liberate the world from the shackles of antisemitism.
You gain by giving. Learn more about Partnership tiers below.
“Imagine a Christianity without Judaism: A bible with no Israel, no Torah, no law and prophets, and finally a Jesus without a history, revealing a god separate from and unknown to the world prior to Jesus’ appearance in history. In such an imagined act, one comes close to imagining the under-studied truth of modern Christian theology: that such a form of Christianity, a Christianity without Judaism, lies at the foundation of Protestant liberalism.”
- Samuel Loncar, Editor in-Chief of Marginalia Review of Books
“Christianity’s Shadow Founder: Marcion, Anti-Judaism, and the Birth of Liberal Protestantism”
featured at The Browser and Mosaic Magazine
Partnership Options: You Gain by Giving
We need your support to make our work at the Center possible:
-
Hosting interviews produced for the The Center Podcast and MRB's YouTube
-
Publishing scholarly articles, essays, book reviews
-
Speaking at religious organizations, non-profits, and educational institutions
-
Consulting for academic departments and religious and community leaders
-
Programming and hosting an annual academic conference to bring together scholars who might otherwise not engage each other. This also includes a working group of scholars, writers, and community leaders, and the events will be hosted live online and in person.
Founder's Circle $5000 +
-
Special project access, like invitations to live events online and in person
-
Interview with MRB, bringing your partnership story to over 100,000 readers
-
Project newsletter for the partnership community
Benefactor's Circle $1000 +
-
Special project access, like invitations to live events online
-
Project newsletter for the partnership community
Contributors: $500 +
1. Affiliates: $500 +
2. Friends: $10 +
-
Project newsletter for the partnership community
All partners will be listed publicly online and in print by their first name and last initial. Please include a comment with your donation if you would like your full name and/or title printed.
“People in the West, even those who may imagine that they have emancipated themselves from Christian belief, in fact, are shot through with Christian assumptions about almost everything. . . All of us in the West are a goldfish, and the water that we swim in is Christianity, by which I don’t necessarily mean the confessional form of the faith, but, rather, considered as an entire civilization.”
-Tom Holland, award-winning historian and broadcaster,
author of Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Changed the World
Resources Available at Marginalia
This list contains essays, reviews, and forum contributions.
Samuel Loncar
(Editor-in-Chief, Marginalia Review of Books)
Christianity’s Shadow Founder:
Marcion, Anti-Judaism, and the Birth of Liberal Protestantism
Samuel Loncar
(Editor-in-Chief, Marginalia Review of Books)
featured in The Browser
Blood Libel: Why is Facebook Permitting Antisemitism?
Paul Franks
(Yale University)
To Speak Truly About God
Rowan Williams
(104th Archbishop of Canterbury)
The Free Press’s Editor, Bari Weiss, Says Wear Your Kippah
Ari Blaff
(University of Toronto)
The Wandering You: Jewish & American Identity
Erin Faigin
(University of Wisconsin-Madison)
When Jesus Was Jewish
Larry W. Hurtado
(in memoriam)
The Christian Origins of Racism
M. Lindsay Kaplan
(Georgetown University)
The Past and Future of Jewish Christianity
Sair Kattan Gribetz
(Fordham University)
Antisemitism, Adorno, and the Theory of Hate
James Loeffler
(University of Virginia)
A State of Their Own:
Jewish Internationalism and Human Rights
Gil Rubin
(Harvard University)
The Conflict: Israel and Palestine
Joshua Shanes
(College of Charleston)
Cultural Contradictions of The Nation-State
Yehudah Mirsky
(Brandeis Univeristy)
Jew and the Making of the Christian Gaze
Annette Yoshiko Reed
(Harvard University)
Anti-Judaism and Early Christianity
Paula Fredriksen
(Boston University)
James A. Diamond
(University of Waterloo)
Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, From Boston Latin to Lubavitch
Founders
Samuel Loncar, Ph.D. (Yale) is the Editor-in-Chief of Marginalia, and he is a scholar, writer, institution builder, consultant, keynote speaker, and applied ethicist. While earning his Ph.D., Samuel was a Junior Fellow at the MacMillan Center’s Initiative on Religion, Politics, and Society, a John H. Hord Fellow, and the recipient of a Baron Foundation Grant for his research on antisemitism. His scholarly article “Christianity’s Shadow Founder: Marcion, Anti-Judaism, and the Birth of Liberal Protestantism” was featured in The Browser and Mosaic Magazine, and his speaking and consulting clients include Oliver Wyman, Shabtai, a Global Jewish Leadership at Yale, Trinity Church Wall Street Retreat Center, the United Nations, and Flagship Pioneering.
Alexandra Barylski, M.A. (Yale) is the Executive Editor of Marginalia, and she is a writer, editor, and social entrepreneur. As an editor, she has worked with NASA project leads, Ivy League professors, best-selling poets and writers, and emerging authors. She is the Co-Founder of The Writing College, and the Director of The Women’s Writing Institute. Her work as an interviewer has been featured at Poetry and Kenyon Review.
Rev. Timothy O’Leary, M.Div. (Yale) is the is the Rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. He received a BA in History from Princeton University and an MDiv from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale. He has been working at the intersection of Jewish-Christian relations for several years, and he is actively shaping a new dialogue in his parish community around the history of Christianity and Judaism. Partnering with Marginalia is an expansion of this urgent faith-work.
Our Partners
Founder's Circle $5000 +
Benefactor's Circle $1000 +
Samuel L.
Timothy O.
Contributors: $500 +
1. Affiliates: $500 +
2. Friends: $10 +
Andreas R.