Hebrew Christian movement


The Hebrew Christian movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries consisted of Jews who converted to Christianity, but worshiped in congregations separate from denominational churches. In many cases, they retained some Jewish practices and liturgy, with the addition of readings from the Christian New Testament. The movement was incorporated into the parallel Messianic Jewish movement in the late 1960s.

1st century to Reformation

From the Jewish origins of Christianity through the split of early Christianity and Judaism and development of Christianity in the 1st century, the Christian mission to Jews was primarily led by the established churches, with Jewish converts sometimes proselytizing to their own people.

Precursor movements

The general missionary movement awakening in the Protestant church during the latter 18th century and the early 19th century motivated many missionaries to proselytize to Jews in a more 'humane' manner. With societies in England, Scotland and Germany, missionaries went all over Europe and had some success, as Aaron Bernstein noted in a number of examples. The 19th century saw at least 250,000 Jews convert to Christianity according to existing records of various societies.
Beginning in the 19th century, some groups had attempted to create congregations and societies primarily of Jews who had converted to Christianity. The London Society for promoting Christianity amongst the Jews was formed in 1809 with the motto “Jesus Christ is the Messiah.”

Early congregations

The first identifiable congregation made up exclusively of Jews who had converted to Christianity was established in the United Kingdom in 1813; a group of 41 Jewish Christians established an association called "Beni Abraham", and started meeting at Jews' Chapel in London for prayers Friday night and Sunday morning; In 1885, the first Hebrew Christian church was established in New York. In the 1890s, immigrant Jews who converted to Christianity established the "Hope of Israel" mission on New York's Lower East Side while retaining Jewish rites and customs. In 1895, Hope of Israel's Our Hope magazine carried the subtitle “A Monthly Devoted to the Study of Prophecy and to Messianic Judaism.” Hope of Israel was controversial: other missionary groups accused its members of being Judaizers, and one of the two editors of Our Hope magazine, Arno C. Gaebelein, eventually repudiated his views, and, as a result, was able to become a leader in the mainstream Christian evangelical movement. In 1915, when the Hebrew Christian Alliance of American was founded, it "consistently assuaged the fears of fundamentalist Christians by emphasizing that it is not a separate denomination but only an evangelistic arm of the evangelical church", and insisted that it would be free of these Judaizing practices "now and forever". In the 1940s and 50s, missionaries in Israel adopted the term meshichyim to counter negative connotations of the word nozrim.

Early organizations

The Hebrew Christian Alliance was formed in Britain in 1860.
The Hebrew Christian Alliance of American was founded in 1915, in part to emphasize to fundamentalist Christians that while it used Jewish forms, it was a cooperating evangelistic arm of the evangelical church.
In 1975, the HCAA changed its name to the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America.