Religious Diversity News - The Pluralism Project

On November 9, 1999, The New York Times reported that Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jewish leaders, the heads of the four major Jewish theological seminaries, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, sent a letter to the Southern Baptist Convention president, Rev. Paige Patterson, asking the SBC to stop supporting "deceptive" tactics to convert Jews. The letter denounced the SBC's endorsement of messianic Jewish organizations: "Our quarrel with the Southern Baptist Convention is not over its right to proselytize. Rather, the Jewish community is deeply offended that the S.B.C. has formally embraced a strategy that attempts to deceive Jews into believing that one can be both a Jew and a Christian."