The Center for Jewish Christian Understanding
Marginalia Review of Books
Rev. Tim O’Leary, M.Div (Yale)
Co-Founder & Director of Dialogue and Development
Alexandra Barylski, M.A. (Yale)
Co-Founder & Executive Editor
Samuel Loncar, Ph.D. (Yale)
Founder, Director, & Editor-in-Chief
The Center for Jewish Christian Understanding
“We can, as historians and scholars, conceptually distinguish theologically and religiously grounded antisemitism from apparently non-religious antisemitism, but in the historical evolution of Western culture they are integrally related.”
- Samuel Loncar, Founder & Director, Editor-in-Chief
“Antisemitism is Our Problem”
“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 historical 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.
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
The Center acts as an educational hub between scholars across disciplines studying the profound and complex history of Jewish Christian relations, and it brings their work to a wide audience.
The Center, in keeping with Marginalia’s broader mission, integrates the work of scholars across disciplines. We’ve already published leading scholars in this area, including Daniel Boyarin, Paula Fredriksen, Rowan Williams, the late Larry Hurtado, Susannah Heschel, Paul Franks, and others. The scholarly work shows a consensus of thought across fields that, when synthesized, creates a new narrative that reckons with the legacy of Christian culture in a responsible way.
Through education, integrated interdisciplinary scholarship, and media produced for a wide audience, The Center brings to light the historical complexities of the Jewish Christian relationship and aims to expose the root cause of modern antisemitism—a strain of Christian theology that has distorted its own history and created a Western culture of violence and hatred that seeks to eliminate the Jewish people.
“Antisemitic incidents across the US saw…a 344% increase over the past five years and a 893% increase over the past 10 years. It is the highest number on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents 46 years ago.”
-Anti-Defamation League,
Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2024
How Can I Partner?
The Center needs your support for:
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Printing resources that integrate scholarship across disciplines and MRB discussion guides and curriculums for a wide audience
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Hosting interviews produced for the The Center Podcast and MRB's YouTube
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Publishing scholarly articles, essays, book reviews, and audio-visual media
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Speaking at news organizations, religious organizations, non-profits, businesses, and educational institutions
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Consulting for universities, business, and NGO's
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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.
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Distributing free print, audio, and video recourses to key institutional stakeholders such as news outlets, synagogues, churches, and college campuses
Scroll down to see our current partners and giving circles.
“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
Founder and Director
Editor in-Chief of the Marginalia Review of Books
“Christianity’s Shadow Founder: Marcion, Anti-Judaism, and the Birth of Liberal Protestantism”
The Story
The Center’s vision to change the narrative around Jewish Christian understanding is a part of Director and Founder Samuel Loncar’s scholarly work as a historian, scholar of religion, and philosopher.
In his article, “Christianity’s Shadow Founder: Marcion, AntiJudaism, and the Birth of Liberal Protestantism,” Loncar links two facts that have received practically no serious, systematic treatment in their connection to modern antisemitism:
(1) that the famous second-century heretic, Marcion, whose thinking has shaped much of Christian theology, rejected the Old Testament as Christian Scripture and explicitly called for the elimination of Judaism as a constitutive part of Christianity, and
(2) that Friedrich Schleiermacher, widely recognized as a great Christian theologian and regarded as the founder of liberal theology—the foundation of the West's distinctively modern liberal Protestant theology—accepted the dogmatic position enunciated by Marcion.
This article showed, for the first time, that in key respects Schleiermacher is Marcion’s heir, and consequently Schleiermacher builds into the foundations of Protestant Liberalism—and thus modern Christian theology—the elimination of Judaism from Christianity.
Impact
Marginalia's publications reach an audience of over 100,000 readers, have been read at Google, assigned to White House staffers and members of European Parliament, have been taught in universities and classrooms around the world, and have been featured at places such as Arts & Letters Daily and the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.
“Christianity’s Shadow Founder: Marcion, AntiJudaism, and the Birth of Liberal Protestantism” was published at Marginalia, and its impact has influenced leading journalists, reached top research universities, major scholars in the field, and the public. The article is:
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taught at major research universities, including Hebrew University
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cited by major scholars, including Guy Stroumsa
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featured in The Browser
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featured in Mosaic Magazine as an "Editor's Pick"
“Christian theologians and scholars of Christianity, by failing to recognize either the reality or the significance of Schleiermacher’s Marcionism, have unwittingly covered over the historically momentous fact that the most academically respectable form of Christian theology in the modern world was rooted in a Christianity excised of its Jewishness.”
Samuel Loncar
featured in Mosaic Magazine
“The Anti-Jewish Heretic Who Shaped Liberal Protestant Theology”
“Antisemitic incidents on college and university campuses rose more steeply than those in any other location. In 2024, ADL recorded 1,694 antisemitic incidents on college campuses, which is 84% higher than in 2023. Campus incidents comprised 18% of all incidents, a larger proportion than in any previous Audit.”
Anti-Defamation League
Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2024
Partnership Options: You Gain by Giving
Founder's Circle $5000 +
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Interview with MRB, bringing your partnership story to over 100,000 readers
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Project newsletter for the partnership community
Benefactor's Circle $1000 +
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Special project access, like invitations to live events online
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Project newsletter for the partnership community
Contributors: $500 +
1. Affiliates: $500 +
2. Friends: $10 +
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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.
Our Partners
Founder's Circle $5000 +
Alfred M.
Samuel L.
Benefactor's Circle $1000 +
Contributors
1. Affiliates: $500 +
2. Friends: $10 +
Andreas R.
Michael O.
Resources Available at Marginalia
This list contains selected essays, reviews, and forum contributions.
More resources will be added to the list weekly.
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)
Jesus the Aryan: The Protestant Reformation's Troubling Legacy
Susannah Heschel
(Dartmouth College)
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)
Reading Cynthia Baker's Jew with James Baldwin
Susannah Heschel
(Dartmouth College)
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
The Founders
Founder and Director
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.
Co-Founder
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.
Co-Founder
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 work.