Treadmill fears

Jews should not worry about a rightist theocracy | Marvin Olasky

Most Jewish voters on Nov. 4 voted for Barack Obama. Some apparently feared Sarah Palin because they identified her with the "Christian right," a group purportedly intent on imposing a theocracy in America. But two works by Jewish writers—Milton Himmelfarb's Jews and Gentiles and Herb London's America's Secular Challenge (both from Encounter Books, 2008)—contend that concerns about theocracy are way overblown.

London, president of the Hudson Institute, writes that "I, a Jew, have come to appreciate the role that Christianity plays in buttressing . . . the greatest and most liberating tradition the world has yet known." His thoughtful prose suggests the importance of alliance-building between Jews and evangelicals. Many Jews still have in the backs of their minds an awareness that Europe's supposedly most-civilized country killed 6 million of their brethren. But there's no reason to expect that the United States will become a mean place for those it has wonderfully sheltered.